When God created us, male and female, He created us in His own image. Genesis 1:26 makes this clear: “Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” He took dirt and formed our bodies. Now God’s image isn’t to be found in our bodies. Instead it’s to be found in our spirits. Both the Hebrew and Greek words for spirit are also translated as wind or breath. In Genesis 2:7 we read, “…the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
One way to determine if a body still has life is to check to see if the person is breathing. If you and I can fog a mirror we’re still alive. If we were deprived of air we wouldn’t last very long. Breathing, breath, is a gift from God and a constant reminder of our dependence on Him. Try holding your breath and you will soon find that air-hunger becomes painful after only a minute or even less. We will die in just a few minutes unless our “breath” supply is restored. But there is more to real life than this physical existence. God never intended for mankind to die. Death became part of our experience when Adam sinned. God warned Adam that if they chose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, death would become part of their experience. They would no longer enjoy the real “life” God had intended. Death would be the shadow that would color all the days of their physical existence. So it is today!
As I’ve wrestled with this passage in Genesis, John 20:21-22 came to mind. It reads, “Jesus said to them again, ‘As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” Whereas the breath of life, physical breathing, is something everyone needs to survive, Jesus gives us something that is more than just physical life. He breathes out “holy breath.” In John 10:10, Jesus said he came, not just to give us life, but to give us life to the fullest extent possible. Jesus was not promising just a better human life. He was offering to give us the very life of God, the eternal, indestructible, incorruptible, divine life. This is the life that is in God Himself. In John 5:26, we read, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” It is the kind of life that’s not limited in quality or quantity! It’s the way back into the graces of the God who made us. Jesus offers access to everyone. In John 14:6, He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”