The Spirit was the means for Christ to offer Himself to God. Hebrews 9:14 tells us that through the eternal Spirit Christ offered Himself without blemish to God. This means that while Christ was working to offer Himself to God as a sacrifice, He was working by the eternal Spirit. Christ and the eternal Spirit worked together to present Christ to God as the unique offering to accomplish redemption for God’s eternal salvation.
Because the means by which Christ offered Himself to God was the eternal Spirit, what was accomplished by that offering is eternal-eternal redemption. Christ’s offering accomplished an eternal redemption because it is an eternal offering. Because Christ’s redemption is eternal, it surpasses time and space; it is everlasting in time and all-prevailing in space. The eternal Spirit has made the death of Christ eternally efficacious. The accomplishment of His death covers all the believing Old Testament saints and all the New Testament believers. Although Christ died on Calvary nearly two thousand years ago and many miles away from us, His death is applicable and available to us because it was accomplished through the eternal Spirit. His eternal death is available and applicable to all persons in any place and at any time. Therefore, whoever believes in Christ has the eternal redemption, accomplished through the eternal Spirit, applied to him. Whenever we contact the Spirit today, we touch the reality of Christ’s eternal offering. Because we are partakers of the Spirit, we are also partakers of the unique offering, partakers of eternal redemption. Once we become a partaker of the Spirit, we partake of everything related to the Spirit.
Christ labored, worked, and lived on earth through the eternal Spirit. Whatever the Lord Jesus accomplished and experienced in His living, labor, and work has been made eternal by the eternal Spirit. This eternal Spirit is all-inclusive, and now we partake of such a Spirit.
The Spirit is also the means for Christ to fill His believers essentially. This is revealed in John 20:22: “He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.” This indicates that Christ filled the believers with the Spirit as the breath of life. This is a matter of the Spirit becoming the intrinsic essence of the believers’ spiritual being. We may neglect the fact that before Christ poured out the Spirit upon the believers economically as power for their work, He breathed the Spirit into them essentially as life for their inward being. We need to be deeply impressed that Christ first filled His believers essentially and later poured out the Spirit upon them economically.
Acts 1:2 says that the resurrected Christ gave “command through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom He chose.” The resurrected Christ has become the life-giving Spirit, yet in resurrection He still did things through the Holy Spirit. In particular, He gave command to the disciples through the Spirit.
Finally, the Spirit was the means for Christ, as the Head of the Body, to baptize all His believers into His Body (Matt. 3:11; Acts 1:5; 11:15-16; 1 Cor. 12:13). The New Testament reveals that Christ is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33). Concerning the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus said in Acts 1:5, “John indeed baptized in water, but you shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” This was accomplished in two steps, in two instances. First, on the day of Pentecost, Christ, the Head of the Body, having received the Spirit economically once again in His ascension, baptized the Jewish believers into the Spirit. That was the first step, the first instance, of Christ baptizing the Body into the Spirit. Then, in the house of Cornelius, Christ, the Head, baptized all the Gentile believers into the Spirit (Acts 10:44-47; 11:15-17). That was the second step, the second instance. By these two steps, these two instances, Christ, the Head of the Body, baptized His entire Body into the Spirit once for all.
Because Christ has baptized all His believers into His Body by means of the Spirit, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:13, “In one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.” As the Spirit is the sphere and element of our spiritual baptism and in such a Spirit we were all baptized into one organic entity, the Body of Christ, so we should all, regardless of our races, nationalities, and social ranks, be this one Body. Christ is the life and constituent of this Body, and the Spirit is the reality of Christ. In this one Spirit we were all baptized by Christ into this one living Body to express Christ.
We have seen an overall view of the Spirit’s work in Christ. Christ does not live, move, and work apart from the Spirit. Rather, He is always one with the Spirit, and the Spirit is His means for His living the divine life and for doing everything.
Home | First | Prev | Next