After God poured out the consummated Spirit upon the Body of Christ, He sent the resurrected Christ back to His chosen people. Acts 3:26 speaks of this: “To you first, God, having raised up His Servant, has sent Him to bless you in turning away each one of you from your wickedness.” God has sent back the resurrected and ascended Christ to the Jews first by pouring out His Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Hence, the very consummated Spirit God poured out is the Christ God raised and exalted to the heavens. When the apostles preached and ministered this Christ, the consummated Spirit was ministered to people.
At the time Peter spoke the word recorded in Acts 3:26, Christ as God’s Servant had ascended to the heavens and was still there. Nevertheless, Peter told the people that God had sent Christ to bless them. Actually, God has received Christ into the heavens. But here Peter says that God has sent this ascended One to the people. In what way did God send the ascended Christ to the Jews? God sent Him by pouring out the consummated Spirit. That was God’s way of sending the ascended Christ to the people. This implies that the outpoured Spirit is actually the ascended Christ Himself. When the outpoured Spirit came to the people, that was Christ, the ascended One, sent by God to them. From this we see that the poured-out Spirit is identical to the ascended Christ. In God’s economy for the experience of His people, the ascended Christ and the poured-out Spirit are one. In God’s economy Christ and the Spirit are one for the dispensing of the processed Triune God into us and for our enjoyment of this dispensing.
We have heard much that God will send Christ back in the future, at the time of the second advent. But according to Acts 3:26, God has already sent back the ascended Christ. First He was sent to the Jews and then to Gentiles throughout the world.
The first time Christ was sent by God He was sent in the flesh. After His ascension He was sent back by God as the Spirit. Christ today is the Spirit. When the all-inclusive Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost, that was God’s sending of Christ. The outpouring of the Spirit was the descension of Christ. In chapter two of Acts the Spirit was poured out, and Peter received this outpouring of the Spirit. Then in chapter three Peter says that God has sent Christ back to His people. God honored Christ, glorified Christ, and sent Him back. Even while Peter was speaking to the people, Christ was there. He was present not as the Christ in the flesh but as the pneumatic Christ, who is the Spirit. Therefore, as part of His work, God has sent the resurrected Christ to His chosen people as the Spirit.
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