Tag: breath

Reading the Bible (and life) as the story of God ‘re-creating’ and ‘re-vivifying’ broken images of God: Part 2 — ‘he lays me down’

Back in 2015 I posted one part of a planned two part epic ‘By the rivers of Babylon’, I didn’t ever post the second part, and nobody seemed to mind. Until today.

To recap, I posted some quotes from ancient near eastern rituals to do with the creation of ‘images of God’ — particularly idol statues — and looked at comparisons with Genesis 2, to suggest that there’s a conceptual link; that in the Genesis creation story we see God creating living, breathing, representatives of the divine, in deliberate contrast to rituals, creation stories, and an understanding of humanity in the ancient near east where man created dead, breathless, statues of gods and then had to develop a cognitive dissonance to be able to encounter that statue as though it was a representative of divine life. We have existing accounts, from the ancient world, of the creation of a divine image and its revivification or rededication after an idol had been captured by an enemy or removed from its sanctuary. I have written bits and pieces expanding on this theme, but thought it’d be nice to come back and finish the ‘epic’ as promised.

I suggested the parallel between the Genesis type scene of creation and re-creation of a divine image (which repeats itself through the Old Testament), mirrors these ancient rituals in the following ways, where an image (tselem) is:

Formed and fashioned, near water (and symbolically, in a sense, moved through water, it’s interesting that God places the man in the garden twice, once before the mention of the water, and once after) (Genesis 2:6, 8, 10-15)
Inspired, or given ‘breath’ so that it the image is vivified. It is to be thought of as a living representation of the God whose image it bears. (Genesis 2:7)
Declared fit for purpose within a system, and via connection to God. (Genesis 1:26-31)
Placed (or enthroned) in the Temple/garden sanctuary and given a job within the Temple. (Genesis 2:8-9, 15)
The images are provided for with food and drink. (Genesis 2:16-17)
The image fulfills a function in representing the God behind the image (Genesis 2:19-20)

I pointed out that this pattern repeated itself with Noah, in the creation of Israel as a people, and was anticipated by the prophets about Israel’s return from exile — where God’s people would be recommissioned as his image bearers. And then promised a follow up post to connect this to the rest of the story of the Bible.

Recap over.

One of my favourite bits of Biblical Theology — perhaps because it was one of the first pieces to grip my imagination about how the Bible might work — comes from connecting Psalm 23 to Jesus, the good shepherd.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever. — Psalm 23

It’s a beautiful Psalm as a standalone. But now read it against that number list. The narrator (first David) is:

Placed by waters in the sanctuary of green pastures;
His Soul restored — literally this is ‘nepesh’ in Hebrew and ‘psuche’ in the Greek translation of the Old Testament — the words used for the ‘breath of life’ breathed in to Adam in Genesis 2. It’s a recreation. The ‘restored’ word is the same word used to describe return from exile in places like Deuteronomy 30:3, 1 Kings 8:34, and Jeremiah 30:3
He is guided along the right paths by God for his name’s sake (a purpose within a system, where the ‘for his name’s sake’ is the purpose, connected to image bearing representation and the failure to live for his name is what lead Israel to exile, to no longer being ‘image bearers’, which is a breaking of the 3rd commandment).
He is taken to a place where there is a table, but at the end ‘dwells in the house of the Lord forever’ (placed in the temple)
He is fed, and his cup overflows (the images are provided with food and drink).
He is anointed with oil — which presumably has some connection to fulfilling a function to represent the God behind the image, alongside the ‘his name’s sake.’

Now. In terms of the Biblical theology thing, i’d often simply connected The Lord as shepherd to Jesus as shepherd — Jesus as the provider who specifically does all these things for people, or promises to, as the good shepherd. Look at what Jesus says around the feeding of the 5,000 as recorded by Mark (Mark 6, where the people are ‘like sheep without a shepherd) and John, where the feeding of the 5,000 comes before passages about the gift of the Spirit as living water that brings eternal life — in fact, the whole of John’s Gospel essentially unpacks that re-creation schema. But the Biblical theology connection that makes Jesus ‘the Lord who is the shepherd,’ with the feeding of the 5,000 in the mix, goes something like:

He places people by water, on green pastures (Mark 6:39, John 6:10)
He feeds them with ‘overflowing’ provision (Mark 6:42-43, John 6:12-14)
The people are ‘sheep without a shepherd’ (Mark 6), and Jesus calls himself ‘the good shepherd’ (John 10).

There’s a degree to which I think this is still a legitimate line to draw from Old to New Testament. But there’s a better story, a better line through the Old Testament story of God creating and revivifying broken images that involves Jesus being the ‘new Adam’ — the new ‘image’ — through whom we are restored as we are united to him; an a reading of Psalm 23 that places Jesus in the narrative schema as the first ‘restored Israelite’, the one whom David points to, who can say ‘the Lord is my shepherd’ — I owe much of this reading to Doug Green, whose paper ‘The Lord is Christ’s Shepherd. Psalm 23 as Messianic Prophecy’ is brilliant.

He says, amongst other things:

“… it is appropriate to read the whole of the Psalter in a prophetic and eschatological direction. More specifically, all of the “Psalms of David” should be read as messianic psalms that describe different dimensions of the life — and especially the suffering — of Israel’s eschatological King.”

“In other words, the apostolic authors adopted not simply a general Christological approach to reading the Psalter, wherein Christ could be “seen” in the psalms, but more specifically a decidedly Christotelic approach, reading it in connection with Israel’s great narrative of redemption, which from their perspective had reached its surprising climax (Greek telos, “end” or “goal” in the story of Jesus, the Messiah.”

Green describes the structure of the psalm as a move from “pasturage to wilderness to temple” that can be described as paralleling “promised land -> exile -> restoration” or “Eden -> Exile from the Garden -> New Jerusalem”. He says:

“Even in their grammatical-historical context, verses 4 and 5, with their images of escape from the threat of death and (possibly) return from exile, tell an incipient resurrection story. Read prophetically, these verses echo the story of the Isaianic Servant as they depict the Messiah’s journey through some kind of suffering, which will subsequently change into his enjoyment of the blessed life, and more specifically to an eschatological banquet…

“If Jesus Christ is indeed the telos, or goal, of Israel’s story, and more specifically the fulfilment of the OT’s messianic prophecies — including the Psalter understood as a prophetic book — then Christian interpretation of the OT must be an exercise in reading backwards, of rereading earlier texts so that their meanings cohere with what God has actually done in history in Jesus Christ.”

