Jesus told us that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He also said that He came that we might have life abundantly. (John 14:6,10:10)
These scriptures are some of the best known to the church. But what does this mean in experience? What is the "life" Jesus refers to here? Surely we are all alive anyway? Let's have a look.
There are different words for life in Greek. They are "bio", referring to physical life, psuche, referring to the natural life of the soul, and Zoe, which in Biblical terms is the uncreated life of God. The word that Jesus uses, translated life, is Zoe. Obviously all of God's natural beings are physically alive. People have life in their soul. This is the life that Jesus said that we must lose. (Matthew 10:39)
"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins"......"But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead.........." (Ephesians 2:1, 4&5a). This is plainly not talking about physical life.
To understand this, we need to go back to the very beginning. God warned Adam against eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God said that eating the fruit of the tree meant death. Adam did not die physically. His soul was still completely functional - he could think, feel and choose, the faculties of the soul. So what died? Adam died spiritually.
It helps to remember that God made man in His image. God is Spirit (John 4:24) and so is man primarily. The soul is the organ of expression and was never intended to dominate man. The soul was meant to serve the spirit. When man died spiritually, he was left with the natural life of the soul. Adam was not only dead, he remained incomplete.
Adam should have rejected Satan's temptation and chosen to eat from the tree of life instead. That way, he and his offspring would have been spiritually alive and able to live in complete harmony with his Creator. Instead, Adam and Eve hid from God, trying to conceal their nakedness by their own efforts. The history of mankind would have been entirely different.
The purpose of God in salvation is to restore mankind to the glorious place that God intended for him from the beginning. Psalm 8 tells us God's plan for humanity. Jesus is the means by which God is restoring mankind to that place of authority, glory and honour. We were not created for defeat, failure, sin, death and disease, violence and hatred and rebellion against God.
When an individual is born again, he is made alive spiritually. We may not understand what has happened but we know that we are somehow different. Then a journey of discovery takes place to take us to a place of maturity and stability in Jesus. (Ephesians 4:13). A major part of this discovery seems to be overlooked by many preachers. We are told often that Jesus is the Way and the Truth. Not so often, we hear that Jesus is the Life. We need our spiritual eyes opened to know what this means to us in experience.
Too many believers are alive spiritually but do not know it. They are saved but still are trying to please God by self effort and their own ideas of what constitutes obedience. If we would recognise that we have no way of pleasing God in ourselves, we should then choose Jesus to live out His life in us, through us and in place of what we inherited from Adam. We still have the "psuche" life of the soul. This was never intended to be more than enough to allow Adam to choose the tree of Life or Good and Evil.
Let's seek God to reveal to us Jesus as "The Life". If we do not, we will struggle with trying to make a natural life conform to the spiritual. That will result in failure, even if we imagine that we are doing the right thing. If we do, all the pressures and burdens of life fall on His shoulders. He is well able to overcome anything that comes our way. Choose Life! There is no better way.
