Note: Here is the entire outline for Week 2 if you’d like to have it or print it for your reference.
The Precious Word of God, Message Two
The Bible—God’s Breathing
Day 1
I. God’s breathing in creation
Genesis 2:7 Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
Job 32:8 But there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding.
II. God’s breathing in the new creation
John 20:22 And when He had said this, He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.
Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day.
Reading portion:
The old creation of man came out of the breathing in Genesis 2:7. The new creation also came out of a breathing. In Genesis we can see only the breathing of a breath, not of the person of the Divine Trinity, for the creation of man as a part of the old creation. The breathing in John 20:22 took place after Christ had passed through the processes of incarnation, human living for thirty-three and a half years, crucifixion, and resurrection. Before His ascension, on the day of His resurrection, Christ came back to His disciples. He did not teach them, but He breathed something into them. What He breathed into them was the Holy Spirit, who is the life-giving Spirit whom Christ became. This Spirit who was breathed out by Christ was the ultimate consummation of the Triune God. When God breathed His breath into Adam to animate the man of clay with a human spirit, He consummated the old creation. But the breathing in John 20:22 was after Christ had accomplished His New Testament work.
The Old Testament work of God’s old creation was to create the physical things. But the New Testament work of Christ was not like that. Christ’s New Testament work was of four steps. First, He became a man in incarnation. Before His incarnation He was the only begotten Son of God (John 1:18) with divinity only, but through incarnation He put on blood and flesh (Heb. 2:14a) as His humanity. Then He lived with the disciples for three and a half years. This living was His working. After this He entered into an all-inclusive death, and then He entered into resurrection. His incarnation was to bring God into humanity; His crucifixion was to terminate that humanity; and His resurrection was to bring the crucified humanity into divinity, that is, to bring man into God. In His resurrection Christ’s humanity was “sonized,” and in His “sonized” humanity He was born to be the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33). Christ’s coming from God to become a man to bring God into humanity and His going through death and entering into resurrection to bring humanity into divinity was a blending, a mingling, a compounding of God with man and man with God. It was in such a condition that Christ came to the disciples and breathed Himself into them, to compound, mingle, and blend Himself with them.
When Peter, John, James, and the other disciples were meeting in that small room, they represented the entire Body of Christ. When the Head breathed into the Body and told the Body to receive the Holy Spirit, we were there also. After this breathing and receiving took place, the compounding, blending, and mingling of God with man was consummated. At the time of the incarnation there was only one God-man. After John 20:22, however, there were at least one hundred twenty God-men. Today this God-man has replenished the whole earth. Everywhere we can see God-men, who are the blending, the mingling, the compounding, of God with man. The realization that we are the blending of God with man should uplift our estimation of our worth. We are the blending, the compounding, of God with man. No words can tell how great a blessing this is. (The Central Line of the Divine Revelation, Chapter 10)
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