After the Lord Jesus breathed Himself into the disciples, He stayed with them economically for forty days. Acts 1:3 says, “To whom also He presented Himself alive after His suffering by many convincing proofs, through a period of forty days, appearing to them and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God.” Christ’s presenting Himself alive was for the purpose of training the disciples to practice and enjoy His invisible presence. In the Gospel of John there is no word or hint indicating that the Lord Jesus left the disciples after breathing Himself into them. Actually, He stayed with them, although they were unconscious of His presence. The Lord’s further appearing to them was His manifestation. Before His death, the Lord’s presence was visible in the flesh. After His resurrection, His presence was invisible in the Spirit. His manifestations, or appearings, after His resurrection were to train the disciples to realize, enjoy, and practice His invisible presence, which is more available, prevailing, precious, rich, and real than His visible presence. Christ’s invisible presence is just the Spirit in His resurrection whom He breathed into the disciples and who would be with them all the time.
After the Lord Jesus breathed Himself as the Spirit into the disciples, He never left them essentially. However, economically He would appear and then disappear. The Lord appeared and disappeared economically in order to train the disciples. Regarding this, we should not speak of His going and coming but of His appearing and disappearing. The disciples had become accustomed to the visible presence of Christ. For three and a half years He had been with them visibly in the flesh. Suddenly His visible presence was taken away. Then the Lord came back to the disciples to breathe Himself into them. From that time onward His presence with them became invisible. It was no longer a physical presence but a spiritual presence. From the time He breathed Himself as the Spirit into the disciples on the day of His resurrection, the resurrected Christ dwelt in them. His appearing spoken of in Acts 1:3 does not mean that He ever left the disciples. Rather, it means that He made His presence visible to them, training them to realize and enjoy continually His invisible presence.
Although Christ’s spiritual presence is invisible, it is more real and vital than His visible presence. The Lord’s visible presence involved the elements of space and time. But with His invisible presence there is neither the element of space nor the element of time. His invisible presence is everywhere. Wherever we are the Lord’s invisible presence is with us. Actually, His invisible presence is not merely with us-it is within us.
The Lord Jesus appeared to His disciples for a period of forty days. In the Bible forty days are a period of trial and testing (Deut. 9:9, 18; 1 Kings 19:8). When the Lord Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil, He fasted forty days and forty nights (Matt. 4:1-2). Also, the children of Israel were tested by God in the wilderness for forty years. Forty, therefore, is the number of testing, proving, trying, educating. In Acts 1 the Lord Jesus appeared and disappeared during a period of forty days in order to train His disciples.
During these forty days the Lord Jesus spoke to the disciples concerning the kingdom of God. Although we are not told in Acts what the Lord Jesus spoke concerning the kingdom, we may infer what He said by considering other portions of the Word. In the Gospels the Lord Jesus taught the disciples much concerning the kingdom. It is not likely that during the forty days after His resurrection He gave the disciples something new concerning the kingdom. Rather, He may have repeated what He taught them in the Gospels. When the Lord spoke regarding the kingdom in the Gospels, the disciples were not able to understand what He was teaching them. They did not have the necessary spiritual insight, because the Lord was not yet in them. But in John 20 they received Christ as the life-giving Spirit. As a result, in Acts 1 they were very different, for Christ, the life-giving Spirit, was now within them as their life and person. Because they had the life-giving Spirit within them, they were able to understand Christ’s speaking concerning the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not a kingdom visible to human sight; it is a kingdom of the divine life. The kingdom of God is actually the spreading of Christ as life into His believers to form a realm in which God rules in His life. The kingdom of God is the ruling, the reigning, of God with all its blessing and enjoyment. It is the goal of the gospel of God and of Jesus Christ. To enter into this kingdom, people need to repent of their sins and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:15) so that their sins may be forgiven and that they may be regenerated by God to have the divine life, which matches the divine nature of His kingdom (John 3:3, 5).
The kingdom of God is actually Christ Himself (Luke 17:21) as the seed of life sown into His believers, God’s chosen people (Mark 4:3, 26), and developing into a realm which God may rule as His kingdom in His divine life. Regeneration is its entrance (John 3:5), and the growth of the divine life within the believers is its development (2 Pet. 1:3-11). The kingdom of God is the church life today, in which the faithful believers live (Rom. 14:17), and it will develop into the coming kingdom as an inheritance reward (Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5) to the overcoming saints in the millennium. Eventually, it will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the eternal kingdom of God and the eternal realm of the eternal blessing of God’s eternal life for all God’s redeemed to enjoy in the new heaven and new earth.
In Acts 1:3 the Lord Jesus must have helped the disciples to have such a proper realization concerning the kingdom of God. The disciples must have begun to see that the kingdom of God is the spreading of Christ as life to His believers, that it is the propagation of Christ as life to form a realm in which God rules in His life. The disciples certainly must have understood that they were now part of the propagation, the spreading, of Christ, and thereby were part of the kingdom of God. Christ’s teaching the things concerning the kingdom of God was an important aspect of His work in His resurrection.
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