to whom also he presented himself living, after he had suffered, with many proofs; being seen by them during forty days, and speaking of the things which concern the kingdom of God;
Between the cross and the ascension stand forty days, and Acts opens by summing them up. Three questions sit inside this verse: what did the proofs prove, why forty days, and why the kingdom of God?
Older Bibles use an unfamiliar word here. A Bible dictionary gives its sense:
"Passion" means suffering: Christ showed Himself alive after His suffering. Acts 1:3.
So His suffering was over. One writer makes that the first of three facts the church could not exist without:
In the opening chapter of Acts we are faced with three great facts. First, redemption is accomplished... His sufferings then were over — redemption was accomplished. That was one great fact. Two other facts follow: the Lord Jesus Christ is received up into glory; the Holy Spirit is received on earth. Without all three of these tremendous facts, the church could not exist.
The "many proofs" are not a side detail. They are the fact the rest of Acts keeps returning to:
Christ presented Himself alive after He had suffered. This was the great fact, established "by many proofs" (v. 3). So it is the subject of testimony throughout the Book, and it is the foundation truth of the gospel.
Take the proofs away and the messengers have nothing to say:
Without the resurrection the apostles would have been as weak as water and their message futile; with it came a power and conviction that produced marvellous and precious results.
The disciples did not take the news easily, and that helps rather than hurts their case:
At first the news of the resurrection seemed to the disciples like idle tales. It is a strong point in the proof of our Lord's resurrection that they were slow to believe. They refused to admit that the Lord had risen until they had indisputable, first-hand proof. If they had been ready to believe any tale they heard, their testimony would carry no weight. But these men were slow to believe the astounding news, and indisputable evidence convinced them. Their testimony should not be denied.
The appearances were counted, and so was the span of days:
We have recorded in Scripture that the Lord was seen ten times in resurrection, five times on the first day of the week and five times afterwards. He showed Himself for forty days. Why forty? Because forty was the full time of probation and testing. So the testimony to the truth and reality of the resurrection is absolute — and sadly, many now deny it.
He was still here, yet no longer tied to earth — and that shaped what He talked about:
In bodily presence He had not yet left the earth for heaven. Yet He was no more of the earth than He was of the great world-system that had crucified Him... 1 Corinthians 15:5-8 and other passages list His appearances during those forty days. Not one of them is to the world, or to anyone who belonged to the world. Only His own saw Him... His interests were not here but there, and all His conversations with His disciples during that time concerned the kingdom of God.
One writer reads that teaching as the kingdom in its present shape, not its coming splendour:
What He said about the kingdom of God was not, we may be sure, about its future state of glory and majesty. It was about the kingdom in its present form, bound up with a rejected Messiah, as the following verses show clearly.
His answer replaced one expectation with another:
Once they were gathered together, they asked Him about the time when the kingdom would be restored to Israel. This drew out that weighty word of His. Without setting the kingdom aside, it was meant to turn their hearts to the coming of the Holy Spirit — an unseen spiritual power. He was not setting before their hearts an Israel in revived glory and a Messiah in displayed power. He was setting before them a refused and departing Saviour, bringing in a time of testimony, in which the Holy Spirit and they were to be His witnesses.
- Suffering finished. The old word "passion" means suffering. His sufferings were over and redemption accomplished — the ground everything else stands on.
- Proof given. Many proofs settled the resurrection. It is the foundation truth of the gospel and the running subject of the book.
- Doubt answered. The disciples would not believe without first-hand proof. That makes their later witness harder to dismiss.
- Time taken. Forty days — the full span of testing — and ten recorded appearances, all to His own and none to the world.
- Kingdom explained. He spoke of the kingdom in its present form, under a rejected Messiah. That leads straight on to the Spirit's coming and a time of witness.
and, being assembled with [them], commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to await the promise of the Father, which [said he] ye have heard of me.
