When Christ ascended up on high, to the third heaven, that was not the end of His traveling. After He ascended, He descended into our spirit. Therefore, Christ is the One who descends, ascends, travels, and comes to us in gracious visitations. Today Christ is still traveling; that is, He is still ascending and descending. However, now His traveling takes place mainly within us. In our experience we may be up or down. When we are down, Christ comes down to where we are and brings us up to God. Many times during the course of a day we may be brought by Christ into the heavens. From our experience we can testify that within us Christ descends and ascends; He goes up and down. Although He is always steady, He does not stand still. On the contrary, He does a great deal of traveling within us. It is difficult to say where Christ is. Is He in heaven or on earth? If we say that He is on earth, we may have the sense that He is in heaven. But if we say that He is in heaven, we may soon realize that He is on earth. Actually, Christ is everywhere. According to verses 9 and 10, He descended and ascended in order to fill all things. Do you think that Christ will fill all things in the universe without also filling you? Through His descending and ascending, Christ will fill us with Himself.
It is by His descending and ascending that Christ constitutes us gifts to the Body. The more He descends and ascends within us, the more we become gifts. Many believers have very little function in the church because they have not yet been constituted as gifts. They may be good believers, but they are not gifts to the church. But as Christ descends and ascends within them, He captures them, vanquishes them, and constitutes them into gifts to His Body. As a result of Christ’s traveling, they become useful gifts.
Regrettably, however, within some of the saints Christ’s traveling may have ceased. Christ no longer goes up and down within them. We need to be constituted as a gift to the church through Christ’s descending and ascending within us. Christ should have many ups and downs within us. This means that Christ should go down and up within us; Christ should come down to where we are and should ascend with us into the heavenlies. If we try to hold Christ as the Head (Col. 2:19) without allowing Him to descend and ascend within us, we damage the process by which we are constituted gifts. The Lord will constitute us as gifts only through His descending and ascending within us. After such experiences of Christ’s inward traveling over a period of time, we become useful in the church. We should experience and enjoy Him as a descending and ascending Christ.
Our Christ is the all-inclusive, universal Christ. He is far above all, and our Christ is continually descending and ascending within us. Through His descending and ascending, He fills all things—universally, vertically, and horizontally. We need to praise the Lord for His traveling, for the marvelous two-way traffic between heaven and earth and between earth and heaven. It is through such traffic that the gift-making and gift-giving Christ produces gifts for His Body. We should not focus our attention on ourselves but on the all-inclusive Christ. We should not consider how weak or how poor we are. Rather, we should think of Christ, speak of Christ, and look away to Christ. We need to praise the Lord for the revelation of Christ in God’s economy found in the book of Ephesians! This book says little of Christ as the Redeemer or Savior. But it does reveal that Christ is far above all and that He is now filling all in all.
We should consider how the believers are constituted as gifts and presented to the Body. First, Christ is wrought into us to become our life, our person, and our everything. Then we minister to others the Christ who has been wrought into us. We need to see that only the ascended Christ can produce gifts for the Body. Notice that in Ephesians 4:8-11 the gifts are spoken of in relation to Christ’s ascension. The ascension was the peak and the climax of Christ’s work. The other basic steps of Christ’s work are incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Ascension is related to the coming of the Spirit. After Christ had accomplished redemption through His crucifixion and after He had resurrected and ascended to the heavens, He came down as the life-giving Spirit. Through the crucifixion of Christ all the enemies were conquered. Hence, the cross is the center of Christ’s victory. Furthermore, by His death on the cross Christ solved all the problems in the universe. This was the reason that after His crucifixion He could rest in the tomb and thereby enjoy a real Sabbath. Then in His resurrection He released all the divine riches. Following this, He ascended to the third heaven, and all the divine fullness was committed to Him along with all of God’s chosen people. Saul of Tarsus was among these chosen ones given to the ascended Christ. It is important to be clear concerning Christ’s descension as the Spirit after His ascension. According to Ephesians 2, Christ even came to preach the gospel of peace (v. 17). This indicates the coming of the ascended Christ.
When Saul of Tarsus was persecuting the churches, he did not realize that what he was persecuting was related to the heavens, that the church on earth was related to the ascended Christ. The Lord Jesus appeared to Saul of Tarsus, and spontaneously, even in his ignorance, Saul called upon His name, saying, “Who are You, Lord?” (Acts 9:5). Because Saul opened himself to the Lord and called on Him, the Lord with the divine fullness could enter into him and then proceed to constitute him into a gift to the Body. In this way the one who persecuted the churches became one who could perfect the saints. Paul became such a gift, not through human education but by being saturated with the divine fullness. Therefore, Saul of Tarsus eventually became the apostle Paul who could feed the saints, preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, and minister Christ to his fellow believers so that they would be nourished, grow, be perfected, and come into their function.
If we would be perfected, what we need is not doctrine. Rather, we need to be constituted with Christ. Like Saul of Tarsus, we all were once enemies of Christ and persecutors of the churches. But one day the Lord Jesus came to us and captured us. The Lord Jesus came to us, and we were caught by Him. Now we need to take Him into us more and more until we are saturated with Him. In this way we shall become functioning members of the Body, gifts constituted by the Christ who has been crucified and resurrected and who has ascended and descended.
Moreover, Ephesians 4:8 reveals an important principle that it was only after Christ on the cross had defeated and captured God’s chosen people that Christ led them to the heavens as His captives in His train of vanquished foes and made them gifts to His Body. We should apply this principle to ourselves; we should consider in our actual experience whether Christ has defeated us. Experientially speaking, if Christ has not defeated us, we cannot be led in His train of vanquished foes. Because Christ on the cross defeated all His enemies, He is victorious in the universe and has gained the ground to fill all things in the universe. But He may not be victorious in us and may not have ground in us, because we have not been subdued by Him in our experience. In order for us to function as a gift to the Body, we must be conquered and subdued by Christ. It is not until we become willing to be captured by Christ that He has the ground and standing to make us gifts to the Body. We must pray to the Lord from the depth of our being, “I surrender to You. I am defeated by You. I am captured by You.” We all need to be thoroughly defeated, captured, gained, and taken over by Christ. When we are willing to be subdued and captured by Christ, we will give Christ the ground to establish us as gifts to His Body. The more Christ ascends and descends within us, capturing and vanquishing us, the more He fills us with Himself to constitute us as gifts to His Body.
In order for the Lord to establish us as gifts to the Body, we must not only be captured by Christ but also grow in life. The more we grow in life, the more we will receive the life supply and the more this life supply will enable us to function in the Body. Holding to truth in love, we should grow up into Christ as the Head in all things (v. 15). By the growth in life, our function in the Body will be manifested. When we grow in life, we will have the rich flow of life, and this flow of life within us will be the function in the Body. The Lord’s intention is to give us as gifts to the Body, yet for Him to make us as gifts to the Body, we must be fully captured, conquered, and possessed by Christ and grow up into Him as the Head in all things.