He concludes “the eschatological David has been brought from the valley of death into the heavenly house of the Lord, to reside there.” Green, I think rightly, describes this as “the story of those who have been united to Christ by faith” — we’re brought into the story through our union with Christ.

If this Psalm is messianic in this sense, then in some way the Lord’s anointed — who is shepherded by God — somehow leads God’s people through exile from God — or death — into restoration and the temple. If Jesus comes as the restoration moment promised in the prophets, and this Psalm, and he does this by being the true image bearer but his restoration into being an image bearer through exile and death is also grounds for our restoration.

So, that’s a fun reading of Psalm 23 that connects it to the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies — where Jesus is the king who ends our exile from God, but there’s more to this story that is explicitly connected to the proposed metanarrative of the Bible; that it’s about God re-creating and revivifying divine image bearers (where idolatry transforms us into the image of dead idols rather than the living God).

My suggestion is that the Gospels, in depicting Jesus as a new Adam, and new Israel, also follow the pattern of establishing Jesus as an image bearer — according to those Old Testament (and Ancient Near Eastern) types — and that this is applied to the church both through union with Christ, baptism, and the indwelling of the Spirit — the things that mark out our transformation into the image of Jesus, from being broken idol-worshipping images. Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and the “exact representation of God’s being” (Hebrews 1:3), but there are also ways the Gospels follow the script.

Jesus is, in a particular sense, ‘formed’ or fashioned near water at his baptism — if crossing the Jordan was Israel’s path to nationhood and part of how Exodus paints them being presented as God’s image bearers — his children, then Jesus’ baptism in the waters of the Jordan mark his calling in the same way. All four Gospels include the baptism of Jesus.
Especially if the Spirit descending on Jesus is the ‘breath’ of God marking him . — if this is Jesus symbolically being given a certain sort of ‘breath’ as Adam was (though Adam receives the ‘psuche’ and Jesus the ‘pneuma’ in Greek — and that distinction is interesting particularly because Paul makes it a distinction between Adam the ‘psucheikon’ (or natural/breathed/souled image) and Jesus the ‘pneumatikon’ (or breathed/spirited image) in 1 Corinthians 15:44 as he reflects on and quotes from Genesis 2 and the resurrection, see below). Pneuma and psuche are used in a way that, at a glance, looks interchangeable for breath and Spirit throughout the Old Testament.
Jesus is declared ‘fit for purpose’ in connection with God in the words that speak from heaven — “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:11), “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17), “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:22), while John’s Gospel has John the Baptist say, of Jesus, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” (John 1:33 — which is significant if the bringing of the Holy Spirit is connected to the end of exile and the restoration of God’s image bearing people).
Jesus is the Temple — or the dwelling place of God — but he also goes in order to prepare an eschatological temple, and in order to transform God’s new image bearers into human temples. This one takes some unpacking. He is also the living representative of God (Hebrews 1), and if we see him we’ve seen the father (John 14:9). He is the “word of God” in flesh, and he “is God” ‘tabernacling’, or ‘dwelling’ in the world in the flesh (John 1:1-14). In John 2, as he cleanses the Temple (which has not ever had God’s spirit come to dwell in it after exile in the way that it did before exile) he speaks of his body as the temple (John 2:22). But he also speaks of his “father’s house” (John 2:16). In John 14:1-3 Jesus says: “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am…” this has often been understood as being about the heavenly city-temple — a new Eden — that John sees coming down to earth in Revelation 21, but in an immediate sense of fulfilment of the ‘place for you’ and the going and coming, Jesus says the Spirit is him ‘coming back’ — “But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:17-18) and then “you heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.” (John 14:28-29). The ‘coming back’ might purely be eschatological, but it seems to both immediately describe the resurrection, the ascension (as part of the “going”), and the coming of the Spirit as part of the “return” to them (and the end of the exile that ‘restores their souls’ — and ours).In John 16, in the same extended episode of teaching, Jesus explains more of the going and coming — “Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy” (John 16:19-20)… then, following Jesus death, and their grief, and his resurrection, John records the following: “The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit…” (John 20:20-22). When Jesus breathes into his disciples and commissions them in John 20:22 it uses the same Greek word for what God does to breathe life into Adam in the LXX.
The point at which the disciples understand Jesus’ reference to his body as the temple, we’re told, back in 2:22, is the resurrection: “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.” When this happen — the disciples become the ‘many rooms’ of the house of God, his Temple — as Jesus has been already, as marked by the Spirit descending on him at his baptism (a sort of symbolic end of the exile — God dwelling with his people again).

Luke does a fun thing with this in Acts 2, where he has the Spirit being poured out on God’s new temple (and I think given Luke’s Gospel ends with the followers of Jesus meeting daily in the temple, and given Acts 2 ends with a reference to the followers of Jesus meeting daily in the temple, and given the festival of Pentecost is a public gathering and there are many witnesses from the Jewish diaspora there, that the events of Pentecost probably happened in the Temple courts, not the upper room mentioned as the setting of the events in Acts 1). God’s new temple — his re-created image bearers — receive the Spirit, in an echo of the glory of his presence coming in to the first temple — with clouds and noise and flaming glory — in the courts of the temple building Jesus had condemned — the temple whose curtain tore when Jesus died as an expression of a sort of judgment on that building and a new way of access to God’s presence…

Jesus is also positioned as a new Adam in his temptation, especially as recorded in Luke’s Gospel, where the temptation follows the baptism, and genealogy (which goes back to “Adam, the son of God”. There’s some fun stuff going on with gardens, both Gethsemane, and at the resurrection where he is mistaken for ‘the gardener’ — where Adam’s original task in the garden was to ‘work and keep’ the garden.

