The Holy Spirit filled the human nature of the Lord Jesus, as it was foretold by the Prophet: "Thou hast anointed Thee, O God, thy God with the oil of joy, more than Thy partaker (Psalm 44:8); or, as the Lord Himself, through the Prophet, said of Himself: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, His anointing is Me, to preach good tidings to the poor of My ambassador" (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18); The Spirit of the Lord worked in the perception of our humanity by the Son of God (Luke 1:31). The Spirit of God descended upon Jesus Christ during His baptism on the Jordan, in the form of a dove, and filled with the Holy Spirit, He returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness (Luke 4:1). All the works and miracles that He performed, He did by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 12:28). Of His Divine teaching the Lord says: "The Spirit is, which quickens, the flesh profiteth nothing: the words which I have spoken unto you, are the spirit, and the life is the essence" (John 6:63). And to His chosen disciples and Apostles, Jesus Christ repeatedly promised to send down the Holy Spirit from the Father. He said: "But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and will bring all things to your remembrance (John 14:26), and when the Comforter comes, I will send Him to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He bears witness of Me (15:26). And when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth: for thou shalt not speak of thyself, but if he heareth, thou shalt speak, and that which is to come shall declare unto you. He will glorify Thee, as He will receive Thee from Mine, and He will make it known to you (16:13, 14).

Now, proceeding to depict the Lord's promise to send down the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, St.

Spirit.

3. And before them set thyself alive after thy suffering, in many true signs, appearing to them for forty days, and saying, concerning the kingdom of God.

Having said that the Lord ascended into heaven, having given commands by the Holy Spirit to the Apostles whom He had chosen, St. Luke turns the word to that extraordinary event which serves as the basis of all the subsequent great events of which he speaks further, such as: the Lord's ascension into heaven, the sending down of the Holy Spirit, the worldwide preaching of the Gospel through the Apostles and their successors, the innumerable miracles in the natural and moral worlds, perfect and accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit. In view of the great importance of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, the Apostle again recalls this truth as indubitable, confirmed by irrefutable proofs. To whom, he says, He also manifested Himself alive, after His suffering, with many sure proofs, in the course of forty days, appearing to them and speaking of the kingdom of God. And before them Thou shalt make thyself alive after Thy suffering. After His suffering on the cross, Jesus Christ died and was buried; but on the third day He rose again, and revealed Himself to be resurrected or alive before the Apostles.

And His resurrection from the dead, or the fact that after death He became alive again, He testified with many true proofs, such as: His repeated appearances among His disciples, His conversations with them; He showed them His hands and feet with sores, and His side pierced (John 20:20). He allowed them to feel Himself and said: "See My hands and My nose, as I Myself am: touch Me, and see, that the spirit hath not flesh and bone, as ye see Me possessing" (Luke 24:39). And when they were still not believing for joy and were amazed, He said to them, "Do you have anything to eat here?" "They gave Him some of the baked fish and honeycomb. And he took it, and ate before them" (vv. 41-43). Thus the Lord appeared to His disciples many times, over the course of forty days, in order to assure them the more perfectly of the truth of His resurrection and to instruct them in the mysteries of salvation. And he spoke, concerning the kingdom of God. The conversation of Jesus Christ with His disciples even after His resurrection from the dead was similar to that which He had with them before His suffering and death. He conversed with them not about earthly things, but about spiritual truths, about how one must save one's soul and attain the kingdom of heaven. By the kingdom of God we must understand both the eternal kingdom of glory, which is in heaven, and the grace-filled kingdom of Jesus Christ, which is spread and established on earth through the preaching of the Gospel, through faith in Jesus Christ. We can confidently assume that Jesus Christ, preparing His chosen disciples for their apostolic ministry, conversed with them primarily about this grace-filled kingdom of God, about the spread and improvement of the Church of Christ, about the establishment and celebration of the grace-filled sacraments, about overcoming the upcoming difficulties in the feats of apostolic ministry, and the like. Of these instructions of the Lord, some have been preserved for us in the Apostolic Epistles, and others in the Holy Tradition of the Holy Ecumenical and Apostolic Church (Bes. on Sunday and Feast from the Apostle, Part I, p. 1).

About the same

Prot. Polotebnova,

The first book I wrote to you, Theophilus, about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning (Luke 1:3).

