06. The inbreathing of the Spirit of a risen Christ (Joh_20:19-23)

(6) The inbreathing of the Spirit of a risen Christ (John 20:19-23) The last revelation about the Holy Spirit in John’s gospel is connected to the Lord’s resurrection. On that glorious day, the Lord meets first Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre; while instructing her not to touch Him (John 20:17), Jesus reveals to her that He was ascending unto His Father and His God, now by grace our Father and our God. The work of redemption places us in the same glory and in the same relations with God that the Lord Himself has. Precious thought indeed !

Then, on the eve of the resurrection day, He meets His disciple in the upper room to call peace, "shalom", upon them twice (John 20:19; John 20:21). Firstly, there is peace of the conscience - peace with God - consequent upon the blood of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 1:20). Only John had reported about the blood shedding at the cross (John 19:34-35), and mentions now that the Lord showed His hands and His pierced side to the disciples (John 20:20), while Luke reports about the Lord showing them His hands and feet (Luke 24:40). Secondly, there is peace of the heart, the Lord’s own peace (John 14:27). The disciples are glad when they see their Lord. The day of the Saviour’s death had closed with mourning and weeping for those that had been with Him (Mark 16:10). And now, their sorrow is changed into joy unspeakable: "At even weeping cometh for the night, and at morn there is rejoicing" (Psalms 30:5).

Immediately thereafter, the Lord sends His disciples into the world, as the Father had sent Him (John 20:21). At that remarkable moment, the Lord Jesus breathed on His disciples the breath of new life in the new creation: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (John 20:22). This does not refer to the sending down of the Holy Spirit as a divine Person, a fact which took place only fifty days later (Acts 2:1-4); it is the inbreathing of the Spirit of a risen, resurrected Christ into the born again disciples. It is the counterpart in the new creation of what had happened in the first creation for the first man, Adam. Man is a creature absolutely apart from all animal creatures because his creation was consequent upon a decree of God: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26). Then, "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). An animal possesses a soul and is driven by its instinct. Man only has a body, a soul and a spirit which makes him a responsable creature before God. The counterpart in the new creation is the breath of life of the resurrected Christ, the Holy Ghost breathed into the born again believers, by Christ Himself, who is "the last Adam, a quickening (making alive) Spirit" (1 Corinthians 15:45). Such is the power to make us free from sin and death, by the law (the moral principle, not Moses’s law) of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2). The good Shepherd’s sheeps have life "more abundantly" (John 10:10).

Finally, this scene closes with the Lord entrusting His disciples with the capacity to remit or retain sins (John 20:23). A comparable authority of binding and loosing on earth was given to Peter in the kingdom, when receiving the keys thereof (Matthew 16:19), or to the two or three in the assembly (Matthew 18:18). In none of these cases, is there the power to forgive sins, which remains the divine prerogative of the Son of Man (Matthew 9:6; Mark 2:10). The capacity entrusted to believers (whether to Peter individually or to believers collectively in the Christian assembly) pertains to governmental administration, in particular through ecclesiastical discipline. The six mentions of the Holy Spirit in John’s Gospel close with that last scene of chapter 20. Let us now turn to John’s first epistle where three more mentions are found.