The rest of the New Testament makes explicit what this point makes implicit, and draws us into the story through our union with Christ by the Holy Spirit — so that we too become temples of the Spirit, and we are transformed into the ‘image of Jesus’ rather than Adam.
If Doug Green’s schema for Psalm 23 is correct, and it depicts Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as the movement from Eden, to exile, to restoration in a new Eden, then there’s something nice about the resurrection appearance being in a garden, and being followed by Jesus eating with his disciples — but also, this becomes something fulfilled in Jesus’ ascension to heaven where he dwells with the father forever, and where there is a new Edenic orchard of food available (near running waters). The new creation is the ultimate re-creation, and Jesus, the Lamb, occupies a particularly central place in this new garden sanctuary — the ‘forever’ house of God.

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.” — Revelation 22:1-3
The imperative that follows the baptism, and later the transfiguration, where Jesus is revealed as God’s son, with whom he is well pleased is “listen to him” — Jesus is God’s representative. The word made flesh (John 1), the way God speaks (Hebrews 1). The ‘image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1). this point seems the least controversial.

There’s a difference between us, and Jesus, in this metanarrative — where the story of the Bible is the story of broken images being restored — we are broken by our sin and idolatry so that we bear the image of our counterfeit gods, as the Psalms put it the result of idolatry is that “those who worship them will become like them.” Sin — idolatry — leads to exile from God, curse, and death. De-creation even. The coming undone of the image we were created to bear. Romans 1 fleshes out how this works with regards to our exchanging the creator for created things. Our restoration comes through Jesus restoring us as worshippers (ala Romans 12) — through his sacrifice, his resurrection and the outpouring of his Spirit which is our ‘baptism’, the moment (depicted as receiving ‘living water’) that recasts us into his image as it re-creates us (see Paul on our being baptised into the death and resurrection of Jesus in Romans 6, such that we, as we receive the Spirit, become children of God again, conformed to the image of his son (Romans 8)). Jesus is a broken image restored because he takes our sin on his body at the cross — he is scourged and scarred and moves through death (God’s image lives and breathes but he breathes his last for us). The resurrection is his re-vivification, and the source of ours – where we move from death in Adam to life in Jesus (1 Corinthians 15) as our ‘psuche’ — the ‘breath of life’ in Genesis meets its ‘end’ or ‘telos’ — the life of God by his Spirit making us immortal images.

Where Paul says: “it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” the word natural is psuchikon (ψυχικόν), while the word ‘spiritual’ is pneumatikon (πνευματικόν). Paul then quotes Genesis 2:7 to contrast Adam, the living being (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν) — something like ‘a living soul’, but I think it’s better rendered ‘a breathed being’ — in part because in Genesis 1:30 the animals also have ‘the breath of life’ in them’ which, in the LXX, also uses “ψυχὴν ζωῆς”) — with Jesus who is a ‘life-giving Spirit’ (πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν). God re-creates us, by the Spirit, through replacing Adam with Jesus in our genetic makeup… so that we share in the resurrection of Jesus rather than the death of Adam.

“And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.” — 1 Corinthians 15:49

It’s probably become clear now from much of the scaffolding above that the six elements of that ‘re-creation’ story also apply to us, in Christ, in ways that make the grand story our story. But here are some fun connections…

We are formed via ‘water’ — Baptism is our visible picture of salvation — a picture of what the Spirit does for us as our ‘hearts are circumcised’ — as we are brought from exile away from God, from death and the dead future of our idols to life with God forever.
We receive life by God’s breath — When we receive the Spirit it is ‘breathed into us’ by God as a gift of immortal life that changes who we are — moving us from Adam’s image of God to Jesus’ image of God.
We are declared fit for a purpose within a system — When this happens and we are adopted as children of God, being transformed into his image we have a new purpose — the ‘great commission’ is a new ‘creation mandate’ — a call to be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth. We are also “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Ephesians 2:10) — Ephesians 2:10 uses the same pair of words for created and ‘handiwork’ that Romans 1:20 uses for ‘what has been made’ (and these are the only times that ‘handiwork’ word is used in the New Testament) — that which is meant to ‘reveal the divine nature and character of God’ — the things declared ‘good’ for that purpose in Genesis 1.
We become priests/images/temples — The job Adam was given in the garden was priestly, Israel’s job was to be a ‘nation of priests’, and that is now the job of the church — the priesthood of believers in/as his temple. Our bodies are the ‘temple of the Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 6:19).
We are fed/provided for — We receive ‘the bread of life’ and ‘living water’ and are invited to eat at God’s table — a reality we celebrate as we break bread together and remember Jesus’ sacrifice in anticipation of the heavenly banquet. There’s a fun thing with the Lord’s Prayer as it relates to all this (and the Psalm 23 stuff about God’s name) as it is a prayer for ‘the bread of tomorrow today’ — the Spirit — which arrives at the feast of bread, Pentecost — but you’ll have to wait for my boss to write his book on that for more…
We are united by the Spirit to be God’s representatives in the world — his image bearers — transformed into the image of Christ as the ‘body of Christ’… Together. Think 1 Corinthians 12, 2 Corinthians 3-5, Romans 8, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3… and heaps of other places…

It’s fun seeing how this plays out in something like the account of the church in Acts 2, where this recreation process seems to be happening en masse as a fulfilment of the prophets, through Jesus’ ascension and the pouring out of the Spirit, and it’s fun drawing a line from there through to Revelation 21 and 22, then asking where in this narrative any particular passage sits, and considering the mechanics by which we become part of the narrative (via union with Christ).

January 12, 2019

Why calling something idolatry is not ‘soft-pedalling’ on sin; and how idolatry is breath-takingly dangerous

I’m an asthmatic. For most of my life I’ve managed to mostly ignore this, except when exercising in winter, but lately, my asthma has been worse than in the past and I’ve found myself with a preventer — when I remember to take it, things go well for me, when I don’t, well, there’s nothing worse than feeling breathless and scrounging around the house looking for the ventolin inhaler my kids have hidden somewhere. That sense of not being able to breathe is oppressive, and scary, and has me considering the shortness of my breath not just in the moment (when it comes to lung capacity), but in my finitude — I have a limited number of breaths I will take with these lungs before I expire. And asthma — the disordered restriction of those airways — means that some of my breathing is more breathless than it should be; and that those breaths in particular serve as a reminder of my mortality.

