In John 7:37-39 we are told clearly that such a Spirit of life, which is the living water, “was not yet because Jesus was not yet glorified” (v. 39). In other words, before Jesus’ death and resurrection such a compound Spirit, the life-giving Spirit, the all-inclusive Spirit as the consummation of the Triune God, was not yet. The Spirit of God was there already, as was the Spirit of Jehovah, but the Spirit who gives life, the compound Spirit, the all-inclusive Spirit, was not yet until Jesus was crucified and glorified in resurrection (Luke 24:26). After His resurrection, He came back to the disciples as the Spirit because through His death and resurrection He finished the entire process to make the Spirit complete. After His death and resurrection, the Spirit was completely compounded to be the life-giving Spirit.
John 20:19-22 shows us that on the evening of the day of resurrection He came to His disciples as such a Spirit. “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. And having said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples therefore rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Then Jesus said to them again, Peace be to you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you. And when He had said this, He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit” (vv. 19-22). When the Lord came back to the disciples on the evening of the day of resurrection, He still had a body because He showed the disciples His hands and His side. The doors were shut to the room where the disciples were, yet Jesus came and stood in their midst. The Bible does not tell us how He got into the room. Our human mentality just cannot understand such a thing. His body was spiritual, yet it still could be touched. This was the resurrected Jesus, with a spiritual, resurrected body (1 Cor. 15:44).
The Lord Jesus then breathed into the disciples, and He asked the disciples to receive that breath. He called that breath the Holy Spirit. In Greek, the Holy Spirit also means the Holy Breath. The Holy Spirit is the breath of the Son. We cannot say that the breath is one person, and the breather is another person. These verses show us clearly that the Spirit is not another person, but the very breath of the Son. We should not consider that the breather is a person and the breath is another person. Actually, the breath is one person with the breather. The resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit is the breath. This indicates that Christ the Son coming back in resurrection is the Spirit. This is why some of the early students of the Bible called such a Christ “the pneumatic Christ.” The Christ in John 20 is the very pneumatic Christ in resurrection. After He had accomplished all of His processes, He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), and this life-giving Spirit is the pneumatic Christ.
Most Christian teachers teach that the Spirit did not come until the day of Pentecost. Actually the Spirit came on the day of resurrection (John 20:1, 19, 22). He firstly came as life in a secret way, signified by the breath of the resurrected Christ. The resurrected, pneumatic Christ came back to His disciples secretly in the night in a place not open to others, and breathed Himself into His disciples. When we breathe, nobody sees what we breathe. Breathing is something secret. What we breathe cannot be seen, but it is so real. Also, the very breath breathed into our intrinsic being is very, very vital. If you do not eat for ten days, you may still live. Also, you may not drink for two days and you may still live. But try not breathing just for five minutes. If you stop breathing, even for five minutes, you would die. This shows how crucial breathing is, and this breathing did not happen on the day of Pentecost, openly, with a big loud voice. This breathing happened silently, secretly, on the evening of the day of Christ’s resurrection.
We must realize that this breathing is more crucial, more vital, than the mighty wind on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:2). Many Christians have only seen the mighty wind blowing on the day of Pentecost. They have never seen the silent, soft, secret breathing on the day of resurrection. Dear saints, consider these two things. Which is more vital? The breath or the mighty wind? If a person were dying and you put him under the mighty wind, this mighty wind would not help him. But if you give a dying person oxygen to breathe in, then this is life-saving. In like manner, the silent, soft, secret breathing on the day of resurrection is life-saving. Actually, it is more than life-saving; it is life-imparting and life-supplying. All those natural disciples, through that breathing on the day of resurrection, received the Spirit of the divine, uncreated life of God. All of them were enlivened, quickened, and filled with the Spirit. They became persons not living by themselves but by the Spirit, persons one with the Triune God intrinsically in their essence.
I believe we all have seen that the period of time from the Lord’s conception to His sending of the Spirit was a complete process of what He went through while He was here on this earth. His conception brought God into man, making divinity one with humanity. This was the beginning of His incarnation. His birth carried out this wonderful incarnation that made God one with man, that brought divinity into humanity, and that even mingled God as one with man. He was a God-man who lived on this earth for thirty-three and a half years as a man living God as His life. He was fully qualified to die a death that accomplished God’s full plan. After this death, He entered into resurrection and through His resurrection, man was brought into God.
His incarnation brought God into man, and His resurrection brought man into God. Through this two-way traffic, the mingling of God and man was fully accomplished. Through the incarnation, God became flesh. Through the resurrection, this God-man became a life-giving Spirit. In His resurrection He came back to His disciples as the Spirit. He was now the “pneumatic Christ.” He was still the God-man, but His humanity had been resurrected and designated into the sonship of God (Rom. 1:3-4). Such a One, the pneumatic Christ as the Spirit, came back to His disciples and breathed Himself as the Spirit into them. From that day onward He became really one with His disciples. He became the very intrinsic being of His disciples essentially. This resurrected Christ, this pneumatic Christ, this Christ as the Spirit, entered into His believers to be their very essence and to be their life essentially on the day of His resurrection.