Life is wonderful because it is mysterious. Even our human life is a mystery. How much more the life of God! Life is mentioned repeatedly in the Gospel of John, far more than in the other Gospels. The life John speaks of is the eternal, uncreated life, which is God Himself. Surely such a life is a mystery! Eventually John tells us that this life is the divine Spirit Himself.
John 1:1 says that the Word was God. Then in 1:14 it says that the Word became flesh. Yet 4:24 says that God is Spirit. In eternity past there was the Word; this Word was God. He became flesh, but He is also Spirit. Who can explain this? Flesh and spirit are almost invariably put in contrast to each other. Yet here we have the Word, God, flesh, and Spirit all related to each other.
The Lord further refers to the Spirit in John 14, where He says that He “will ask the Father” to send “the Spirit of reality” who abides with the disciples and will be in them (vv. 16-17). Then in the next verse He says, “I will not leave you orphans; I am coming to you,” thus implying that the Spirit’s coming is the Lord’s own coming. In that day He would be in them (v. 20), meaning that when the Spirit of reality indwelt them, the Lord Jesus Himself was in them. It is clear that the Lord here was identifying Himself with the Spirit.
After the Lord’s resurrection He appeared to His disciples (John 20:19-22), showing them His hands and His side. Then “He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Lord came not teaching or commanding, but breathing! He breathed the Holy Spirit into them. In Greek the word for spirit and the word for breath are the same. Thus we may also translate what the Lord said as, “Receive the holy breath.” When He breathed into them, what they received was His breath. They received the Holy Spirit by breathing in the Lord’s breath.
As we covered in the previous message, the first section of John is chapters one through twelve. In this section we learn that Christ was God, but that one day He became flesh. He became a man that He might accomplish redemption for us and might thus open the way for us to receive the divine life. In His redemptive death He was in three forms. He was the Lamb of God for our redemption; He was in the form of a brass serpent to destroy the Devil; and He was in the form of a grain of wheat, falling into the ground to release the divine life into many grains.
How much we should rejoice! Our sins have been taken away, the Devil has been destroyed, life has been released and imparted into us, and we have thus been made the many sons and the members of Christ’s Body!
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