<p>20:22 <em>And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit</em>- The gift of the Spirit was not and is not a once-off phenomenon, given just once in the experience of the believer. The New Testament records the believers being filled with the Spirit on various occasions, and the exhortations to allow ourselves to be filled with the Spirit are proof enough that it is given in an ongoing sense. Paul says that the Corinthians had received the Spirit at baptism, but he urges them to now be spiritual, to receive it and be filled with it again. There is therefore no chronological issue with the fact that Luke places a giving of the Spirit by the risen Lord at a slightly different point in the narrative.</p><p>The breathing of the Lord recalls His breathing His last breath toward the disciples at His death; &quot;breath&quot; and &quot;spirit&quot; are the same idea. The Spirit given is therefore fundamentally the spirit of Lord Jesus, His breathing, His life. Any manifestations of it through miraculous gifts in the first century are incidental to the essential idea- which is that His breathing, His living, the spirit of His mind, is given into ours and becomes ours as it displaces all human thinking and 'spirit' within us.</p>