When I’m wheezing and spluttering and trying to breath what I need is ventolin. I can definitely reduce the impact of my asthma on my life by taking preventative measures like being healthy. But in that moment of breathlessness; if all you do is hold up a picture of healthy airways and tell me I should do all in my power to have those, I’ll still expire. And you’ll be a massive jerk; especially if you have some ventolin in your back pocket.

In the fallout of a controversial recent post it has been suggested that the framework I’ve put forward for speaking about sexuality in the modern world — that it’s a form of idolatry — is ‘soft pedalling’ when it comes to calling sin “sin”.

I disagree.

The Bible, from start to finish, is pretty sure that idolatry is deadly and destructive — the most deadly and destructive sin — and I’d argue that it sees most sinful actions as a result of an idolatrous disposition. It even gets the top two spots in the ten commandments.

“You shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. — Exodus 20:3-6

I’ve written stacks of stuff about how when Genesis says we’re made in the image of God, this uses a word used elsewhere (in the ancient world) for ‘idol statue’ — and our job is to be the living, breathing representatives of God in his world, which is what makes idolatry a particular inversion of the created order where we, as Paul puts it in Romans, worship the creation instead of the creator; this represents a disordering of the natural world — we were meant to rule the world with God, and instead are being ruled by it. The second commandment is a big deal because breaking it turns the created order on its head. As we live in disobedience to this command we’re actually living against the ‘created order’ — our order-bringing mission in the world — which disorders the world, and us. This disordering involves, as Augustine would put it, a ‘disordering of our loves’ — if we were made to chiefly love and worship God, and rule over the creation, but put created things in the God slot in our hearts, we end up living lives that are not optimal but destructive. Or to use the flourishing language that picks up the ‘be fruitful and multiply’ command in Genesis 1, we live lives that are not fruitful, and instead spread death. When I say something is idolatry I’m not backing away from saying something is sinful, I’m diagnosing something as terminal, using the same diagnosis the Bible gives. But this diagnosis comes with a particular treatment (as I’ll suggest right at the bottom of this post).

A lot of the debate around changes to the definition of marriage, because they misdiagnose the problem (in my opinion), miss the solution. Lots of people in my theological camp — those who hold Reformed convictions about God and the world — talk about ‘creation ordinances’ — things that God instituted for ‘all people’ not just ‘his people’ ‘in the beginning’ — before people rejected him and the world was cursed — that last beyond that curse (typically largely undamaged by it and still accessible and good for all people). These ‘creation ordinances’ typically are listed as marriage and multiplication, work and dominion, and the sabbath. These are part of how ‘God has ordered the world’ for all people; a sort of ‘natural law’ that should be apparent for everybody.

These ‘creation ordinances’ are often linked to the concept of ‘common grace‘ (wikipedia); they’re part of how God continues to bless all people, and they become the basis Christians in this framework use to assess the work of governments; whose role relates to common grace as they ‘restrain evil’ and who are not just meant to restrain bad things but uphold these basic universal goods.

It’s interesting to consider how far our culture has departed from work and dominion, and from sabbath, and how little we made a fuss about those changes (and other changes to marriage — like no fault divorce) when considering how stridently we argue for marriage now… the onus now seems to be on those who suggest these ordinances are undamaged by the fall to demonstrate how this is the case (not just insist it is), or we need a different model for explaining the world (and the Biblical data).

Now. I have some issues with this basic framework as it has been applied — because I think it misses a couple of important and foundational ‘creation ordinances’ that humanity departs from as soon as we’re given the opportunity; and because we walk away from these, I think this gives us a framework for understanding why humans (individuals, cultures, and governments) walk away from the others; and what is required to have people walk back. I also think these particular commands — pre-fall — are particularly connected to our telos or purpose as humans, and that post fall they are frustrated rather than ongoing; that ‘work’ was meant to be the work of extending the garden of Eden — as the place God dwelled with humanity (like the Temple) — over the face of the earth; that ‘sabbath’ was meant to be the enjoyment of rest with God in this expanding garden, and that marriage was to reflect the image of God in a one-flesh union ‘male and female’; and that multiplication was the multiplication of living breathing images of God who would represent him in his ‘temple-kingdom’ as it spread. Nature is oriented towards a certain function, and that function is broken by sin. So, for example, I see these functions being recaptured in the church — the cultural mandate becomes the Great commission (which sees the ‘temple-kingdom’ of the Church — people with the Spirit — spreading around the globe).

But let’s work with this category of ‘creation ordinances’ being the ongoing things that God gives to all people for our universal good. I think the list is missing a few, and here’s the two things I’d say God gives to all humans that are, perhaps, bigger and more vital to our humanity than those other things held to be ordinances — ‘image bearing’ and ‘breath’. These are two concepts that Christians have used politically in very similar ways to the others — in upholding the sanctity of human life — and they are certainly universal. But they are also closely tied to our created purpose in the world; the other creation ordinances, and those two commandments quoted above.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” — Genesis 1:26

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. — Genesis 2:7

If these are not ‘creation ordinances’ — that are true for all people of all time — then I’m not sure that ‘creation ordinance’ is a valid category.

They’re also concepts the prophets return to as they call God’s people back from idolatry (and arguably at the heart of how Israel is meant to be a blessing to the nations — who share these realities — as they call those nations away from idolatry and to life in God.

Because here’s the thing. Idolatry distorts these creation ordinances. Idolatry literally takes your breath away. It is worse than asthma. It is deadly. And Idolatry deforms us as we are conformed into the image of the images (or other gods) we worship. Idolatry is the gradual process of eradicating God’s image in our lives and replacing it with an idol — a process that is complete when we become breathless.

Consider, for a moment, how the Bible speaks of idolatry distorting work, or the ‘cultural mandate’ — to take the good things God has made and create with them; Genesis 2 speaks of the gold in Eden; look what Isaiah says about those who fashion idols from silver and gold.

