Genesis 2:7 NIV
…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.
What Is In You?
What makes you
unique? For me it is my last name. In high school kids made fun of it. Often when asked my last name, I have to
spell it because receptionists reflexively start writing it as Walker rather
than Walkup. Just recently I was
substitute teaching at a high school and kids in two different classes made fun
of it. My son did an internet search of
our last name and it turns out a descendant of ours with our last name was a
member of Scottish royalty and named his castle after our name. My wife’s first name, Mary Jo is unique in
Northern California. Combine it with
Walkup and it seems inconceivable that anyone else has the same name. Well it turns out there is another Mary Jo
Walkup in the Bay Area and when we first moved here, we started getting her
mail and the library confused the two of them.
Yet you cannot hide behind someone else.
You are different from every other person that has ever existed and
nothing you do can keep this from being true.
You may have plastic surgery to make you look like Barbie or feign a
British accent so that you sound more charming but in the end you are who you
are and no one else and that cannot be changed.
You are made by God with a unique soul that no one else can ever
possess.
When God put together his first human being, it was
such an ignoble work. He scraped
together some dirt and formed him out of the common stuff of the earth. It was like a child scooping up clumps of mud
and patting the mess together into a shape of his own imagining. No fanfare or shouts of acclimation greeted
the new creation. But the Lord wasn’t
finished yet. At the end of it, He did
something that is difficult to assess.
The Lord breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and from that
point forward he and each one who came from his line became a “living soul”.
The Hebrew term translated “being” in the NIV and
“soul: in the KJV is “nephesh”. It
describes you as you, distinctly different from every other person that has
ever been or will be. Without the breath
of God, Adam was just a body, an organic collection of matter. Once though God breathed into him, Adam came
alive; became “him”. A parallel term
found in the Greek Bible is “psuche”, from which is derived the English word
“psyche”. The idea of both words in their Biblical
context is that they describe you as the combination of body and spirit. Take out the spirit and the psuche or nephesh
ends. You have a body stranded without
life. James the brother of Jesus
references this body without spirit condition and uses it to compare it to faith
without works. As the body without
the God,spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (James 2:26 NIV) The Apostle Paul hints at the time when a
separation will take place between him and his body. Therefore we are always confident and know
that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to
be away from the body and at home with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:6-8 NIV)
The book of Proverbs speaks of the souls (nephesh)
of animals and says that the righteous man cares for the animal soul. A righteous man cares for the needs of his
animal… (Proverbs 12:10 NIV) It is
literally, “A righteous one knowing the soul of his animals. The word translated animals is a term used
for any creature other than humans and comes from a root that means “tongue
tied” or without language. It is all
those beasts that God did not breathe into and make living souls. The Bible differentiates between the spirit
the animals possess and the sort of spirit people have. Who knows if the spirit of man rises
upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?" (Ecclesiastes
3:21 NIV) The question raised has to do
with the ultimate destination of the human spirit vs. the animal spirit but the
point is that they are different; animal spirit and human spirit. What separates one from the other? All we have and it is an important difference
is that the Bible says that God breathed into the first human being and by
doing so gave people something He did not give animals…something called a
“living soul”.
What are we to make of this breath God put into
Adam? The only other time we see in the
Bible God pushing out His breath into someone, it is when Christ during His
resurrection breathed upon the disciples the Holy Spirit. And with that he breathed on them and
said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22 NIV) There are three considerations here. The first is that this is something from God
that the animals don’t possess. Second
it is spirit; something beyond physical.
Third it is of God, it comes out of Him.
In our modern age we think of anything “spiritual” as not really
real. Like a metaphor, something
spiritual stands for a way of seeing, a way of viewing an aspect of life. If it is spiritual, then that is code for
this is deeply personal, it flows out of me and how I live my life. Yet the Bible insists that the things of the
Spirit are super real, are eternal real rather than temporary real. God and Spirit are not just real, they are
the basis behind all reality. They make
reality actual, not just digital imagery or something coming out of a machine. The fact that God’s breath is in you and
sustains you is why you are not just a thought; you are by God’s action,
“really real”.
What is exceptional about God breathing into the
first human being and the result of the breath being passed along across every
generation and through every person that has been conceived is that something
of God is in each of us. The Biblical
term for this is that we are made in “God’s image”. What a marvelous miracle that is! All of us have “Godness”; it is in a sense,
in our DNA. No matter how bad we might
be, how corrupted by Satan and debased by our behaviors, God is still a part of
who we are, the life behind our being. When
Jacob, after a twenty year absence finally met up with his brother Esau and
found him full of forgiveness and no longer holding against Jacob his grudge,
Jacob said of him, “For to see your face is like seeing the face of God”.
(Genesis 33:10 NIV) Perhaps there is more truth to that statement than Jacob
knew at the time.
What is possible for someone who has God a part of
him or her? Love and forgive with
supernatural strength come to mind.
Author Philip Yancey in his book Rumors of Another World reminds you and me of the great power those
who have Christ in them possess. When
the transition of power took place in South Africa as the apartheid government based
on racial injustice was replaced by a demographic coalition of blacks and
whites led by the recently released Nelson Mandela, there were many atrocities
of the past racist leaders that needed to be addressed. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led
by Bishop Desmond Tutu brought white policeman and army officers in to face
their accusers over crimes they had committed while in power. The rules were these: if when voluntarily
facing his accusers, the officer confessed his crime and fully acknowledged his
guilt, he could not be tried and punished for the crime. One police officer told of a time when he and
his fellow policeman shot an eighteen year old and burned his body to ashes to
destroy the evidence. Later the same
officer returned to that house and seized the boy’s father. While his wife was forced to watch, the
police tied her husband to a wood pile, poured gasoline all over his body and
set him on fire.
After hearing the police officer describe his
crimes, the widow, who was also the mother, was given the opportunity to
speak. “What do you want from Mr. van de
Broek?” the judge asked her. She replied
that she wanted him to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body,
gather the dust and make it possible for her to give her husband a decent
burial. The police officer hung his head
in shame and agreed to do so. But then
the widow added, “Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still
have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the
ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know
that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my
forgiveness is real.” As she left the
witness stand to go to the police officer, the widow had to stop because
overwhelmed, the officer had fainted. (p. 223-224)
What can you do with God a part of you, what is
possible with Him living through you?
Adam had a chance to find out just what sort of goodness could flow from
him into the world all about him. Now
that we live in the age of sin and death, it is certainly more difficult to
believe that we possess the love and kindness of God but we do. The promise is still valid today. I can do everything through him who gives
me strength. (Philippians 4:13 NIV)
Today you can love like God.
Today you can forgive like Jesus.
Today you can be kind like Jesus.
Today you can get rid of your temper, be done with your addictions,
leave behind your lusts and be patient in any and every circumstance just like
Jesus. With Christ a part of us, it is possible!
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