4. The Church and the Government of the Holy Spirit
Then the risen Lord establishes the fact that the Holy Spirit will be the governing reality in the Church for this age (John 20: 22).
This "breathing" on them was a symbolic act.
Firstly it symbolized a new creation, the "one new man," indwelt and energized by a new life, the life peculiar to this resurrection body - "raised together with Him." Then it was a prospective securing unto the great receiving. If the real "receiving" of the Holy Spirit took place on the day of Pentecost as recorded in Acts 1:8, then this of which we read here was not an actual receiving, but rather a potential or prospective appointment which in due course would carry with it the authority of verse 23.
The main point is that the Church, the New Creation, the Body of Christ, is indwelt, energized, actuated and endowed by the Holy Spirit. This is not an official, but a spiritual thing. It is not ecclesiastical, political, or traditional, but vital, dynamic, and of a nature, not a system.
5. The Church - Fellowship Through Faith
The section which brings Thomas so much into view sets forth the fact that the fullness of blessing by fellowship with the risen Lord is only, but surely, on the basis of faith. It is possible to be in and of the Church, where the fullness of Christ is to be found, and yet to be almost like an outsider. It is possible to be doctrinally or positionally of the Body corporate, and yet for all practical purposes, enjoyment and blessedness to be like an isolated and unrelated unit going a lonely way.
This is the lot of all doubters who have a question.
Faith brings into fellowship, life, experience, and worship!
6. The Church - A Family
Finally. The most beautiful character of the Church, which lifts it out of all cold formalism, legalistic death and stiffness, and mere ecclesiasticism, is indicated by the family terms here used - "Father," "brethren" (verse 17). Here again we are taken to a letter to the Hebrews, 2:11-13, 17; 3:1).
The Church is a family. "The last Adam" is "a life-giving Spirit" (1 Corinthians 15:45). He begets sons and daughters through "the travail of his soul" (Isaiah liii.11).
He makes His "brethren" the "congregation" in the midst of which He "sings" (Hebrews 2:12).
All this leads to the testimony to His Divine Person. The main evidence of His being "the Christ, the Son of God" (verses 30, 31) is found in His significant (or "sign") acts in the Church, i.e. the mighty effects of His death and resurrection.
John 21
It is fairly generally agreed that this part of John's record is a kind of after-inspiration. The main narrative closed with the comprehensive statement of 20:30, 31).
We have to try to see why John should have had this reaction from his closure and should have felt constrained to append this further episode with its several aspects. He evidently felt it important and necessary to do so. Hence it must not fail to register with us as being something more than an afterthought or a sudden recollection of an omission.
Firstly, we must realize that what is here is a part of Luke's emphatic statement: "To whom he also shewed [presented] himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days, and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3).
This, then, is an integral part of the purpose of the forty days. The Lord's definite purpose in that period (which was probationary and testing: the number forty always indicates that in the Bible) was - on the one side to detach His Church (here represented in another symbolic number - seven) from an old, purely earthly, sentient and natural relationship with Himself, and on the other side to establish a new basis of that relationship and service, that is, a heavenly, spiritual, and universal.
John had just written concerning Mary's sudden recognition of her Lord, probably by the way in which He spoke her name (20:16). He said to her: "Take not hold on me." This would at least imply that the old relationship and its physical form (Mary had anointed His feet and head) no longer obtained, but had changed. It was now a spiritual one entirely. John's gospel is the one of spirituality; he called the miracles of Jesus "signs," meaning that they were intended to signify spiritual truths and principles and not to be just mighty acts. So this last part of the record is full of spiritual principles. These we must grasp.
Having seen, then, that the first principle is the new kind of relationship, let us take that a step further. This new basis requires that the men of the new dispensation be spiritual men, and their work is to be spiritual work. This is exceedingly testing to the natural man. Indeed, he cannot stand up to it. Until he receives the Holy Spirit as an indwelling reality, and so becomes a spiritual person basically, all attempts to cope with spiritual things will be defeated. "The natural man cannot know the things which are spiritual," said Paul (1 Corinthians 2:14). Now this is born out in the case of the central figure in the circle of disciples in our chapter.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 74 - "Peter's Defection)
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