Dave's Diary

Daily Reading: Genesis 2:4-7 and John 3:1-17

Today we seek to learn a lesson in discipleship from the lifeless body of Adam.

As it does each Monday in this Lent Series, our focus shifts from yesterday’s “Encounter” (in this case with ‘The Tempter’) to next Sunday’s “Encounter”, which in this case will be between Jesus and “The Teacher”, Nicodemus. In that coming encounter, Jesus will refer to Nicodemus as “Israel’s Teacher” (John 3:10), and He will express disappointment that Nicodemus is slow to understand Jesus’ teaching that he needs to be “born again” (v.3) or “born of the Spirit” (v.8) if he is to enter the Kingdom of God.

As a rabbi and a “teacher of the Law” in Israel, Nicodemus would have known each letter and punctuation mark of the Genesis 2 account of God creating the first human, and he could have recited exactly how Adam was born when God Himself breathed His own breath into Adam, and Adam “became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). We might miss this, but Nicodemus would have known implicitly that God’s “Spirit” was exactly the same as God’s “breath”. The Hebrew word for both is “ruach”. To be “born of the Spirit” is to be “born of the Breath of God”. So, when Jesus said a person must be born of the Spirit, He was saying that to enter the Kingdom of God, God first has to breathe His Breath into that person.

Jesus was telling Nicodemus that no one earns entry to the Kingdom by doing the right things. Instead, they enter it only when God breathes His Spirit into them.

When it comes to being “born again”, Nicodemus was correct, it is not a matter of returning again to one’s mother’s womb. But what he didn’t yet piece together was that it is instead a matter of recognising one’s state of spiritual death. It is a matter of recognising that one is as desperately in need of God’s life-giving Breath as Adam’s lifeless body was as it lay in the dust of Eden, and then crying out to God to be brought to life by His Breath.

I’m sure you’re reading this daily devotional because you have already made that cry to God at some point in your life. Now, we definitely do not believe in being repeatedly born again, again and again. But we do understand that God breathes His Breath of Life into His children over and over again, to fill us up afresh whenever we feel we have become barren and worn-out in spirit. Are you feeling a bit like the lifeless body of Adam today? Are you in need of a fresh breath of Life. Then join me in asking God for exactly that.

Father, there are parts of my life that feel as lifeless as Adam’s dusty body, or the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision. Right now, by Your perfect grace, please breathe Your Breath of life into me once again. By faith I breath You in. By faith I receive Your Spirit, and Your Life. Amen.