When Jesus rose from the dead He appeared to His disciples and placed His life-transforming peace upon them. What He did next is no less significant; ‘ And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit’. We may well wonder what the significance of Jesus’ breath has to do with anything but think back to the beginning of the Bible. In the book of Genesis we read God’s description of how He made man; ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being’. This was mankind’s physical start in life.
What Jesus did on the day of his resurrection was a repeat performance of what God did at the beginning of history. This tells us that what Jesus was visibly portraying, on the basis of His death and resurrection, was a new start- a new spiritual start in life for everyone who would believe in Him! Not content with this ‘new start’/clean sheet experience Jesus also was offering God’s Holy Spirit to help, strengthen and equip God’s people as they live every day for Jesus.
A new life, a new start, peace, joy and all this included with God’s Spirit living within you- where would you find anything to compare with this?!
Comments