Four Kinds of Life

By David W Hall

I was in a hurry, so instead of pulling up the weeds properly, I used a hoe to cut them off at ground level.  Raking them into a pile, I went off to take care of the day.  Of course, you know what happened.  My weeds simply re-sprouted in the ground as well as in the pile I had left behind.  An example of vegetable life in action.  Its urge was to sustain itself and to multiply.  Then, when vegetation dies, it decomposes and ceases to exist.

Animal life is different from vegetable life in so many obvious ways (not just because animal life does not infest my garden).  It is usually mobile and mostly has some level of consciousness.  Like vegetable life, animals have the impulse to sustain themselves and to multiply and, when they die, they cease to exist.

Now let us look at human life. It would be a mistake to say that human life is just the top of the animal kingdom.  When God created both vegetable and animal life, He did so simply by uttering a word of command.  He said, ‘Let the earth bring forth,’ and it obeyed.  With Adam, it was entirely different.  God personally formed him from the dust of the ground and then breathed into him the ‘breath of life’ so that ‘man became a living soul’. 

When our bodies die we do not cease to exist, for we are more than just a physical body, we have a soul and spirit which go on forever.  Certainly, our bodies do function by the principles of biological life, but the soul inside us makes us unique above all of creation. 

This soul-life did not always exist.  It was something new that was produced when the members of the Trinity made a covenant together to establish the ‘new creation’.  It was this life that was breathed into Adam and set him above the rest of creation. 

But beyond human soul-life there is another kind of life that God has planned that we share.  Having been born in physical bodies with soul-life, He wants us to be ‘born from above’ by the seed of His own divine life.  Why?  So that we become ‘children of God’, just like Jesus (without presuming to be God).  Jn 1:12; 1 Jn 3:1. 

What a wonderful promise!  Can you imagine having the capacity to live the way He lives?  God does not want us to just slavishly follow an example, or keep a set of rules and expectations.  For centuries, people have tried this and failed. No!  He wants to share His own divine life  – all His capacity to love and give, His purity and dignity, His freedom from fear and anxiety, and infinitely more!  The Bible refers to this kind of life as ‘eternal life’.  More than an endless life, it is His own life with all its qualities.

How do we receive His life?  Do we buy it or earn it? 

Certainly not!  We receive it as a gift.  The apostle Paul wrote, ‘the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’.  Rom 6:23.  The life is already given, but have we received it?  And where do we receive it?

The apostle John wrote, ‘God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son’. 1 Jn 5:11.
 
But Jesus is not here on earth now.  So how can we receive the life that is in Him? 

Let me explain.  Since departing from this earth, Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit in His name. Now when people gather in the name of the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit is there bringing the life of God through the word that is proclaimed.  That is why it is called the ‘word of life’.  Phil 2:16; 1 Jn 1:1.  When we receive and believe this word in this context, a spiritual birthing process begins to take place.  To put it another way, the people of God are corporately referred to as the ‘body of Christ’.  When, in faith and fellowship, we are joined to God’s people, the life of the ‘Head’ of the Body, Christ, is available to each member. 
Have you received God’s life?  You certainly can!