Genesis 2:7; John 20:19-22; 1 Corinthians 15:45-49
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 soul.
Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.
And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
JOHN HOWE (1630-1705): Adam was at first “a living soul,” God breathed into him the “breath of life,”—that pure, divine, and heavenly breath—and he became “a living soul;” so, then to have asked the question, ‘What is man?’ must have been to receive the answer, ‘He is a living soul: he is all soul, and that soul all life.’ But now, is this living soul buried in flesh, a lost thing to all the true, and great, and noble ends and purposes of that life which was at first given it?
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): When Adam fell, in that fall he spiritually died—he did not die in body: for he lived many years after, and had children. But he died in spirit. He lost all spiritual apprehension of divine things. And all his posterity, are literally born the same. Generation from father to son, is only in nature: and “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,” 1 Corinthians 2:14.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): Nicodemus thought that when the Messiah came, and His kingdom was set up, they should all share in it, they being the descendants of Abraham: but Christ assures him that he must be “born again;” in distinction from, and opposition to his first birth by nature: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” John 3:3; and, unless a man has this work wrought on his soul, he will never understand divine and spiritual things; nor can he be thought to have passed from death to life, and to have entered into an open state of grace, and the kingdom of it; and that living and dying so, he shall never “enter into the kingdom of heaven,” John 3:5; for unless a man is regenerated, he is not born heir apparent to it.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): The action of our Lord, “He breathed on them,” John 20:22, stands completely alone in the New Testament, and the Greek word is nowhere else used. On no occasion but this do we find the Lord “breathing” on any one. Of course it was a symbolical action, and the only question is, What did it symbolize? and why was it used? My own belief is that the true explanation is to be found in the account of man’s creation in Genesis.
FRIEDRICH ADOLPH LAMPE (1683-1729): I think that our Lord breathed on all the disciples at once, and not on each separately.
J. C. RYLE: It is probable that was so. The words, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” are almost as deep and mysterious as the action of breathing. They can only signify, “I bestow on you the Holy Ghost.” But in what sense the Holy Ghost was bestowed, is a point that demands attention. Our Lord cannot have meant that the disciples were now to “receive the Holy Ghost” for the first time. They had doubtless received Him in the day when they were first converted and believed. Whether they realized it or not, the Holy Ghost was in their hearts already; “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost,” 1 Corinthians 12:3. I believe our Lord taught the disciples, by this action of breathing on them, that the beginning of all ministerial qualification is to have the Holy Spirit breathed into us; until the Holy Ghost is planted in our hearts, we are not rightly commissioned for the work of the ministry. However, I do not feel that this view completely exhausts the meaning of our Lord when He breathed on the disciples.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): In this breathing He evidently alluded to the first creation of man.
J. C. RYLE: I cannot forget that they had all forsaken their Master the night that He was taken prisoner, fallen away from their profession, and forfeited their title to confidence as Apostles. May we not therefore reasonably believe that this breathing pointed to a revival of life in the hearts of the Apostles, and to a restoration of their privileges as trusted and commissioned messengers, notwithstanding their grievous fall?
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): There is a Spirit which gives life, and Christ is the Lord of that Spirit. The whole fullness of the Divine energies is gathered in the Holy Spirit, and this is His chiefest work—to breathe into our deadness the breath of life.
JOHN HOWE: “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the second Adam was a quickening Spirit.” This latter is a great deal more. A living soul signified him to live himself; but a quickening spirit signifies a power to make others live. That the first Adam could not do—he could never have given it, by any power or immediate efficiency of his own, to another. Here, the constitution of the second Adam was far above that of the first, in that he could quicken others—a quickening spirit, not only quickened passively, but quickened actively with such a spirit as could give spirit, and diffuse life.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: Many other names belong to the Holy Spirit. He is ‘the Spirit of adoption,’ He is ‘the Spirit of Supplication,’ He is ‘the Spirit of Holiness,’ He is ‘the Spirit of Wisdom,’ He is ‘the Spirit of Power and of Love and of a sound mind,’ He is ‘the Spirit of Counsel and Might’; but highest of all is the name which expresses His mightiest work, the ‘Spirit of Life.’
THE EDITOR: And He is “the Spirit of Christ,” Romans 8:9—“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” And surely the timing of Christ’s breathing on them has significance; it was in the evening on the day of His resurrection. Therefore, I see Christ’s action as an immediate fruit of His resurrection; it was a re-creation, a symbolic representation of man’s restoration to that spiritual life and communion with God which was lost in Adam’s fall, by the Holy Spirit’s regenerating work, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
ADAM CLARKE: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty,” Revelation 1:8; that is, as alpha is the beginning of the alphabet, so omega is the last letter of the alphabet. It is worthy of remark that, in Greek, the union of Α—alpha, and Ω—omega, makes the verb αω, ‘I breathe,’ and may, in such a symbolic book as Revelation, point out Him in Whom we live, and move, and have our being; for having formed man out of the dust of the earth, He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul; and it is by the inspiration or inbreathing of His Spirit that the souls of men are quickened, made alive from the dead, and fitted for life eternal.
THE EDITOR: Believers are “new creatures in Christ,” 2 Corinthians 5:17; thus, spiritually in Him, we can truly say as did Elihu, “The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life,” Job 33:4.