With whom, then, will you compare God?
    To what image will you liken him?
As for an idol, a metalworker casts it,
    and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
    and fashions silver chains for it.
A person too poor to present such an offering
    selects wood that will not rot;
they look for a skilled worker
    to set up an idol that will not topple. — Isaiah 40:18-20

“Tell us, you idols,
    what is going to happen.
Tell us what the former things were,
    so that we may consider them
    and know their final outcome.
Or declare to us the things to come,
    tell us what the future holds,
    so we may know that you are gods.
Do something, whether good or bad,
    so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear.
But you are less than nothing
    and your works are utterly worthless;
    whoever chooses you is detestable. — Isaiah 41:22-24

All who make idols are nothing,
    and the things they treasure are worthless.
Those who would speak up for them are blind;
    they are ignorant, to their own shame.
Who shapes a god and casts an idol,
    which can profit nothing?
People who do that will be put to shame;
    such craftsmen are only human beings.
Let them all come together and take their stand;
    they will be brought down to terror and shame. — Isaiah 44:9-11

This is maybe my favourite bit of this extended treatment of how idolatry is fundamentally a departure from not just the creator but these created ordinances, talking about the craftsman who cuts a block of wood in half and uses one half to make an idol and the other as kindling to cook his food:

“Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him;
he cannot save himself, or say,
“Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”” — Isaiah 44:20

It’s not just Isaiah either…

Everyone is senseless and without knowledge;
every goldsmith is shamed by his idols.
The images he makes are a fraud;
they have no breath in them. — Jeremiah 10:14

The thing is; the Old Testament consistently says the product of idolatry is that we become what we worship. And when we worship breathless and dead gods, rather than the living, breathing, God, we become breathless.

The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
    made by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
    eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear,
    nor is there breath in their mouths.
Those who make them will be like them,
    and so will all who trust in them.— Psalm 135:15-18

Here’s where ‘common grace’ kicks in — for as long as we’re still living and breathing we’re still, in some capacity, representing the God who made us — whether we like it or not — but our idolatry means we’re hurtling towards breathlessness as we hurtle away from the ‘creation ordinance’ of life representing God and ruling over creation (because we’ve made created things our God). And this life and breath is still a good gift from God — a ‘common’ gift to all people.

This is what God the Lord says—the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out,

    who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it,
    who gives breath to its people,
    and life to those who walk on it. — Isaiah 42:5

Ultimately it’s idolatry that takes us to death as its natural end… it takes breath away, and it takes our bearing the image of the living, breathing, God away. It changes the way we work and rest. Why should it not also threaten how a culture understands marriage and multiplication? At some point in this trajectory from living and breathing and bearing God’s image a person — be they an idol maker, or idol worshipper — sees God’s common grace to them overcome by the effects of their sin and idolatry. This seems to be also true of cultures. At some point, culturally, a shared idol distorts us or deforms us away from the image of God and into the image of a culture’s gods; at some point our shared loves created by cultural stories disorder our loves so that we don’t love God as we were made to and as the Bible commands. The cultures in the Old Testament that were idolatrous were led by kings who were basically the ‘popes’ of their idol cults — who were also held to be ‘the image of god’ in their cultures. Idolatry happens corporately and culturally, and typically around narratives about what a god is and what they require and provide. Common grace is held in tension with the sort of temporal judgment for idolatry Paul speaks about in Romans 1 — where we no longer see the natural as natural — or with what has been called the ‘noetic effect‘ of sin.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. — Romans 1:20-21

Here’s how I understand the logic of this passage — God’s invisible qualities should be clearly seen from creation — creation ordinances are relatively logically clear and embedded in nature itself; but oriented towards us knowing God. When we deliberately choose not to know God, culturally or individually, we’re no longer able to see these obvious connections — our thinking and loves — our minds and our hearts — are darkened or ‘disordered’ — and this is ultimately an act of judgment from God. Our breathlessness starts now; the process of becoming what we worship starts now. God gives us what we want. And the result is that we individually and corporately start walking away from life-giving, common grace producing ‘creation ordinances’ and towards death and destruction.

Another way of framing this might be ‘how much uncommon grace is required to pull someone back to knowing and worshipping God’? And then ‘how do we do this’? We’ll get there below. Before we do, there’s a pretty compelling account of how the noetic effect changes the way we see some good things God has made (like moral ordering of the universe) in a different degree to how we see others (like the logical ordering of the universe — eg mathematics) in this paper on how sin effects scholarship; I think it’s worth grappling with that paper and at least seeing that common grace and the noetic effect are held in tension. I’ve written elsewhere how because of the ‘subjectivity’ created by sin and idolatry (following this model), marriage might be more like music than mathematics.

It seems to me that from the limited survey of some Biblical gear above that it is reasonable to conclude that sin changes our ability to know and worship God — it pulls us away not just from the creator but from the ‘creation ordinances’ in their pre-fall state — even if those things are all still good and provide ‘common grace’ benefits to people as a part of what it means for us to be human. The questions for us with this data are: how much is this effect corporate, not just individual? And at what point does the ‘noetic effect’ of sin eclipse common grace in a culture (or an individual)?

At some point we need to be able to account for why it is that the people in our culture are so happy to redefine a ‘creation ordinance’ if the category of creation ordinance is going to have any valid descriptive power when it comes to life in this world. As well as accounting for why our world seems to be departing from these creation ordinances, we probably need to better account for why it’s people who believe in a creator who seem to be less likely to do this (why is the coalition for marriage just a bunch of religious leaders?). It’s not just that these communities are more sold on history or biology. It’s not just that theism comes with an orientation towards the ‘classical view’ of the world; we have to account for why others don’t buy this. I think the answer that best accounts for and describes this reality is idolatry. That’s the diagnosis. It’s serious. And it’s terminal if not properly treated.

Let me be unequivocal in not ‘soft-pedalling’…

The Bible says that marriage is created by God as a ‘one flesh’ relationship between one man and one woman. This ‘one flesh’ relationship is sexual, but also unitive in that it forges a single identity unit of ‘two-persons-as-one’. It is part of how such a man and woman then bear the image of God, and marriage is part of how we humans were to fulfil the command to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ — this isn’t to say that every person has to be married to bear the image of God, or contribute to fruitfulness, or even that children are the ‘purpose’ of marriage or having children its essence.

This is God’s design for humanity and is part of what a truly flourishing society is built on. To depart from this design is sin.

