Breath Of Life

Previously stated was the fact that the breath of Jesus upon His disciples was the giving of the Holy Spirit to them. These questions were then brought to us. But why does He do this? Why does He give them the Holy Spirit at this point?

And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. John 20: 22 – 23.

Jesus has breathed on them after His resurrection, for in Him, their resurrected Teacher and Master, they not only see and believe, but they are made one with Him through the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection have taken place, and Jesus has come in flesh, in risen Body to His disciples, so that they can also know resurrection in their carnal bodies. This will only occur when the very Breath of the Holy Spirit becomes their breath. Jesus, as it were, puts Himself in them, His very life into them, so that they will ‘live’, because of His new breath in them.

When Jesus breathes upon you, you receive life. There is a beautiful mystery here about the breathing and receiving of life. When Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon His disciples, did He not breathe life into them? Is this not the way of Father God as well? When Adam was formed, God the Father breathed breath into him, the ‘Breath of Life’. The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2: 7. It is clear that Adam was formed, a visible form, a human person or body. He was not in the form of a tiger, or a tree, or a mountain, but a human being. Nevertheless, he was not a living body. He was as one dead, one without life, until God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Is not the Holy Spirit the Breath of Life? If this is so, then God the Father breathed the Holy Spirit on Adam and made him a living being. In simple visuals, are we not being shown, with deeper meaning and understanding that without the breath of God, we are dead? The Breath of Life, who is the Spirit of God, is given to us, created human beings, for without Him we are nothing.

Is this what Jesus had done to the disciples, when He breathed on them the Holy Spirit? If indeed, we believe that God breathed the Holy Spirit into Adam, when He breathed life into him, then here is fact. When Jesus breathed on the disciples and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit, He breathed life into them. But were they dead, that He had to breathe life in them? Yes, for I believe that unless the Spirit of God is our very breath, our very life, we are spiritually dead.

Allow me, at this juncture, to remind you of some facts about Jesus, God incarnate. When Jesus came to earth and took on flesh, He took on sinful, human flesh. He did not come as the Adam before sin. He came in the body of the Adam after sin, a weakened and defiled body. Jesus never sinned, but God made Him to be sin for us. May I also refresh your memory, bringing to your attention, how Jesus walked the road of the sinner and suffered the death of the sinner, so that you and I may know, not just our sins forgiven, but that you and I may have a resurrected body, while still here on the earth. Is it a body which He who raised Jesus, will also raise in all who believe? But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. Romans 8: 10 – 11.

I believe and accept that just as the Breath of Life was given to Adam, through the Breath of God the Father, so too the Breath of Life was given to the disciples through the Breath of God, the Son.