The first book. The first three verses of the Acts obviously point to the first half of the writer's work, the Gospel of Luke, see Ev. Luke 1:1-4, and 24:49-52. In the Slavonic text, a book is a word, in the Greek original "logos" (Λόγος), in the meaning of speech, teaching, story, narration. In the Evangelist John the Theologian, the Logos (on Λόγος, — the Word) is used as the proper name of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, according to a special Divine revelation that came to him — Apoc. 19:11-13 — as the proper name of the Son of God, Jesus Christ: St. John 1 ch., 1 ep. John 1:1. I wrote to you: With this reminder of Ap. Luke points to the closest connection between the book of Acts and the Gospel. "Luke reminds us of his Gospel" also "in order to indicate his very careful attitude to the matter, because even at the beginning of that work he says: it has been decided for me, after a thorough examination of everything from the beginning, to describe to you in order, and not in any way, but in the way that those who were eyewitnesses from the very beginning handed down to us" (Blessed Theophylact), i.e. not of the 70 disciples, which was Luke himself, and of the 12 who were actually called from the very beginning of the preaching of Jesus Christ and the very first heralds of His teaching, such as, for example, Peter, James, John, the apostles who were with Jesus Christ during the entire time of His ministry. - Onions. 1,3.2. The direct correlation of the preface of the second part of the work of the Holy Evangelist with the first verses of his Gospel gives the idea that the motivation for writing the Book of Acts was, among other things, the appearance of various apocryphal or spurious private records, from which the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles were later compiled, as well as the appearance of individual narratives of a spurious Gospel nature was, among other things, the reason for the writing of the Gospel of Luke — St. Luke. 1:1.2, — Just as many undertook to narrate about Christ, what is known among them from tradition from self-seers from the beginning, so it is precisely without the calling and guidance of the Holy Spirit that many of the first Christians then wrote down for various reasons, the stories about the ministry of the apostles after the Lord's resurrection. From the private apocryphal records of the apostolic time, the Acts of Peter and Paul, Paul and Thekla, Andrew and Matthew, John, Philip, and Bartholomew were subsequently formed. Thaddeus, Thomas, the Acts of all the Apostles Obadiah, a certain Leucius Charinus, and so on. (Ger. 1, 211-212). Any critical study of the apocryphal writings of Ap. Luke does not make in his books; he only opposes them with a positive true history, after examining or verifying what oral tradition says about what was preached by the self-seers from the first time and about the self-seers themselves. In the preface to the book of Acts. Luke does not repeat the idea of the preface of his Gospel, either because he applied the latter to the second part of the work; or because the book of Acts tells a lot about such events as Luke himself, as the closest collaborator of the Apostle Paul, was an eyewitness, so that in the history of Paul's travels it was necessary to write: we decided to go: we arrived, and so on. (Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-17; 27:1; 28:16) and readers who knew the Apostle Luke no longer needed his special assurance after the Gospel preface. Theophilus - Luke. 1,3. Theophilus, to whom the book of the Acts was assigned first of all; as well as the Gospel of Luke, was a Christian (Luke 1:4) from the pagans, an eminent citizen of Antioch, the birthplace of the Apostle Luke. There is a tradition that Theophilus had a church in his house for the Christians of Antioch. From the fact that Luke does not make any geographical explanations of the places of Italy mentioned in Acts (28: 12-13, 15), but explains the places of Palestine and Greece (1, 12; 16, 12; 27, 8, 12; cf. Luke 1: 26; 4, 31; 24, 13), it must be concluded that Theophilus did not live in Palestine and Greece, but was well acquainted with Italy; so that he must have been some kind of governor in Antioch, sent from Rome, according to the then established order of Roman government in the East. About everything, i.e. about the most important. In the New Testament the word "whol" or "all" is quite often used to denote deeds in general or most of the important things (Acts 13:10. I Tim. 1:16. James 1:2. Matt. 2, 3; 3, 5. Acts 2:5. Romans 11:26. Colossians 1, 6, etc.). A similar way of expressing the word "all and everyone" exists in all languages. Jesus – in the Syriac translation of the Bible of the second half of the second century (Peshito) it reads: "Jesus our Messiah" or Christ. By this expression the writer points not only to the Lord's miracles and various blessings to His unfortunate people, but also to His suffering, death and resurrection, in a word, to everything that Jesus did for the salvation of the world. "He will not sin who calls the very suffering" of Jesus, as if involuntarily tormenting the state of soul and body, an action; for through suffering He did a great and wonderful deed, destroying death and doing all the rest" (Zlat.). From the beginning.

Until the day on which He ascended, having given commands by the Holy Spirit to the Apostles whom He had chosen (Luke 24:49, Matthew 28:18, John 20:21, Luke 24:51).

Until that day is the fortieth day after the Resurrection. (See verse 3 and Luke 24:51). Into which He ascended, into heaven; for the image of the ascension, see v. 9. — This passage is interpreted differently according to different readings of the text. In the Syrian (2nd half of the 2nd century) and Arabic (1st half of the 7th century) Bibles it reads: "Giving His commandments to the apostles, whom He chose by the Holy Spirit." With us, as in the Greek text, the words "by the Holy Spirit" refer to the command to the apostles, and not to their election. The interpretation of this reading must be recognized as correct and accurate. "As the Lord Himself, out of humility and adaptability to His hearers, said: I cast out demons by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28): so here, commanding by the Spirit, it is said not because the Son had need of the Spirit, but because where the Son creates, there also the Spirit cooperates and is co-present, as one in essence" (Theophilus). The commandments are precisely the command to go and preach the Gospel of salvation to all nations: "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:14; cf. Mark 16:15-19). Having given commands in the Slavonic text in accordance with the original (έντειλλάμενος), having commanded or commanded — the communion of unity. Number; so that he does not express many of the commands proper. Consequently, it should not be concluded from the present verse that along with this one supreme commandment, the Lord gave other and special commandments to the apostles; they were superfluous if the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, became their Divine Guide in all their ministry. John 14:26. Moreover, the commandment to preach the Gospel to all creation combines in itself everything that the Lord taught His Apostles after His resurrection, which is why Luke speaks here of it alone.

3rd verse: "By whom He also manifested Himself alive after His suffering, with many sure proofs, appearing to them for forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God" (Luke 24:13 and 36 and John 20:30; 21:14, etc., John 20:22, Luke 17:21).