That we have walked away from God’s design for sex and marriage is a result of sin. The deadly sin of idolatry where we’ve, as a culture, decided to worship sex (a created thing); and see the flourishing human life as being connected to love and sex — and so marriage — rather than being connected to God. This is idolatry — it’s not just our gay neighbours who do this (and it’s not just outside the church); this is a culture wide decision to live in a different story and to put a ‘created thing’ as an ultimate good. Part of the problem with how the church speaks about this is that we’re so complicit with the idolatry of sex and marriage — the idea that these are necessary for human flourishing — that it sounds like we’re actually denying a thing we think of as god (or an ultimate good) to others. When we extol the virtues of marriage and family in idolatrous terms — as though they truly satisfy — and then deny them to people who are different to us, we do not sound loving. This is part of why talking about Jesus in this conversation about marriage and sex is not just window dressing…

This sin, or idolatry, is deadly in that it pulls us away from bearing God’s image as it forms us according to a different image or vision of the good and flourishing life. This is why our culture has walked away from God’s design for marriage. We’re pursuing a different God, or ultimate good. Once we, as a culture, pursue that good it makes sense to afford the ‘good’ of marriage to any one of our neighbours who is living in this story or according to this vision.

If what the Bible says about idolatry is true then this is deadly. It’s not soft-pedalling on sin to call the push for same sex marriage a ‘religious’ or ‘idolatrous’ thing; but like any doctor delivering a fatal prognosis our bedside manner is important. Especially if there is a cure and a treatment plan…

At some point sin means our ‘breath’ is more like the breath of an asthmatic on the way to a fatal asthma attack than like a human with a healthy set of lungs — or like the lungs of somebody who has deliberately set out to reduce their capacity by unhealthy living or smoking. When I’m in a state of breathlessness, panicking as I open every drawer in the house looking for an inhaler, I don’t just need to picture what my lungs should be without this disorder. We don’t treat an asthmatic or someone with asbestosis or mesothelioma by showing them a picture of healthy lungs — creation ordinances — and telling them to jump back to living that way; we treat disordered lungs by fixing the disorder, or with a lung transplant.

We respond to idolatry — disordered love — with the Gospel of Jesus, which re-orders our love for God, others, ourselves, and the world.

God restores breath to breathless lungs, and restores his image in us, by the Spirit as it conforms us to the image of Jesus.

Without this intervention we’re holding up a picture of healthy lungs to an asthmatic as they suffocate to death.

I’ll unpack more of this in part 2.

September 7, 2017

A matter of life and breath

“Ok. Let’s start CPR”

Breath.

We take it for granted right up until the moment that it is gone.

I’m in hospital this week, celebrating the incredible miracle of new life. New breath. For the third time I was there. Physically. Emotionally. Present. There. In the room. Waiting. Watching. Listening. There, as a mouth opened, and filled a set of lungs with oxygen for the first time.

breath

Breathe little girl.

Thankfully, our little one, has not required CPR. But in a hospital there are many who do. In hospital, life and death exist as the start or end point of different journeys. Hospitals beat airports when it comes to the scale of human emotions. When I walk the corridors I remember the training I was given for news reading — bizarrely — whether its bad news or good, people like the comforting empathy of a warm smile. The smile conveys a subliminal wink and a nod, from a third party, to the idea that life will go on, that everything will pan out. Even if its patently obvious that it won’t. Even if it’s clear that everything has, or will, change. I walk around the hospital with my empathetic newsreader smile plastered on my face, trying not to make eye contact. Just in case. But I listen as I walk. Because the hospital experience, tied up as it is with life and death, is something that feels almost sacred.

“OK, let’s start CPR.”

Life is incredible, and, linked as it is to breathing, breath is incredible. The capacity for the very atmosphere that surrounds us to sustain life is remarkable. Yet like good typography, breath often goes unnoticed. We take it for granted.

I notice it when I’m short of it — in the throes of exercise, or on a cold winter’s night as my mild asthma starts constricting my chest — but other than that its simply automatic. I find myself thinking about breathing if I’m trying to exercise some control over something that I feel like I ought to be more invested in, when I feel the need to still my heart and my thoughts, or when I want to sneak out of a sleeping child’s room unnoticed.

But breath is a miracle.

Breathe little girl.

Nothing reminds you of that faster than a hospital. Where breath is there one moment, and gone the next. Or, more happily, where a breath is taken for the first time.

My newest progeny, Elise, is three days old now. She is alive. She is healthy. She breaths. She is a wonder to me. A beautiful marvel (just like Sophia and Xavier before her). I’ve spent three days reflecting on that moment where her mouth and lungs opened to receive breath, autonomously, for the first time. It’s true, of course, that Elise has been living on vicariously delivered oxygen for many months now. But this was life without breath. Another miracle.

Breathe little girl.

It’s interesting how much you pay attention to the breath of another. One that you love. Whether its the breathing of a loved one, a spouse or significant other, when you’re in close proximity, or the breath of a child whose life you suddenly feel (and are) responsible for. There’s some sort of nerve-jangling response hardwired into a parent that comes as an automatic response to every cough, whimper, or choking sound. Nothing gets you breathing faster than hearing something abnormal in the breathing of your child. And yet I have no idea how many times I’ve inhaled or exhaled while writing this sentence. Have you counted your breaths while reading this? Of course not. Though maybe you will. And every breath counts.

Our breaths are numbered — whether by an all knowing divine being, or simply by the period of time we’re alive, and the number of times we inhale and exhale before expiring — we only breath a certain, finite, number of times in this world.

As I write these words I’m sitting next to my wife, Robyn, watching Elise sleep and listening to her breath. Listening for abnormalities. Sure. But listening and celebrating the marvel that is human life.

Breathe little girl. Keep breathing.

Breathing is so fundamental to our human experience.

“OK. Let’s start CPR.”

These words are a terrifying reminder that one day breathing will cease. For me. For you. That breath will leave your body for one last time, leaving it, if you can believe what you see in the movies, 21 grams lighter. But dead. Lifeless. 21 grams might not be the weight of the soul, that’s a weird sort of dualism that leaves body and soul more separate than I believe they are. But, if that movie (21 Grams) is right, it is the material difference between a dead person and a live person.

