On the Spirit of Resurrection

The Spirit of Resurrection.

THE HOLY SPIRIT: The eternal life-giving Third Person of the Holy Trinity; the intimate bond of divine love and truth shared by God the Father and God the Son; the dynamic power of God offered to every human being on earth; the supernatural Presence in the Community of God who is personal without being material; the invisible creative force with divine intelligence who truly knows the mind of God from the inside; the Spirit of God who thus has all knowledge and is present everywhere in the universe; the sacred energy streaming forth from the Father and the Son, pouring love into our hearts (Romans 5:5), producing virtuous qualities in us (Galatians 5:22-23), and gradually transforming each believer into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18).

God’s eternal Spirit was present at creation, of course, “brooding like a bird over the watery abyss.” (Gen. 1:1, MSG). No surprise there. All three Persons of God existed together eternally before creation began, and they will be intimate spiritual companions forever after the world’s recreation as well. At creation, the Spirit was like a mother bird hatching an egg, bringing beauty and order out of nothingness and chaos, waiting to take us under His wing.

Because the Triune God is united and inseparable, the Father and the Son is everywhere the Spirit us. If the Spirit dwells in us and alongside us, so does the Father and the Son. If the Father and the Son have promised to make a home in us, the Spirit is right there as well, arm-in-arm in their Trinitarian Presence, establishing a dwelling place in us. Since we are welcomed inside the relationship of the Trinity, the Spirit helps make that happen. Since we are adopted into God’s family as His children, we can be sure the Spirit was a part of that process. We can be assured the Spirit will work to sustain us in the Trinitarian circle and fellowship.

St. Paul’s Trinitarian blessing that closes his second letter to the Corinthians contains an interesting observation concerning the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14). After praying for them to be blessed in the grace of Jesus Christ and the love of God, Paul completes the blessing by praying that they would experience the “koinonia” of the Holy Spirit. Koinonia is another rich Greek biblical term, meaning communion, participation in, companionship, intimate partnership with, deep fellowship with. We are not only joined into the community of the Trinity through the Spirit, but we are plugged into a profound fellowship with other believers as well. There would be no communion with other people were it not for the source of all communion, the intimate unity of the triune God. We are one with other believers only because of our oneness with the Trinity. Believers are welcomed into the relationship of the Trinity, and through that spiritual source of oneness we have the possibility of intimate fellowship with fellow believers. The Holy Spirit dwells within us, along with the Father and the Son, and thus we are able to live inside the Trinity while the Trinity lives within us and we live within the community of believers. The Holy Spirit, our true Companion, our intimate Friend “who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).

“If God Himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of Him. When the Spirit of Christ makes His home in you and empowers your life, even though your body is doomed to physical death because of sin, His life-giving Spirit imparts life to you because you are fully accepted by God. The truth is that anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ within does not in fact belong to God. If the Spirit of the One who resurrected Jesus from the dead lives inside of you, then you can be sure that God’s Spirit of Resurrection will also raise your dying body to new life! With His Spirit living inside of you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!” (Romans 8:11; a weaving together of three translations: The Message, The Passion Translation, and the Voice Bible for Readers).

RUACH: A somewhat slippery Hebrew term because it can translate as wind, breath or spirit, or any combination thereof. The word literally means “air in motion’ or “current of air.” Ruach is used almost 400 times in the Hebrew Bible, and is the word used exclusively for the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit. When ruach is referring to God or the Lord, ruach is a divine Person, not merely a life force, a bundle of energy, or a symbol of inspiration, although the Holy Spirit does possess all those qualities. Ruach has been called the Breath of God, the Spirit-Wind, Creative Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Resurrection, and the Sacred Breath. Like the wind, the Spirit is free to come and go, and cannot be tamed, found, or caught. Like the wind, we don’t know where the Spirit is coming from, where He is going, or the reasons behind making a particular appearance. And like a breath, the Spirit gives life to the lifeless and maintains that liveliness. Like the wind and a breath, the Spirit is invisible, intangible, and we can witness the effects of ruach without actually seeing ruach itself. Because ruach is God’s Sacred Breath within our bodies, the entire human family is essentially both spiritual and physical. The Greek equivalent to ruach in the New Testament is the word “pneuma.”

Ruach, the Spirit-Wind, was said to hover over the chaos and emptiness like a brooding mother bird before creation (Gen. 1); it was said to blow over the flooded earth to dry up the floodwaters and begin the renewal of creation (Gen. 8:2); it was said to rush over the Red Sea and separate the waters for Moses and the Israelites (Ex. 14:21-22); it was said to give new life to the dry and dead bones of Ezekiel’s amazing vision (Ezek. 37); it was said to bring the strong winds and tongues of fire to the waiting believers in Jerusalem (Acts 2).

