After saying, “Peace be to you,” the Lord said to His disciples, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (20:21). The Lord said that just as the Father sent Him, so He would send us in the same way. The sending of the Lord is the same as the sending of the Father. The Father sent Him, and He will send us. By what way did the Father send the Lord? It was only by the way of the Father’s being in the Son. The Father sent the Son by being in the Son. The Father’s life, nature, presence, and the Father Himself came with Him. The Lord sent His disciples with Himself as life and as everything to them. In the same way, the Son now sends us. He sends us with His life, His nature, and His presence. As the Father sent the Son by being one with the Son and by being within the Son, so in the same way the Son sends us by being one with us and by being within us.
The way the Lord sends us is by breathing the Holy Spirit into us (20:22). This was why, immediately after saying, “I also send you,” He breathed the Holy Spirit into them. By His breathing, He entered as the Spirit into the disciples to abide in them forever (14:16). Hence, wherever His disciples are sent, He is always with them. He is one with them. As we shall see, to breathe the Holy Spirit into us means that the Lord breathes Himself into us. The Lord sends us by being within us. The only way that the Lord can be one with us and be within us is by breathing Himself into us. Therefore, we must receive the Spirit, which is the reality of Christ. If we have received the Spirit of Christ, we have received the reality of Christ. In other words, this simply means that we have received Christ Himself. By this we see that the Lord sends us by breathing Himself into us.
Verse 22 says, “And when He had said this, He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Lord is the Word who is the eternal God (1:1). In the Gospel of John, the Word passes through a long process and eventually becomes the breath, the pneuma, that He might get into the believers. For the accomplishment of God’s eternal purpose, He took two steps. Firstly, He took the step of incarnation to become a man in the flesh (1:14), to be “the Lamb of God” to accomplish redemption for man (1:29), to declare God to man (1:18), and to manifest the Father to His believers (14:9-11). Secondly, He took the step of death and resurrection to be transfigured into the Spirit that He might impart Himself into His believers as their life and their everything, and that He might bring forth many sons of God, His many brothers, for the building of His Body, the church, the habitation of God, to express the Triune God for eternity. Originally He was the eternal Word. Through His incarnation, He then became flesh to accomplish God’s redemption, and through His death and resurrection He became the Spirit to be everything and to do everything for the completion of God’s building.
Never forget that the eternal Word took two steps: the step to become flesh (1:14) and the step to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). We must remember these two “becomings”—becoming flesh and becoming the life-giving Spirit. The eternal Word firstly became flesh and then, as the last Adam, He became the life-giving Spirit. The first step was the step of incarnation, and the second step was that of resurrection. The first step was for redemption and the second step was for life-imparting. After becoming flesh to be the Lamb of God to shed His blood for our redemption, He became in resurrection the life-giving Spirit for the purpose of imparting Himself into us as life. Not many Christians have seen this clearly. Most Christians only realize that Christ took the step of incarnation for the accomplishment of redemption. They do not see the second step—that in resurrection the last Adam in the flesh became the life-giving Spirit that He might come into us to be our life. But the Gospel of John clearly reveals both steps. In chapter one, the eternal Word became flesh to be the Lamb of God. In chapter twenty, this wonderful One took another step, the step of resurrection, to become the life-giving Spirit. Thus, in the evening of the day of His resurrection He came and breathed Himself as the Spirit into the disciples.
This Gospel testifies that the Lord is God (1:1-2; 5:17-18; 10:30-33; 14:9-11; 20:28), the life (1:4; 10:10; 11:25; 14:6), and the resurrection (11:25). Chapters one through seventeen prove that He is God among men. Men are the contrast to Him as God. Chapters eighteen and nineteen prove that He is life in the environment of death. Death, or the environment of death, is the contrast to Him as life. Chapters twenty and twenty-one prove that He is the resurrection in the midst of the old creation, the natural life. The old creation, the natural life, is the contrast to Him as the resurrection, of which the Spirit is the reality. As the resurrection, He can only be realized in the Spirit. Hence, He is the Spirit in resurrection. He is God among men (chs. 1-17), He is life in death (chs. 18-19), and He is the Spirit in resurrection (chs. 20-21).