Acts 10:42 says, “He charged us to proclaim to the people and solemnly testify that this is the One who was designated by God to be the Judge of the living and the dead.” Christ has been designated, by God, the Judge of all mankind. He will judge both the living and the dead. At His coming back the resurrected Christ will be the Judge of the living before the millennium on His throne of glory (Matt. 25:31-46). This is related to His second coming (2 Tim. 4:1). Christ will also be the Judge of the dead after the millennium on the great white throne (Rev. 20:11-15). Thus, Romans 2:16 says, “God shall judge the secrets of men...by Jesus Christ.”
Acts 17:31 says, “Because He has set a day in which He is about to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a Man whom He has designated, having furnished proof to all by raising Him from among the dead.” God has designated Christ to judge the inhabited earth at a day set by Him. This refers to the day when Christ will judge the living on the throne of His glory before the millennium. Because on that day He will judge the inhabited earth, it should refer only to His judgment on the living. God has designated Him to execute this judgment because He is a Man (John 5:27), and God’s raising Him from among the dead is a strong proof of this.
God has given the authority of all judgment to Christ that all men may honor Him as they honor God (John 5:22-23), and He will judge according to the will of God (John 5:30). As the Son of God (John 5:25), He can give life (John 5:21), and as the Son of Man, He can execute judgment (John 5:27). He is one with the Father in the matter of enlivening, and He is also one with Him in the matter of judgment.
After God seated Christ in the heavens, made Him both Lord and Christ, exalted Him to be a Leader and a Savior, made Him the High Priest, and designated Him to be the Judge of the living and the dead, He poured out His Spirit upon His slaves. Concerning this, Acts 2:17 and 18 say, “It shall be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; and upon My slaves, both men and women, I will pour out of My Spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy.” The pouring out of the Spirit here differs from the breathing of the Spirit into the disciples out of the mouth of Christ on the day of His resurrection (John 20:22). The pouring out of God’s Spirit was from the heavens after Christ’s ascension. The former is the essential aspect of the Spirit breathed into the disciples as life for their living; the latter is the economical aspect of the Spirit poured out upon them as power for their work. The same Spirit is both within the believers essentially and upon them economically.
The poured-out Spirit is the consummation of the processed Triune God. The Triune God became incarnate, and then He lived on earth for thirty-three and a half years, after which He went to the cross and died an all-inclusive death to solve all problems. Then He was buried and raised up from the dead, entering into resurrection and becoming a life-giving Spirit. After His resurrection, He ascended to the heavens to be made Lord, Christ, Savior, Leader, High Priest, and Head of all things. After passing through such a process, He became the Spirit, and the Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God.
The Spirit poured out on the day of Pentecost was not merely the so-called Holy Spirit, as is commonly taught. Rather, according to the entire revelation of the Bible, this Spirit was the Triune God consummated, through the process of incarnation unto ascension, as the Spirit. Therefore, the Spirit poured out on the day of Pentecost was the consummation of the Triune God. When this Spirit was poured out, the processed Triune God was poured out, and this outpouring included the elements of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and descension.
The outpouring of the all-inclusive Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God is a great blessing to God’s chosen people. Now God’s people can receive in full the dispensing of this consummated God. From the day of Pentecost until now, God’s chosen people have been under this dispensing. We may be under such a divine dispensing day by day and even moment by moment. It is a great thing to be under this dispensing, which is the issue of God’s marvelous work in the New Testament.
This dispensing could not take place at the time of John the Baptist, or when Peter was traveling with the Lord Jesus. The reason the divine dispensing could not be experienced then was that the Triune God had not yet been consummated. But by the time Christ came to His disciples after His resurrection and told them to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19), the Triune God had been consummated. It certainly is good news, glad tidings, to hear that the Triune God has been consummated as the all-inclusive Spirit to dispense Himself into us.
God has poured out the all-inclusive Spirit as His consummation upon the whole Body of Christ including all of us. This outpouring is God dispensing Himself into His chosen people in a full way. Today we are under this outpouring, this dispensing. May we all see this vision that God has poured out the all-inclusive consummated Spirit and that we all are under this marvelous dispensing.
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