We have seen that the church is a mystery hidden in God’s eternal economy. We have also seen that the church as the mystery of Christ has been revealed in two steps: first by Christ and then by the Holy Spirit. In the first step, Christ revealed the church outwardly to His apostles. He showed them the universal and local aspects of the church but not the mysterious aspect. This aspect was not revealed until, after His resurrection, Christ had become the life-giving Spirit and had breathed Himself into His disciples and, on the day of Pentecost, had poured out the consummated Spirit upon them. After all this had taken place, the believers, especially the apostles, were equipped and qualified to realize something deeper and more profound concerning the church. They could see something not just outwardly but inwardly, not something that could simply be realized in the mind and in the heart but something that needed to be understood by the human spirit. Paul in particular received in his spirit the revelation of the church as the mystery of Christ. In his spirit he received the completed revelation concerning Christ as the mystery of God and the church as the mystery of Christ. Therefore, in his Epistles Paul unveils these two mysteries.
The revelation of the church as the mystery of Christ is received not in our mind or in our heart but in our spirit, in the regenerated human spirit indwelt by the Spirit of reality. Because Paul was enlightened in his regenerated spirit, he entered into the vision of the church as the mystery of Christ and spoke concerning this vision in his Epistles, telling us of this mystery.
Having considered the church as the hidden mystery in God’s eternal economy and having seen that the church, the mystery of Christ, has been revealed first by Christ in the Gospels and then by the Holy Spirit in the Epistles, we shall begin in this message to consider the formation of the church. First, we shall see the formation of the church in a general way, and then we shall cover the details.
We need to realize that none of us is qualified to form the church. Only the Lord Jesus is qualified for this. In Matthew 16:18 He says, “I will build My church.” He is the unique one who is qualified to form the church.
In order for Christ to form the church it was necessary for Him to pass through death and enter into resurrection. In resurrection He was transfigured from the flesh to the Spirit. First Corinthians 15:45b tells us that in His resurrection and through His resurrection Christ as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.
On the day of His resurrection, the Lord Jesus appeared to His disciples in a wonderful way. “When therefore it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst and said to them, Peace be to you” (John 20:19). The disciples were “startled and became frightened and thought they beheld a spirit” (Luke 24:37), that is a phantom, a ghost, a specter. The Lord said to them, “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you behold Me having” (Luke 24:39). The Lord had a physical body that could be seen and touched. After showing the disciples “both His hands and His side” (John 20:20), the Lord “breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit” (v. 22). This is the Spirit expected in John 7:39 and promised in 16:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:7-8, 13. Hence, the Lord’s breathing of the Holy Spirit into the disciples was the fulfillment of His promise of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter. Here the Spirit as the breath was breathed as life into the disciples for their life. By breathing the Spirit into the disciples, the Lord imparted Himself as life and everything into them.
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