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Adam and the Breath of Life
By John R. Gavazzoni
I have often experienced what I've called the Spirit's nudging in the general direction toward a more accurate understanding of some issue re: God's relationship with man, and have shared such AS such, i.e., without any claim to have completely arrived at where that direction finally points. So, it was this morning as I lay snuggled under the covers not quite ready to start my day. Laying there, my thoughts began to circle around, and then settle on, God breathing into the first man's nostrils the breath of life. For what it might be worth to my readers, the following describes this morning's nudging:
This might seem to be off-subject, but to understand just what happened with that in-breathing of the breath of life from God into Adam (notice the picture that comes to mind: face to face breathing into his nostrils bespeaking an act of intimacy from God not found in the creation of the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea, the things creeping upon the earth, nor the fowls of the air), we must give thought to what life is. To paraphrase the KJV text taking into account the original Hebrew: "God Spirted into his (man's) nostrils the Spirit of life."
Jesus explained "zoe aionios" (Greek: age-during, or age-pertaining life) as: "that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." (Jn. 17:3) The "zoe" part, as used in the New Testament, is reserved for describing that Life which is the source of all life, i.e., God's life, particularly as given to man, and particularly in respect to experiencing God in man's creaturely/earthly journey. The "aionios" part has to do with the eons, the ages (from the Greek, "aion" for "age." "Aionios" is the adjective form of the noun, "aion," and as such, it cannot have greater force than the noun, therefore it is wrong to translate it...as the KJV does...as "eternal" in the passage above. It's completely unscholarly to presume "aionios" to mean eternal. To repeat, you can't stretch the meaning of the adjective form of a noun that pertains to time into meaning eternal.
Further sharing God's nudging as I remember the thought-development still lying in bed, drawing from previous nudgings: if eonian life is that we might know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, from that, we should be able to understand what death is, namely, to not know, or more accurately, to mis-know God. "Know" in the passage referenced, conveys from the Greek, the intimate, experiential knowledge in contrast to the kind of knowledge that is limited to mere mental conceptualization.
In other words, the Greek, "gnosis" goes beyond knowing ABOUT God to communing with Him as He shares Himself with us. That just might be at least a partially-foundational definition of what a human soul is: a person, as formed of the dust of the ground, having become a soul by God's in-breathing, in the here-and-now, in the ages, having the capacity to know God as we had known Him eternally, as in, timelessly before we all were sent into this world in Adam....from begotten of God to created of God, the latter formed of the spirit-stuff of the former.
Knowing God begins with knowing Him as those begotten of Him, as His children, "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God", sent into this world to suffer a disconnect from our origin, of being in this present evil world, needing to be born again from above, so by that regeneration, being restored to knowing Him as we were known of Him when He chose in Christ before the foundation of the world. The same capacity of soul, to know God, makes us vulnerable to mis-knowing God. From knowing to mis-knowing, to having our knowing restored is at the heart of what our journey as pilgrims and strangers/sojourners in a strange land is all about.
From having, to losing, to regaining, the soul comes to know God in a depth of communion it would not have without suffering alienation, estrangement and the enmity that arises from our misunderstanding of why such a journey is required, that is, required for us to know God in the depth that He desires for us to know Him. In a word, we cannot know the love of God - the love that God is - except as He proves His love to us in the face of our estrangement-born enmity against Him. It was necessary in order for us to know God at His best.
It is about, as Harry Robert Fox explained: "God did His best for man as man did his worst to God." In the Garden of Eden, Eve opted for knowing good and evil without knowing God. To know what God knows without knowing God is death. To know God is life. There comes an understanding with receiving the "gnosis" knowledge of God that carries one through the times when the earthly circumstances we are subjected to seem utterly incongruent to how God, as Love, should treat us.
We have this understanding richly expressed in Jonathan Mitchell's rendering from the Greek text of 1 Jn. 5:20, amplified, expanded, and with alternate renderings: "yet we have seen and thus know that God's Son has arrived and is continually here, and has given us thorough understanding (comprehension; faculty of thought; intelligence; intellectual capacity; input through the mind) to the end that we would constantly know [other MSS: so that we constantly know] by experience the True One (or: the true, the real, and the genuine), and we constantly exist within and in union with the True One (or: in the real [situation]; in the midst of Reality): within His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the True (Real; Genuine) God, and Life pertaining to and having the qualities of the Age (or: life having its source in the Age [of Messiah]; eonian life; Life of, for and on through, the ages).
Now, in regard to the matter of the mis-knowing of God which is death, the soul of man, still in its stage of unrealized/unfilled capacity to know God truly, experientially and intimately, experiences the yearning that Paul wrote of in the eighth chapter of Romans, to be released into the liberty of the glory of its divine childhood, and as such....as Eve did...opts to, in some measure take things into its own hand. The soul is seduced into thinking some initiation on its part is required. After all, wouldn't the soul be acting like God, in the likeness of God according to which it was created? It would seem some sovereign action as a complement to God's sovereignty is called-for.
So, the soul...we in our creaturely-earth-bound mode of existence.... do exactly what Jesus never did: we do what we do not see the Father doing. This seduction is powerful, powerfully attractive, seen to be "good for food...... pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desired to make one wise." Hey Bible students out there in reader-land, has the serpent beguiled you like he did Eve? Have you been seduced into eating the spiritual junk food from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that has no nourishment for truly knowing God, feeling satisfied with knowing more and more ABOUT God? Junk food gives us a temporary feeling of being filled without providing the nourishment that conforms the soul to the image of God's Son. It's our destiny, and we will find that its hard to kick against the pricks of that destiny.
I have come to see that there's an addictive factor in this syndrome I've tried to explain. Once, opting to take some initiative toward fulfilling the divine imperative of being conformed that we be conformed to Jesus' image, each time we give into that urge, the more addicted we become. We become prey to every soulish exhortation that's supposed to take us to the next level of spirituality, or to solve some spiritual problem we're struggling with. "Here's how-to...." "what you need to do...." "God is trying to tell you...." on and on ad infinitum/ad nauseum. Keeping us on edge as to whether or not we're doing what's required of us.
Let me clue you in: God isn't expecting or requiring anything of you. All His expectations are in His Son in you. The way it works is, Christ in you, as it was with Him during His earthly life, only does that which He sees the Father doing, and is not at all needing any contribution that is of your initiation. What I'm talking about is what Paul referred to in his question: "having begun in the Spirit, are you made perfect in the flesh?" The flesh desperately desires credit for, as it supposes, doing its part so God can do His part.
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