After such a long process from incarnation through resurrection, a process in which He carried out the ministry of the New Testament and set the pattern for the New Testament ministry, the Lord Jesus became the very consummation of the Triune God, the life-giving Spirit. Then in the night of His resurrection He came back to His disciples not to teach them, not to carry out some work, but to breathe into them (John 20:22). He breathed this ultimate consummation of the Triune God into Peter and all the others. The Lord came not only with the life-giving Spirit but as the life-giving Spirit, as the all-inclusive, ultimate consummation of the Triune God, to do one thing—to breathe Himself into the disciples. Such a breathing into them was sufficient for their spiritual life.
It is very interesting that after this breathing in John 20 He did something further in the next chapter, in John 21. The very next chapter in the Bible after John 21 is Acts 1. In Acts 1 and 2 we see another Peter, a different Peter. He is not the same one who was there in the four Gospels. Here is a Peter who has been transformed and even replaced in full. If you were an uneducated person from a primitive culture, one who had no knowledge of Christianity, and then you were saved and began to read the Bible for the first time, you would be shocked when you came to the opening pages of Acts. In reading the four Gospels, you would have an impression of Peter as one who was a natural man and an uneducated fisherman, always behaving in a natural way. However, the Peter in the opening pages of Acts is strikingly different. He understood the Bible and knew how to interpret it. He had not graduated from any seminary, nor did he have any education in theology or any theological degree. Nevertheless, this fisherman became a person who knew the Bible, and he took the lead to remain in Jerusalem for ten days in spite of the threatening of the Jews. He no longer cared for his fishing; he did not care for anything except the prayer in that upper room. He took the lead to remain there to pray with the one hundred twenty for ten days. How could the Peter in the Gospels do such a thing? Even consider yourself—do you think you could remain together in oneness with one hundred twenty others to pray for ten days?
Only a short time before, the disciples had been fighting among themselves. All the others became indignant because James and John wanted to be at the right hand and left hand of the King (Matt. 20:20-28; Mark 10:35-45). Now in chapter one of Acts those who had been fighting among themselves were together in unity, in oneness, with a pure intention and a purified desire. Right after the Lord’s death and resurrection, they all became different persons because the life-giving Spirit as the ultimate consummation of the Triune God had been breathed into their being. In that unique, all-inclusive drink they received everything; they received the Triune God, and they also received the uplifted humanity, the proper human living, the terminating death, and the germinating resurrection.
In medical science, the greatest thing is to know how to inject all the necessary elements into the human body. Compared to this, surgery is not so wonderful. We should not compare God to a surgeon, but rather we should recognize Him as the wonderful One who injects Himself as the all-inclusive nourishment into our being. It was because of such a life-giving injection that we can say Peter was another person in the first two chapters of Acts.
Not only Peter, or even only two or three others, but also all the other one hundred twenty were changed. One hundred twenty men and women, all Galileans, who were despised by the local people, were remaining in Jerusalem in one accord not for any entertainment or amusement, but only to pray to One they could not see. There was nothing for their eyes to see, there was no outward attraction, and there was certainly no entertainment. They remained there under the threatening for ten days, praying in one accord.
We need to consider what could make it possible for those one hundred twenty to remain in oneness. What had happened to change the situation so much in such a short time? The very element of Jesus had been injected into their being so they were the reproduction, the continuation, the increase of Jesus. Whatever had been there as an ingredient in Jesus in the four Gospels was injected into the one hundred twenty in Acts 1. The first chapter of Acts is a continuation of the record of Jesus after His baptism, after the crucifixion. After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, He was ready to be anointed, and He was anointed (John 1:32). Now, in Acts 1, the one hundred twenty were also ready to be anointed. In a sense, they were no longer natural, and they were no longer living in the old man, in the old creation. There is no need to say that they were no longer living in sin or in the world. They had been replaced with this wonderful Jesus through His death and resurrection, and they were, therefore, ready to be anointed. When the day of Pentecost came, the Spirit descended upon them economically just as the Spirit had descended upon Jesus after His baptism. Therefore, from Acts 2 Peter took the lead to stand up with at least eleven others to carry out the New Testament ministry that John had initiated and Jesus had continued. Their ministry was a continuation of the ministry of the Lord Jesus.