In this message we want to see the revelations concerning Christ’s heavenly ministry. The New Testament as a biography of Christ is composed of His three ministries: His ministry on the earth, His ministry in the heavens, and His ministry in the kingdom. In the first ministry, the earthly ministry, He consummated one major thing, that is, to impart the Triune God into His redeemed. Through incarnation He came to be a man, to bring God into man. Then on this earth He lived a life to express God in His divine attributes through Christ’s human virtues. He died an all-inclusive death to clear up all the negative things. Then He resurrected to be designated the Son of God with His humanity uplifted into the level of divine sonship (Rom. 1:4; Acts 13:33). Through that resurrection He was born to be the firstborn Son of God. Also, as the last Adam, He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), indicating that He was going to impart the consummated God as the life-giving Spirit into His redeemed. In resurrection He also regenerated all God’s chosen people to be God’s sons (1 Pet. 1:3).
In this way He brought the consummated Triune God into man, making man one with the Triune God. Here is an organic union, an organic union in the divine nature and in the Spirit. God was consummated to be the life-giving Spirit, and also God regenerated His chosen people’s spirit. This life-giving Spirit indwells the human regenerated spirit of God’s chosen people. Thus, God was not only brought into man but man was also brought into God, making man and God, God and man, one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). This was consummated in John 20, when Christ came back to His disciples in the night of His resurrection to breathe Himself as the Spirit into them (v. 22).
After His resurrection Christ ascended to the heavens. He became the Minister of the heavenly ministry. In His heavenly ministry He consummates a major thing, that is, to build up the regenerated believers into His Body. First, God gains a people to be joined to Him and be one with Him. Second, He builds up the Body of Christ.
The ascension of the consummated Christ as the embodiment of the consummated Triune God brought Him from the earth into the heavenly sphere, where He was enthroned to be appointed as so many items of His status for His qualification to carry out, in His heavenly ministry, what He has consummated in His earthly ministry.
In His heavenly ministry He is the God-appointed Redeemer to apply His redemption to the repentant sinners (Rom. 3:24; Eph. 1:7). He is the God-ordained Ruler of the kings of the earth and the Savior to execute His full salvation in life to the believers for their regeneration (Rev. 1:5; Acts 5:31). He is the God-established Minister to minister all His unsearchable riches with heaven to His believers for their growth in life (Heb. 8:2). All the unsearchable riches of Christ bear the flavor and the nature of the heavens; they are dispensed into the believers for their growth in the divine life.
Christ is the God-ordained Mediator of the new covenant to execute what He has accomplished in the new covenant to the believers (Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 12:24). He made the new covenant through His death and resurrection. But He needs to be the Mediator of this new covenant to execute it in reality. Christ is also the God-ordained surety of the new covenant to guarantee the sure fulfillment of the new covenant to the believers (Heb. 7:22). He is the God-ordained High Priest to take care of the believers as God’s people in His loving sympathy and intercession for them that they may be saved to the uttermost (Heb. 4:14-15; 7:25). In His heavenly ministry, Christ is also the God-established good Shepherd to shepherd God’s people as His flock throughout their Christian life on this earth (John 10:11, 14, 16; 1 Pet. 2:25; 5:4). Daily, hourly, and moment by moment we have a great Shepherd, the Chief of the shepherds, taking care of us like a shepherd taking care of his flock.
In His heavenly ministry the ascended Christ first poured out the Holy Spirit as a violent wind upon His believers as the Spirit of power for the producing and formation of the churches (Acts 2:1-2). This is different from His breathing Himself into the disciples as the life-giving Spirit. The Spirit as the gentle breath is the inward Spirit. On the day of Pentecost He poured out Himself, the consummated God, as a violent wind, upon His believers.
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