When God Exhales!

There’s a strange word-picture—God exhaling—but the Bible really does report at least two instances. The first is in Genesis 2:7—the Lord God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” In other words, God took that pile of dust, breathed into it, and gave it life and a soul.

The second time God exhaled may be even more wonderful because it isn’t just physical life to a lump of clay, it’s spiritual-life-giving breath to anyone who inhales it. In 2 Timothy 3:15, the apostle Paul says, “All Scripture is God-breathed.”

This means that as life came into Adam from God, in Eden, so spiritual life is flowing to us from the Scriptures. As we read the Bible, we are inhaling that life into our soul—it is the very breath of God coming at us. That is why Paul goes on to say that all Scripture “is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”—it is God speaking directly to us.

This is why words written two or three thousand years ago are still relevant. God can take statements, questions, comments or commands straight from the Bible and, in His infinite foresight, apply them directly to our lives, as if they were new and unique to us. Author Jan Karon, for one, knows this. She put these thoughts into her character Father Tim’s mind in In This Mountain:

“Though he’d known for decades that the exhortation was there in First Thessalonians and had even preached on it a time or two, it came to him now as if it were new, not ancient wisdom. It came to him with the utterly effulgent certainty that this Scripture was his, and he might seize upon it…”

How about you? Has a verse of Scripture ever come home to you in power and meaning, aside altogether from the original Bible context? Again, Paul expresses it well—“the word of God, which is at work in you.” (1 Thessalonians 2:13) It gives you spiritual oxygen and revitalizes your soul.

Two or three more examples should suffice to show how the original context of a scripture can be re-interpreted hundreds of years later with even greater depth of meaning:

Isaiah 7:14-16 — “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel…before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.” A girl of Isaiah’s day would marry and have a son as a sign to Israel. This is taken up and refined in the New Testament to show the true virgin birth of the Saviour and His lack of any need to “learn” right and wrong.

Psalm 69:9 — “…Zeal for your house consumes me.” This is a psalm of David’s, and who wanted more desperately than David, to build the Lord’s temple? Yet how much deeper is the second application of these words when Jesus is the subject, as in John 2:17. The sentence may well be true of many since His day too, including the Wesleys, George Mueller, Nate Saint, and countless others.

Psalm 22:7, 8 — “All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: He trusts in the LORD? let the LORD rescue him.” This is another psalm of David and it seems to re-tell either his life on the run from Saul or his exit from Jerusalem when Absalom rebelled. This is the first application of the words; the next, and deepest, application is the Lord on the cross in His hour of greatest suffering. A Christian suffering today could also find some of these words true of himself.

So, the conclusion of the whole matter is that we want to keep God’s breath coming at us in all its sweetness and purity, refreshing and invigorating us daily. Lord, help us to inhale deeply!