Zoe!

I have come that they might have life (zoe) and have it more abundantly.

 

The first man (Adam) became a living being (bios);

the last Adam, a life (zoe)-giving spirit (I Cor. 15:45)

 

One of the first things Jesus did after His Resurrection from the dead was to breathe on the apostles, just as the Creator breathed the breath of life into Adam at the creation. Before the Resurrection, Jesus taught, Jesus touched and healed, even spit and healed.  But He did not "breathe" on anyone that I know of.  In Hebrew, the word "breath" is ruah, the same word used for "spirit/Spirit," "wind," "breeze," etc. throughout the Scriptures.  In the passage from I Cor. quoted above, Adam receives life (bios), but he is not a "life-giving spirit."  Only the "second Adam" now living a new kind of life -- a life beyond bios-- can communicate a new kind of life to those dwelling in Him -- no longer "bios," but zoe.

 

In Lewis' classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Aslan rises from the dead, he goes into the White Witch's castle and one by one, breathes on the statues frozen by the Witch.  Before his death, Aslan stood for justice and truth, but he did not have the power to breathe on the statues which had come under the power of the Witch.  His righteousness was limited to his physical and biological influence -- his bios.

 

Our "bios," our physical life, eventually runs down and dies, but the Risen Christ possesses within Himself "zoe" -- Life itself, or "eternal" life -- a life that cannot run down, get sick, grow old, or die.  Zoe is the kind of life possessed by, inherent in, God Himself; it is God's own life.  To become a Christian does not mean gaining more "bios;" it means receiving from the Fountain of Zoe eternal life.*  Jesus came to share His own Zoe with us, with all of us. 

 

No mere man or woman has the power to communicate eternal life; the best we can do is to pass on our natural, biological, life.  As children in Catholic school, we heard about "eternal" life, but we thought that that was the life we would have in heaven -- if we were good on earth; we would "earn" eternal life.  Reading the Scriptures for ourselves, however, communicates an entirely different concept.  Jesus promised the woman at the well -- not exactly a role-model for "earning" eternal life -- a spring of water welling up to eternal life.  And she obviously, despite her sinful nature, received this life-giving water, becoming the first evangelist and drawing her entire village to Jesus Christ.

 

Zoe is the promised "Gift of the Father," the Holy Spirit, the "pledge," or "earnest money" of another kind of life given to us in Christ Jesus.  And we do not have to wait until we die to receive it.  Our baptism is a symbol, a re-enactment ahead of time, of our death to the first Adam, the natural man, and our rising to a new kind of life in Jesus Christ, the second Adam.  This new kind of life comes not because we are earning it by our behavior, but because we accept Christ's death as our own, and His resurrection as our own. 

 

Don't we all wish we could go around "breathing" on people a new kind of life to replace what Peter calls "the empty way of life handed down to us by our fathers"?  When we ask for the Gift of the Holy Spirit, we are opening ourselves to Zoe-- eternal life, the life of God Himself.  The reading today from God Calling 2 says this:

 

Men are trying to live the Christian life in the light and teaching of My three years' mission alone.  That was never My purpose.

 

I came to reveal My Father, to show the God-Spirit working in man.  I taught, not that man was only to attempt to copy the Jesus of Nazareth, but that man was also to be so possessed by My Spirit, the Spirit actuating all that I did, that he would be inspired [breathed into] as I was.....

 

I told my disciples that I could not tell them all, but that the Spirit would guide them.  That is where my followers fail Me.  Dwell more and more upon this Spirit-guidance, promised to all, and so little claimed.

 

In the desert following their escape from Egypt, the Israelites thirsted for life-giving water.  Moses struck the rock, and water poured out for all who were thirsty, saints and sinners.  So, too, in our journey, we all thirst for the life-giving water of peace, joy, and truth.  Our Rock has been struck; from His side flows the water of eternal life, for all who will come, saint and sinner.  He will give of the Spirit to all who ask.  No one should be afraid to approach the Man of Sorrows, crowned with the thorns of sin, bearing our burdens and grief.  He is not the Unapproachable Throne of Divinity; He is the Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world, that we might have Life/ Zoe. 

 

*this paragraph, as well as the information about Aslan, is taken from Louis Markos' excellent book, A to Z with C.S.Lewis