AscenA23.  Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11.    The Acts of the Apostles is Luke’s second volume of Christian history.  After Jesus’ resurrection, he spent forty days with his apostles and then ascended up to heaven, promising them to send the Holy Spirit soon.  The Holy Spirit would empower them to be witnesses of the ongoing saving action of Jesus in the entire world.  Angels came to move the apostles on to the work to which Jesus had sent them.

Matthew 28:16-20.   Jesus commissions his Apostles and with them all his followers/disciples to, in turn, make others into becoming obedient followers of Christ.  The action of enabling others to become disciples of Christ is baptism, which is a spiritual birth that enables us to become children of God the Father, reborn by water and the Spirit. (John 3:1-16)  In being obedient followers of Christ, Jesus assures us that he, though invisibly so, is with us until one day he returns, as the angels asserted, as he was once here.  It is not enough to be baptized and go our own individual way.  Jesus calls upon us as we go through life on our way to heaven to bring others along with us to heaven.  As Jesus’ divine life worked in his human flesh, so he empowers us with his presence within us to enable sinners to become saints.

Ephesians 1:17-23.  “May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him.”  Through daily spiritually living with God the Father whose love for us enables us to see him with “the eyes of our hearts,” we experience “the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe” in him.  We live by the grace of his divinity that he shares with us as members of his “church, which is his body,” the fullness of Jesus who fills us life.  While still on earth with an earthly body, Jesus shared with us something of himself “who fills all things in every way.”  “We were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:9b) who enables us to live spiritually with him, even while our lives here depend on our earthly bodies.