Excerpts from the CNT:

Christ today is in resurrection. One day, as the One who existed in eternity, Christ became a man by incarnation. Eventually, He was crucified and buried. Through death He entered into another realm, the realm of resurrection. In His preexistence, Christ was God and was with God in eternity; by incarnation, He became a man in the flesh; then, through crucifixion and burial, He entered into resurrection. On the day of His resurrection angels told the women that Christ could not be found in the tomb, for He had risen from the dead (Luke 24:1-6). This indicates that Christ is in resurrection.

Christ is now our Savior in resurrection, and the Spirit is Christ in resurrection (1 Cor. 15:45b). After Christ was resurrected, He became a person wholly in resurrection. Today some Christians know Christ in His incarnation and crucifixion. But like Paul we should aspire not only to know Christ in His death but even the more to know Him in His resurrection (Phil. 3:10). We need to know Him in the power, sphere, and element of His resurrection.  

In Acts 1:3 we see Christ as the One in resurrection appearing to the disciples and speaking to them the things concerning the kingdom of God: “To whom also He presented Himself alive after His suffering by many irrefutable proofs, appearing to them through a period of forty days and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God.”

a. Appearing to the Disciples

The Lord’s presenting Himself alive was for the purpose of training the disciples to practice and enjoy His invisible presence. In the Gospel of John there is no word or hint indicating that the Lord left the disciples after breathing Himself into them. Actually He stayed with them, although they were unconscious of His presence. The Lord’s further appearing to them was His manifestation. Before His death the Lord’s presence was visible in the flesh. After His resurrection His presence was invisible in the Spirit. His manifestations, or appearings, after His resurrection were to train the disciples to realize, enjoy, and practice His invisible presence, which is more available, prevailing, precious, rich, and real than His visible presence. The Lord’s invisible presence is just the Spirit in His resurrection, whom He breathed into the disciples and who would be with them all the time.

After the Lord breathed Himself into the disciples, He never left them essentially. However, economically He would appear and then disappear. The Lord appeared and disappeared economically in order to train the disciples. Regarding this we should not speak of His going and coming but of His appearing and disappearing. The disciples had become accustomed to the visible presence of Christ. For three and a half years He had been with them visibly in the flesh. Suddenly His visible presence was taken away. Then the Lord came back to the disciples to breathe Himself into them. From that time onward the Lord’s presence with the disciples became invisible. It was no longer a physical presence but a spiritual presence. From the time that He breathed Himself as the Spirit into the disciples on the day of His resurrection, the resurrected Christ dwelt in them. His appearing spoken of in Acts 1:3 does not mean that He had ever left the disciples. Rather, it means that He made His presence visible to them, training them to realize and continually enjoy His invisible presence.

Although the Lord’s spiritual presence is invisible, it is more real and vital than His visible presence. The Lord’s visible presence involved the elements of space and time. But with His invisible presence there is neither the element of space nor the element of time. His invisible presence is everywhere. Wherever we are, the Lord’s invisible presence is with us. Actually, His invisible presence is not merely with us—it is within us. When the Lord was with the disciples in the flesh, His presence with them was outward and visible. But after He breathed Himself into them as the life-giving Spirit, His presence became inward and invisible.

Through such an invisible presence, this invisible Christ became His disciples’ element and essence. He was one with His disciples intrinsically and essentially, but the disciples were not used to such an invisible presence. They were used to visible things. Because of their weakness, He appeared to them and disappeared in order to train them to realize His invisible presence. He wanted them to know that even though they did not see Him or feel His presence, He was still with them all the time (Matt. 28:20). His presence was always there inside their being; it even became their intrinsic essence and their thought. In Galatians 2:20 the apostle Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” This is the invisible presence of the pneumatic Christ.

In these forty days, the Lord trained the disciples to know their new being, to know that His essence had become their essence. He trained them to know that He had become them, that He had entered into them, and that He had brought them into Him. He also trained them to realize that He was in the Father, that they were in Him, and that He was in them (John 14:20). Ultimately, this kind of training was to help the disciples realize that they were mingled with the Triune God, that they were no longer merely human but divinely human, even “Jesusly” human. They were no longer separate from the Triune God, but they could now live a life in which they were one with the processed Triune God. They were no longer merely men, but God-men, divine men, with the Triune God as their intrinsic essence to become their divine being. The Lord was training them to live and behave in this life and to be persons in this life, the divine persons on this earth. The Lord created the entire universe in six days, but He spent forty days to train the disciples. The training of the disciples was a much bigger task than the creation of the universe.

The Lord Jesus appeared to the disciples for a period of forty days. In the Bible forty days are a period of trial and testing (Deut. 9:9, 18; 1 Kings 19:8). When the Lord Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, He fasted forty days and forty nights (Matt. 4:1-2). Also, the children of Israel were tested, educated, by God in the wilderness for forty years. Forty, therefore, is the number of testing, proving, trying, and educating. In Acts 1 the Lord appeared and disappeared during a period of forty days in order to test and train His disciples.

b. Speaking to Them the Things concerning the Kingdom of God

During these forty days, Christ as the One in resurrection also spoke to the disciples the things concerning the kingdom of God. Although we are not told in Acts what the Lord spoke concerning the kingdom, we may infer what He said by considering other portions of the Word. In the Gospels the Lord Jesus taught the disciples much concerning the kingdom. It is not likely that during the forty days after His resurrection, He gave the disciples something new concerning the kingdom. Rather, He may have repeated what He taught them in the Gospels. When the Lord spoke regarding the kingdom in the Gospels, the disciples were not able to understand what He was teaching them. They did not have the spiritual insight to understand the kingdom of God, because the Lord was not yet in them. But in John 20 they received the wonderful person of the resurrected Christ into them as the life-giving Spirit. As a result, in Acts 1 they were very different, for Christ, the life-giving Spirit, was now within them as their life and person. Because they had the life-giving Spirit within them, they were able to understand the Lord’s speaking concerning the kingdom of God.  

The kingdom of God is not a material kingdom visible to human sight; it is a kingdom of the divine life. The kingdom of God is the spreading of Christ as life into His believers to form a realm in which God rules in His life. The kingdom of God is the ruling, the reigning, of God with all its blessing and enjoyment. It is the goal of the gospel of God and of Jesus Christ. To enter into this kingdom, people need to repent of their sins and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:15) so that their sins may be forgiven and that they may be regenerated by God to have the divine life, which matches the divine nature of this kingdom (John 3:3, 5).

The kingdom of God is actually Christ Himself (Luke 17:21) as the seed of life sown into His believers, God’s chosen people (Mark 4:3, 26), and developing into a realm in which God may rule as His kingdom in His divine life. Regeneration is its entrance (John 3:5), and the growth of the divine life within the believers is its development (2 Pet. 1:3-11). The kingdom of God is the church life today, in which the faithful believers live (Rom. 14:17), and it will develop into the coming kingdom as an inheritance reward (Gal. 5:21; Eph. 5:5) to the overcoming saints in the millennium. Eventually, it will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the eternal kingdom of God and the eternal realm of the eternal blessing of God’s eternal life for all God’s redeemed to enjoy in the new heaven and new earth.

In Acts 1:3 the Lord Jesus as the One in resurrection must have helped the disciples to have such a proper realization concerning the kingdom of God. The disciples must have begun to see that the kingdom of God is the spreading of Christ as life to His believers, that it is the propagation of Christ as life to His believers to form a realm in which God rules in His life. The disciples certainly must have und