Whatever you believe the soul is, that which vivifies a bunch of cells, it departs with your last breath.

Death sucks. It’s like a black hole that sucks the life and oxygen out of what would otherwise be a pretty spectacular universe.

“Ok, Let’s start CPR”

I heard these words as I walked the corridors of the hospital, on my way from my living, breathing, miracle to the cafeteria which serves up a bunch of salty deep-fried rubbish, and sugar — delicious though it all is — that will inevitably lead to a few fewer breaths for me if I keep indulging in them.

As I left the maternity ward I was aware of a piercing, repeating, alarm, and a bit of motion around the doors of a room at the end of the corridor in the ward I walk through to get to the cafeteria. I heard those words.

“OK. Let’s start CPR.”

They’re stuck in my head. A twin memory, juxtaposed to that precious moment from the birth suite. Clanging. Jangling. Butting up against the reality of new life. Intruding on a celebration.

I purchased my wedges and waited as the hot oil turned them golden brown. I walked back past the room. It was still. Empty. Without breath. I don’t know what happened to the resident, whether they were rushed away for treatment, or how that story ends. But I do know it’s a stark reminder that all is not right in this world.

Those breaths my daughter took as she entered the world, the breaths she takes now as I sit beside her, will one day cease. As will mine. My wife’s. My other children. Breath is fleeting. Life is fleeting.

Breathe little girl.

The writer of Ecclesiastes, let’s, for the sake of argument, call him Solomon, reflected on the existential dilemma that this dependence on breath places us in, against the backdrop of just how temporary our breathing is in the grand scheme of things.

Breath. Over and over again he repeats the word ‘hebel’ — a word our translations render as “meaningless,” but a word that means breath. Fleeting. Inhale/exhale. You breathe in. You breathe out. And it’s all over.

“Breath! Breath!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly breath!
Everything is breath.”

What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
    but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
    and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
    ever returning on its course. — Ecclesiastes 1:2-6

This leads to a pretty depressing place.

“So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is breath, a chasing after the wind.” — Ecclesiastes 2:17

Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is breath. —Ecclesiastes 3:19

Here one minute. Gone the next.

Breathe little girl.

Why?

Why is it that breath does not last? That life does not last?

This miracle of new life, and new breath, that I witnessed for the third time this week, why isn’t it an eternal miracle?

Why does life end?

If Solomon had been able to answer these questions adequately, then perhaps Ecclesiastes would be a little less morose. He does turn, in the face of futility, to the only one it makes sense to turn to. The one who gives life.

Remember your Creator
    in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
    and the years approach when you will say,
    “I find no pleasure in them”…

Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
    and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
    and the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
    and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

“Breath! Breath!” says the Teacher.
    “Everything is breath!”…

Now all has been heard;
    here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
    for this is the duty of all mankind. — Ecclesiastes 12:1,6-8, 13

Solomon’s dad, David, was also confronted by this same existential crisis, the question of what life means in the face of the stark reality of death.

“Show me, Lord, my life’s end
  and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting my life is.

You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
  the span of my years is as nothing before you.

Everyone is but a breath,
  even those who seem secure.

“Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom;
    in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth
    without knowing whose it will finally be.

“But now, Lord, what do I look for?
My hope is in you.
Save me from all my transgressions;
do not make me the scorn of fools.” — Psalm 39:4-8

Breathe in. Breathe out. Expire. And yet, David speaks of hope and salvation… The Psalms, not all of them are written by David, end up a little more hopeful, relying on God’s life-giving character as part of the answer to death.

“All creatures look to you
    to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them,
    they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
    they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face,
    they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
    they die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit,
    they are created,
    and you renew the face of the ground.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
    may the Lord rejoice in his works.” — Psalm 104:27-31

God gives life. God takes it away.

We humans can prolong life by artificially breathing into someone’s lungs.

“Ok, let’s start CPR”

Sometimes by moments, sometimes by years. But never eternally. We just don’t have enough breath, or life, to give. CPR, at its most basic, is the giving of some of the oxygen allocated to yourself, in terms of the finite number of times you’ll breathe in your lifetime, to someone else. It’s incredible. The transfer of life giving breath from one person to another.

But CPR is a temporary fix. It’ll always be followed by death. This, in part, is because we’ve all only got a finite amount of oxygen to spare. CPR is a dying person giving another dying person a bit of their life. Real life needs living breath, the sort that Psalm speaks of, the sort that creates and renews, when God sends his Spirit — breath that comes from the infinite life giver. It’s God and his glory, and his breath-created works that will endure forever. This sort of breath seems the only answer in the face of death, which only entered the world because we rejected God.

This is not how it was supposed to be. The link between life and breath is no accident. For those who take what the Bible says about life and breath and death seriously, our breathing was not meant to cease. We were made to live. We were made to live in such a way that our very life — the essence of our existence — reflected the greatness and glory and existence of the one who breathed life into us. Whatever points Genesis is making about the origins and function of human life, one thing is clear — breath is what separates us from dust. From dead matter. Breath is why we matter, it’s what gives life in this world — first to the animals (Genesis 1:30), then to humanity.

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” — Genesis 2:7

This breath is what gives us the capacity to live out our function as living images of the living God. Not simply images fashioned from clay, or precious metals. And, Christians believe the living God continues to fashion every human life.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! — Psalm 139:13-17

The other gods of the Ancient Near East had their dead statues. Idol statues that were formed and fashioned by craftsmen, then ceremonially “quickened” in a mouth opening ceremony so they could act for the god they represented— despite this ceremony they remained still, mute, and dead. Breathless.

Idols don’t speak. In part because they don’t breath (have you ever tried breathing without speaking?). And they don’t breath because they don’t live. They don’t help us answer the existential dilemma we’re confronted with at the sound of inspiring or expiring (and just how cool is it that these words are related to breath entering and leaving the lungs?). The consistent testimony of the inspired writers of the Old Testament is that Idols do not speak, or breath, so they cannot inspire… they leave us bereft and helpless in the face of the fleeting nature of life. That’s why the writer of Ecclesiastes finally turned to his Creator.

