Focus: The Essence of Life (Pt.2)

Text: Jb.10:12; 33:4

"Thou hast GRANTED me LIFE and favour, and thy visitation hath preserved my spirit… The Spirit of God hath MADE me, and the BREATH of the Almighty hath GIVEN me LIFE."

There's vast difference between life as it is and life as it ought to be. We tend to live by default rather than by divine design. Let's go for life as God intended it.

Following our acronym of LIFE we have already considered the L letter, which is Loan for investment. Now we'll focus on the I-letter, which is:

*Infusion of divinity for expression on earth

Man is a unique creature. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the prince, suffering from acute depression and spiritual paralysis, says to two of his fellow students who visited him, "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an Angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals - and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"

Interestingly, in the making of man four Hebrew words are used. In Genesis 1:26, it is the word 'asah.' In Genesis 1:27, it is 'bara.' In Genesis 2:7, it is 'yatsar.' And finally in Genesis 2:22, it is the word 'banah.' Powerful words. It took four unique Hebrew words to describe man's creation. That tells us that man is indeed an exceptional work of art - the divine masterpiece. He is a product of divine creativity and of infinite intelligence.

But what is most interesting is that God did not stop at creating, manufacturing or fashioning, sculpting and building of the man, as the Hebrew words suggest, but He went beyond that to breathing into him, thereby marking him out as a distinct creature that could bear His image and display His likeness.

Genesis 2:7 makes it clear that man became really alive after God had breathed into him. God imparted him with His divinity. By divine breath man became human. Dust and divinity are fused together in him.

Without the divine breath human life is impossible, but by it he is a creature of eternity and of divine expression. Of all creatures man is the highest being in the universe because of the breath of God in him. He is God's masterpiece. Among all creatures man presents and represents God.

Man can't be man without God. The breath of God in man makes possible the divine factor in man's earthly environment. We see the divine factor playing out in all facets of his existence. Every man you see is designed and destined by God to be a reflection of Himself to the world around him. We 'mirror' God in this world. Paul says, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being… For we are also his offspring" (Act.17:28). What is man, really, without his maker? Without God, man is less human. Describing the man without God, Paul says he is "without strength," "without Christ," "no hope," and "without God in the world" (Rom.5:6; Eph.2:12) - powerless, hopeless, Christ-less and godless. Man is nothing without God, but by the infusion of divine breath man is animated and activated to manifest God upon the earth in everything he does and wherever he is.

Peter describes the believer in Christ as a partaker of the divine nature. The Lord Jesus Christ came to give us life, and desires for us to have it in full, and before He left this earth, the Scripture says, "He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (Jh.20:22). The Christian, by divine infusion, becomes an expression of Christ in the earth.

Both by creation and redemption man is quite exceptional, and his life on earth is designed to be extraordinary.

Stop living life as it is and start living it as it is meant to be lived. Soren Kierkegaard says "life is understood backwards, but it can only be lived forward."

We'll continue tomorrow.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter