Christ As Breath

Receive the Holy Spirit

God is Spirit, and He desires to give His Spirit to humanity. His Spirit is His invisible essence. The Spirit is compared to the breath or the wind. It is unseen, yet it can be felt. Like the wind or breath, it has the unseen power to sustain and move what is seen. Breathing in the Spirit by turning to Him is essential for a life in Christ. We live both in the world and in Christ. Practicing conscious remembrance is a simple way to receive the Spirit's supply each day. 

The movement of the Spirit stirs within us and awakens us. We sense His Spirit with our spirit. God-consciousness develops as we become more aware. The knowledge of God is gained through awakening this spiritual sense. Cultivating this sense is important for our well-being. My mind can only respond to what it perceives. Staying aware of the Spirit helps guide our minds and actions. The divine Spirit creates a union with God, enabling us to feel His presence within our human spirit. 

As the Spirit, God’s essence is transmittable and receivable. Air becomes the breath of human life. The Spirit (pneuma) also serves as a source of divine life (zoe) for us. What is everywhere, and part of the atmosphere covering the earth, enters our being and participates in the metabolism of life for the development of life. The air is a meaningful symbol of the Spirit.

God has created man with a spirit. Humans possess the unique ability to receive the divine Spirit. Made alive by the Spirit, we become aware of another realm that has divine presence. This awareness allows us to know, love, and believe in Him. Faith is thus formed in us through the substantiation of things not seen. The Spirit provides an inner certainty. We understand the physical world through our senses, and similarly, we know God through the inner sense within our spirit.

The Spirit connects us and makes us one spirit with the Lord. The Spirit of truth conveys the reality of God to us. The Spirit of life brings us into a living union with Him. A fellowship in spirit becomes possible by receiving the Spirit. Every type of life has its own fellowship. Life recognizes its own kind. Gathering together as the church is based on this kinship of the Spirit. 

True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father also seeks such to worship Him.

Worship in Spirit and truth, which God seeks, arises from this new awareness of Him. Just as sound provides hearing and light provides sight, so too does the Spirit bring an awareness of God.

From Genesis to Revelation, God operates as the Spirit.

In Genesis, the Spirit of God was brooding upon the surface of the waters. In Revelation, the Spirit and the bride say, Come! The Spirit ties the biblical narrative to our human life and makes it relevant. 

God, as the Spirit, begets, anoints, and raises Jesus. 

That which has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is baptized and anointed by the Spirit. God is delighted with such a man. 

He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him. And behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying: This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I have found My delight.

The Spirit contains this ‘delight’. Having received the Spirit, we come to know that God the Father is well-pleased in the Son. The Spirit puts us in the Triune God.  

On that day, you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.

‘That day’ is here now. It is the day of mutual co-inherence between God and man. The Spirit brings God to us and brings us to God. This communion is represented by the Christ who says:

I am the true vine, and My Father is the keeper of the vineyard.

Abide in Me and I in you.

Jesus begins His earthly ministry, teaching and healing by the power of the Spirit. 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He has anointed Me.

The Spirit also accomplished the resurrection of Christ. 

And if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you…

The Spirit is the common thread through each stage with Christ.

God intends that man receive His Spirit. We are made for this. God has formed man’s spirit along with the rest of creation. 

Jehovah…who forms the spirit of man within him.

God has also shaped our human vessel to receive Him. 

And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.

Man is God-compatible. This is intentional and purposeful. The human spirit is miscible with the divine Spirit, becoming one spirit. 

But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

There is God's intent to realize this state, as expressed through the prophets.

I will put My Spirit within you… and you will be My people, and I will be your God.

Christ's work leads to the promise that the Spirit will be sent to dwell with and in man.

But when He, the Spirit of reality, comes, He will guide you into all the reality. 

God’s work in man is woven with the thread of the Spirit, from the Spirit hovering over the waters of death in Genesis to the Spirit and the bride inviting all to freely drink the water of life. The poetry is beautiful. The Spirit creates the words, and the Spirit also reveals the truth behind the words.  

Christ transmits the Spirit to the disciples in His resurrection. The Way of Christ begins with the disciples receiving the Spirit of Christ. 

He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. 

A new and living way is thus initiated. This is the spirit of the glorified Jesus. This is the ‘spirit that was not yet’ from John 7:39. 

In His ascension, the gift of the Spirit is given to many more. The continuation of The Way is made possible by the Spirit. The offer on the table was the gift of the Spirit.

Believe and be baptized, and you will receive the gift of the Spirit.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit…

Because of the gift of the Spirit, The Way became an advancement over existing ways. The Spirit authenticated the Way. 

Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.

The good news of the gospel is that the Spirit is available now, fulfilling the Old Testament promise. 

So it is written [in Scripture], “The first man, Adam, became a living soul (an individual);” the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving spirit [restoring the dead to life].

Christ gives life to individuals. The first man, Adam, is soulish, and the second man, Christ, is spiritual. The soulish man comes first and is created by God to become a living soul. Through Christ, there is the spiritual man as a new creation. Adam embodies the soul, while Christ embodies the Spirit. The spiritual death in Adam is contrasted with spiritual birth in Christ. 

What was previously understood must be reinterpreted within a broader framework established by the apostles. This framework is the new wineskin into which new wine has to be poured. Old wineskins ruptured. The presence of the Spirit dramatically transforms everything.

The believer’s life involves experiencing the Spirit. God flows into a person's inner being, and believers feel it as rivers of living water. Jesus spoke of this mysterious experience. 

He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. But this He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

The Spirit gives us a life that has a new quality. It is zoe or divine life with divine consciousness and qualities. The Spirit makes us partakers of God’s holy nature. 

He has granted us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these, you might become partakers of the divine nature.

By receiving the Spirit, there is a transformation from a soulish, human consciousness to a spiritual and divine consciousness. Well-being results from this change in awareness. Christ’s work is life-giving and life-multiplying. The pattern of Christ is replicated. Man can be born of the Spirit, baptized in the Spirit, receive the Spirit's anointing, and be taught by the Spirit. 

I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of reality, who proceeds from the Father. The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things.

The Spirit indwells the Body. A person with the indwelling Spirit becomes a member of the mystical Body of Christ. Such a person is Christ-like in the sense that the Spirit of God indwells them as members of the Body. The indwelling Spirit effects a transfer from Adam to Christ. There is a change in life, nature, and identity. Adam is soulish with a human identity. The sons of God are spiritual, just as God is spiritual. The Spirit inscribes this new identity.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh [the physical is merely physical], and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

I revealed Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, and to Me You gave them, and they have kept Your word.

God’s intent for man to receive His Spirit is fulfilled through Christ. Starting with Christ’s physical body, it continues with Christ’s mystical body. It is His Spirit in His Body—the Spirit of God within the Body of Christ.

The ministry of the Spirit continues. The apostles announce the good news, accompanied by a further transmission of the Spirit. 

Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

This promise belongs to you and your children and to all who are far off—to all whom the Lord our God will call to Himself.

The apostles and disciples are now ministers of a new covenant, ministers not of the letter but of the Spirit. 

Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard his message.

The Head and the Body operate together to impart the Spirit to humanity. New believers receive the Holy Spirit’s sealing, filling, and gift by believing in Him. The believer’s experience of the Spirit is interpreted as follows: 

Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. You were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise.

God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit brings us God’s life, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and makes us members of His Body. God is revealed. Man now has a consciousness of God. His love is experienced in our hearts, and man’s true identity as sons of God is restored through the pouring out of the Spirit. The Spirit conveys God's riches to man through this mystical union. A new day has dawned.

With one accord, they continued to meet daily in the temple courts and to break bread from house to house, sharing their meals with gladness and sincerity of heart... 

The indwelling Spirit performs various functions. The new man, equipped with new life through a new birth, has become part of the new creation in Christ. This new man lives and walks in a new way. The Spirit within is now a vital participant in the functions of life. The Spirit: 

• Gives us new life, makes us alive to God
• Witnesses with our spirit
• Brings us into fellowship with God
• Anoints, teaches, leads, and guides us into all the realities
• Regenerates, washes, renews, and sanctifies
• Anoints us to make us holy
• Comforts us, as one who is with us to care for us
• Indwells us, flows in us, and fills us to the overflowing
• Speaks through us at critical junctures
• Enables worship and service to God
• Brings oneness
• Builds us together into the dwelling place of God.

In this spiritual union, the Spirit functions with our spirit to care for our human life, cause all things to work together for good, transform us, and bring us to God’s goal of mutual indwelling.

The Spirit is the holy anointing oil described in Exodus, which contains many ingredients, including olive oil, myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, and cassia. These elements symbolize the mingling of divinity and humanity seen in Christ. It includes the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. The priests, the tabernacle, and all sacred things are anointed by this compound ointment in the Old Testament. The application of this compound ointment brings consecration and sanctification, first seen in Christ. The Spirit applies the divine significance of Christ’s attainments and accomplishments to all who receive. Thus, the Spirit becomes experienced as the Holy Spirit.

God gives His Spirit without measure. The biblical narrative makes it abundantly clear that receiving His Spirit is central to the interaction between God and man. 

For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for God gives the Spirit without measure [generously and boundlessly]!

After His teaching, travel, and travail, Christ concluded His earthly ministry with the words: Receive the Holy Spirit, which conveyed the distilled essence. For the disciples, that was a new life initiated by a new breath—the divine Spirit.