I look but there is no one—
    no one among the gods to give counsel,
    no one to give answer when I ask them.
See, they are all false!
    Their deeds amount to nothing;
    their images are but wind and confusion.— Isaiah 41:28-29

Everyone is senseless and without knowledge;
every goldsmith is shamed by his idols.
The images he makes are a fraud;
they have no breath in them. — Jeremiah 10:14

The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
    made by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
    eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear,
    nor is there breath in their mouths.
Those who make them will be like them,
    and so will all who trust in them.— Psalm 135:15-18

Replacing the living God with other stuff is what started the long, slow, march towards death for all people. And eventually we’ll become just like the dead, dusty, stuff we replaced him with.

“OK, let’s start CPR”

Death sucks because in suffocating us of life and breath, it robs us of something that is intrinsic to our humanity and its essence. It consumes the life that was given us in order that the one who gives life might be seen.

Even if we do all in our power to be shaped by other gods, idols that we live for and reflect instead, until breath is taken away, until death happens, we still, in our living, breathing, existence point to the existence of the life-giver. The breath-giver.

The gods of the nations around Israel were represented by dead images, fashioned from dirt. But not the God of the Bible. The living God. The God who could not, and would not, be represented by dead statues. Statues with no breath in them. The living God needed living representatives.

Idols are dead. And dumb. As we follow them, or simply turn away from the life-giving God, that becomes our destiny. Dumb death. This future is all we can inflict on others on our own steam (or breath). This is why CPR is only a temporary fix. We are expirers by our nature, not inspirers.

The living God, on the other hand, speaks and gives life. Rather than death.

Where people make images of dead gods, the living God gives life to living images.

Humans.

That we die is an affront to what we were created for. God is a living, breathing, God — who gives and sustains life through breath, and ends life by taking that breath away (Numbers 16:22, 27:6, Job 12:10, 27:3, 33:4). As long as we live and breathe, by God’s design and as his gift, we still actively bear his image. Whether we like it or not…

If it were his intention
and he withdrew his spirit and breath,
all humanity would perish together
and mankind would return to the dust. — Job 34:14-15

God takes life, because God gives life.

This is what God the Lord says—the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out,

    who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it,
    who gives breath to its people,
    and life to those who walk on it. — Isaiah 42:5

God gives life to all people. In this sense, all living, breathing, speaking people, whether they remain turned away from God and towards things that kill or not, continue to represent something true about God. But temporary life isn’t really a complete testimony to the eternal life of the life giver, given eternal life is. Psalm 104 delights in the idea that the glory of God will endure forever as God rejoices in his works. Adam and his descendants don’t truly carry out the role of image bearer.

Jesus does.

The humanity Jesus reveals in his perfectly obedient life, death, and resurrection, is a truer humanity than our natural, death-riddled, humanity. The humanity offered to us in Jesus, the new life, and new birth, offered to those who turn to him and receive God’s Spirit, is a fuller picture of God, and the answer to the crisis of existence that confronts us in the face of death. It solves the shortness of our life, by offering eternal life. A share in the true essence of God’s life. In the Old Testament story, turning away from God and towards idols leaves people metaphorically (or perhaps metaphysically) with stone hearts, and as dry bones. God’s promise to his people is that he will re-enter the scene to renew and recreate life (which echoes the hope of Psalm 104).

“‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’” — Ezekiel 37:4-6

This is divine CPR. CPR that works because the infinite one, with lungs of infinite capacity, who breaths life, not death, is the one administrating the life-giving intervention.

The beauty of the Christian story is that as God breathes his Spirit back into us we start reconnecting with the divine, inspiring, purpose of human life, powered by God’s breath. We become his workmanship again. Consider Ephesians 2, the whole chapter, or even the whole letter, is gold, of course… but these bits:

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved… For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do… For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit… And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. — Ephesians 2: 4-5, 10, 18, 22

We become work that will endure eternally. Inspired, rather than expiring. The effort put into knitting us together in the womb meets its divinely inspired purpose. Breath and life intertwine as we become God’s image bearers again. Presenting a living image, and pattern, we see perfected and demonstrated in Christ (see Colossians 1:15-21). The weird thing about the pattern of Jesus life, the way he demonstrates that he is God’s craftsmanship (and the way I think Paul follows his example, cf 2 Corinthians 3-4), is that it’s caught up in being prepared to stop breathing for the sake of others. It’s about being prepared to lay down life now, confident that the one who gives life will take it up again (John 10:14-18). It’s on the Cross where the pattern for life-giving humanity that reflects the life-giver is laid out for all to see. On the Cross the one who connects us with the life-giving God shows exactly what it looks like to truly trust and obey God. He demonstrates what it looks like to simultaneously and perfectly love God, and love your neighbours, and your enemies. At the Cross Jesus defeats death, and he does that by putting his breath, and life, in its place. In the hands of God. Showing us what it is to trust God in the face of the apparent meaninglessness of a short existence.

Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. — Luke 23:46

Through Jesus, God’s life giving breath — his Spirit — comes to dwell in us, not us alone, but us his people — giving us life again. God’s life. Eternal life. The promise of the Old Testament prophets and the hope of the Psalms (even the hope of Solomon), meet their fulfilment.

Paul, who wrote that stuff from Ephesians, ties up all this stuff— idols, images, and God’s relationship to life and death, and breath in Jesus — as he speaks to the leading thinkers of Athens, in Acts 17. These thinkers are those who spend their time grasping and grappling with the existential question death presents to us. Like the writer of Ecclesiastes, Paul turns to the Creator of life to find a way to answer this question without being all-consumed by existential angst.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” — Acts 17:24-31

Breathe.

Life is found in and through the one who the creator, the living, breathing, God raised from the dead. Jesus.

My prayer for my kids, for Elise, for Xavi, for Soph (and for all those I love), is that they might know that they are fearfully and wonderfully crafted by God, as his workmanship, that they might stay connected to his purpose for them through Jesus, and grow to love God, and live by his breath. Not our on their own steam. Because this is what lasts. And as a dad, it’s the only thing that gives me hope knowing that one day the lives I hold in my hands, and in my heart, will end.

Breathe little girl. Keep breathing.

July 22, 2015