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fulfil. He was the Apostle,' the Representative of the Father. Of this mission of Jesus the fourth Gospel is specially full,2 though like other ideas which are labelled as 'Johannine,' it comes to the surface now and again in the Synoptic Gospels. The Lord's mission had occupied a prominent place in that last prayer, the echoes of which must still have been ringing in the ears of the Eleven.* But now He had finished the work which the Father had given Him to do on earth in His own person; henceforth He would work through others. Early in the ministry He had sent forth twelve whom He called His Apostles, His delegates even as He was the Father's Delegate. Was He now merely renewing a commission which He had given before? No doubt He renewed it, but in doing so He made it wider and permanent. The new commission is wider, for it is not limited to the Apostolate; the other disciples who were present are included, and with the Eleven they represent the whole Church. And it is permanent ;

for while the Apostolate was temporary, the Church as a whole lives on to the end, and as long as she

1 Heb. iii. I.

2 See Jo. iii. 17, 34; v. 36, 38; vi. 29, 57; vii. 29; viii. 42; x. 36; xi. 42.

3.g. in Mc. ix. 37, xii. 6.

4 Jo. xvii. 3, 23.

5 Με. iii. 14 οὓς καὶ ἀποστόλους ὠνόμασεν,

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lives she retains the missionary character impressed upon her by the risen Lord. At the same time His first saying, at least as it is seen in S. John's idealistic rendering, places once for all the permanent mission of the Church in its true relation to the mission of Jesus Christ. The mission of the Church is not a separate or independent task, but one which is altogether secondary and subordinate, resting upon, flowing out of, the Divine mission of her Lord.1 His mission was not exhausted by His earthly ministry, His death, or even His victory over death; but henceforth it fulfils itself in the subordinate mission of the Christian society acting in His name and by His Spirit.

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The risen Lord, Himself sent into the world by the Father, now in His turn sends His Church. But He does not send her unequipped. He had been conceived by the Holy Spirit and, before the ministry, baptized with the Spirit; in the power of the Spirit He had entered on the work which had now been accomplished. If the Church was to carry on His mission, she also must be born of the Spirit, baptized with the Spirit, inspired by the Spirit, and thus enabled to do her part in the regeneration of the world. Hence the

1 On S. John's use of åπoσtéXXew and wéμtei see the additional note in Westcott's Commentary on S. John.

2 Lc. iv. 14.

Lord's next act, after the solemn sending, was to endow those whom He sent with His own Spirit. He breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive the Holy Ghost.

More than once S. John's Gospel carries its reader back to the beginnings of the world and of our race. In the beginning was the Word, reminds us of Gen. i. 1; He breathed on them, of Gen. ii. 7, 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. The beloved disciple, it may be inferred, wishes to teach that this breathing on the part of the risen Christ is analogous to the Divine breathing which inspired human nature with a life higher than that of the mere animal.2 The first Adam was made by the Breath of God a living soul; the last Adam, the Lord from heaven, became by His resurrection a life-giving spirit, able to breathe into His fellow-men the very breath of life.3 Of the exercise of this new prerogative the act of breathing on the assembly was the outward, visible sign; the sacrament of an inward, spiritual quickening. The coming of the Holy Spirit, the Breath

1S. John uses in c. xx. 22 the verb which the LXX use in Gen. ii. 7 (èveþúonoev). See also Ezek. xxxvii. 9 (LXX).

2 Cf. Driver in Westminster Commentaries, Genesis, p. 38.

I Cor. xv. 45.

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of the Divine Life, was to bring new vitality to these timid, nerveless men, fitting them for their great mission to the world.

In an earlier chapter of his Gospel, S. John teaches that in the days of our Lord's ministry there was as yet no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.1 The Breath of God could not fall upon the disciples so long as the Master was yet in the flesh. Even the Resurrection had not completed the change which was passing over Him; He had not yet ascended to the Father, His body was not yet wholly spiritual; even now, therefore, the time for the actual descent of the Spirit had not come. To this extent the ancient commentator was right who said that 'receive' in the mouth of the risen Lord meant 'ye shall receive.' 2 The grant was made at the same time as the symbolical breathing; they received the Spirit potentially from that moment, but the actual outpouring of the Spirit followed the Ascension, and could not precede it. Nevertheless the Lord's, 'Receive-take-a gift of the Holy Spirit,' was not an idle form, but a word of power, for it

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1Jo. vii. 39 οὔπω γὰρ ἦν πνεῦμα, ὅτι Ἰησοῦς οὐπω ἐδοξάσθη.

2 Theodore of Mopsuestia: 'accipite pro “accipietis” dicit' (Migne, P.G. lxvi. 783).

3 λάβετε πνεῦμα ἅγιον. Compare the anarthrous πνεῦμα in Jo. iii. 5, vii. 39o, and тò πveûμa (тò äyɩov) in i. 32, iii. 8, vii. 39a, xiv. 26.

carried with it the same promise of spiritual life, to be realized in due time. As the grace of Ordination and the grace of Confirmation

gradually fulfilled in the experience of life, so the original gift of the Spirit bestowed on the Resurrection Day was for the whole life of His Church, and has manifested itself in every spiritual power which has worked in the Body of Christ from the beginning to the present hour. As for the imperative, it is a warning against a merely passive attitude on the part of those who receive the gifts of Christ.

As when He gave the Sacrament of His Body, the Lord said Take, eat, so in this sacramental gift of His Spirit His word again is 'Take'; for this gift, though given absolutely to the Church, belongs to individual believers only so far as by an act of the will they severally lay hold upon it and appropriate it to their own use.

The Church had now been sent and spiritually equipped for her great task. But what message was she to deliver? What was the purpose of so vast a mission, supported by a new inbreathing into man of a Divine life? The Lord's next words2 strike the keynote of the whole movement: if ye

1 Mt. λáßere pάyere: Mc. simply λáßere, take ye (R.V.).

2 ἄν τινων ἀφῆτε τὰς ἁμαρτίας, ἀφέωνται· ἄν τινων κρατῆτε, κεκράτηνται. For av (ẻáv) Tis cf. Jo. xvi. 23, Acts ix. 2: in practice it seems to be nearly equivalent to boris av, but less definite. The perfects express 'the absolute efficacy of the power' (Westcott).

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