Between the resurrection and Pentecost, the Lord tells the apostles to do nothing but wait in one city. Why wait, why in Jerusalem, and what is "the promise of the Father"?
The opening phrase, "while staying with them," appears in older versions as "being assembled with them." A note in the margin offers a different reading again. One writer tests it against what Peter later said about the days after the resurrection:
The day of His final departure was near. The disciples were hearing His last instructions. Being assembled with them — or, as the margin puts it, "eating with them" — the Lord told them not to leave Jerusalem... The margin's reading would fit well with what Peter said to Cornelius and his friends (10:41): that the disciples ate and drank with the Lord after He rose from the dead... What times those must have been! What grace they show!
The Lord adds that they had heard this promise from Him. One writer traces what that memory would have brought back:
They remembered what He said to them in the upper room, after He gave them the Lord's Supper. The Lord had made the astounding statement, "It is better for you that I go away"... He said, "If I do not go away, the Comforter will not come, the other Comforter. The One Who is coming will come to take My place, and He will be to you even more than I have been. He will live with you, not for three years, but will stay with you for ever."
People often mix this gift up with two other works of the Spirit. One commentator separates them, and shows why the timing depended on Christ's leaving:
It matters greatly that we understand this. Many wrongly apply the Spirit's baptism either to miraculous displays or to the new birth... The question here is not the great basic need of sinful people at all times to be born of the Spirit. Still less is it those gifts... It is the immense and lasting privilege of the church: the Holy Spirit sent down in person to stay with the saints and to be in them... This depended on the Son's going away. If He did not go away, that other Advocate, the Spirit of truth, would not come. But once the work of reconciliation was done, Jesus went on high and sent the Spirit down here.
This settles an old puzzle. In John 20 the Lord had already breathed on the disciples and told them to receive the Holy Spirit. Yet here He still tells them to wait.
Was this giving of the Spirit the gift spoken of in John 7:39; 14:17, 26; 15:26; 16:7-13? No. In Acts 1:4, at a later date than the one John writes about here, the Lord told His disciples that they were still to wait for the promise of the Father.
The promise also pointed them away from Israel's earthly hopes:
The sending of the Holy Spirit also led them out of the Jewish field of promises that were only earthly. The Father's promise of the Holy Spirit was a very different thing from the promise that Jehovah, the God of judgment, would restore the kingdom of Israel by His power.
The command fixes them in one place together, and that detail carries weight:
Acts 1:4 reminds us that the early disciples did not receive the Holy Spirit one by one. The Lord commanded them to gather at Jerusalem and wait there for the promise of the Father, the blessed Holy Spirit of God... The Spirit came and formed the believers into one body — Christ the Head in heaven, the believers the body on earth.
Being told to wait was itself a test, and one writer draws out what they did with it:
Fallen nature cannot wait. It is impatient, because it distrusts God. The Israelites could not wait for Moses to come down from the mountain. King Saul could not wait for Samuel to come. The Lord tested the disciples at this very point. He said "Wait," and they gathered in Jerusalem in submission to Him, bound together in the bonds of Divine love, and waited as He had said.
That wait was for one occasion only. God answered their prayers, and the answer stands:
The hundred and twenty people gathered there took their stand on that promise. They prayed and received the answer. If we now ask for the Holy Spirit to be sent, we are centuries behind the time. He is here. How sad it is to neglect His presence!
- Promised — the Father's promise is the Holy Spirit Himself, a Person sent to stay for ever, not a burst of miracles and not the new birth.
- Purchased — the gift waited on Christ's going away. He finished the work of reconciliation, went on high, and sent the Spirit down.
- Postponed — the breathing in John 20 was not this gift, since the Lord still tells them here to keep waiting.
- Placed — the Lord kept them together in Jerusalem, because the Spirit came to form one body, not to visit believers one by one.
- Past — their wait tested their obedience, and prayer carried them through. Ours is over: the Spirit has come and remains.