The Gospel According to Ezekiel. While Isaiah is the prophet of God the Son, and Jeremiah is the prophet of God the Father, Ezekiel is known as the prophet of the Holy Spirit. He repeatedly reports that “the Spirit entered me,” or “the Spirit lifted me up,” or “the Spirit of the Lord fell on me” for a total of 52 times, more than any other writer in the Hebrew Bible. Ezekiel makes it very clear that the Holy Spirit is the driving force throughout his book. The Spirit is in charge. The book of Ezekiel could just as easily be called “the Gospel According to the Holy Spirit.”

Ezekiel 37:1-14 – “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones.” (verse 1). God brought Ezekiel into a vision that proved to make a profound statement. This was not the first vision for Ezekiel. His visions were not literal experiences, but they were said to be dream-like, very realistic, and occurred in some unknown place… not heaven, not earth, but in some “third place”. This valley, which also could have been translated as “plain,” could have been in some extraterrestrial place during a prophetic ecstasy, or it could have been the same valley where he met the Lord in Ez. 3:22, “Then the Lord took hold of me and said, ‘Get up and go out into the valley and I will speak to you there.’ So I got up and went, and there I saw the glory of the Lord, just as I had seen in my first vision by the Kebar River. And I fell face down on the ground.”

HOPE. Just preceding Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, he spoke words of hope and consolation to the Israelites. He said that Israel would be restored as a nation one day, and the people would return home (Ez. 36). The people probably found this hard to believe, since everything looked so hopeless. Ezekiel also spoke God’s promise to judge the nations who were used to punish Israel. But God didn’t stop with those hopeful words. Ezekiel went on to say that God would purify His people in a dramatically unique way. “And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my teachings and be careful to obey my commands.” (Ez. 36:26-27). God promised to transform, renew, and empower His people to do His will. This promise reflects the New Covenant with Jesus and the Holy Spirit given to us by God. But at this time in Israel’s history, Ezekiel’s prophecy begs a number of questions: What will this look like? How will God perform these spiritual miracles? When will this transformation take place?

THE VISION. As if to answer those questions inspired by the prophecy of a new heart and spirit, Ezekiel experiences a vision that is like no other, and continues to capture the imagination of all Bible readers (Please read Ezekiel 37:1-14). God explained the meaning of this vision very clearly in the last paragraph (verses 11-14). There is a lot to unpack in this relatively short vision.

Having this fantastic vision was nothing new to Ezekiel, so he seems to take this extraordinary experience in stride. He wasn’t shocked, he wasn’t dismayed, he didn’t faint. When the Lord asked him at the start if these bones could come back to life, Ezekiel didn’t laugh, and he didn’t hesitate in his answer: “Only you know the answer to that, Lord.” He didn’t answer “Of course!” just to placate the Lord, and he didn’t answer “No way!” as if to reveal a lack of faith in God’s supernatural power. He answered the way we would hope to answer, “God only knows if these bones can come back to life.” If God’s question didn’t seem strange enough, God then asked him to talk to those dead bones, as if they could hear him prophecy to them. Dead bones are inanimate, and they don’t have ears to hear anything. But Ezekiel was nonplussed. We don’t know if he felt foolish doing this, or if maybe he questioned in his own mind if God knew what He was doing. But Ezekiel took the Lord at His word and spoke to those dead bones as if they had ears to hear. Ezekiel just goes with the flow of God’s instructions, no matter how foolish they seem. After speaking to the bones, God asked Ezekiel to speak to the wind, another impossible task. Once again, he didn’t hesitate to do what God asked. One wonders if these amazing things in the vision would have happened if Ezekiel hadn’t cooperated. Did God depend on Elijah to make all this happen, or did God just enjoy having Ezekiel a part of this process? We don’t know, but Ezekiel surely had a major hand in all that transpired in the vision.  By the end of the vision, Ezekiel surely agreed with the Lord… Yes, these dead bones are definitely like the Israelites, no responses by them to all these theatrics I go through, no signs of vitality at all. These Israelites really do seem as good as dead!

PROCESS. It’s interesting that there were many stages in this miracle with the bones. First, there was the stirring of the bones, the noticeable rattling. Then the bones somehow assembled themselves together to make a skeleton. Then there is the addition of the sinews and fleshy organs to the bones. Then there is the skin covering all the flesh. Then Ruach, the Breath of God, gives life to those assembled bodies. One wonders if that was the order of events in the original creation of man in Genesis 1 and 2. Certainly in both cases, the creation of man and recreation of the bones, the breath of the Holy Spirit is what gave life to the flesh and bones. And that very same breath gives life to all of us and to all creatures everywhere.

RESURRECTION. If nothing else, this vision was all about the Spirit of Resurrection. There are hints throughout the Hebrew Bible of the resurrection, and this is another one. God here is putting an idea out there for the Israelites to consider: the resurrection of the body. There are other Scriptures in the Hebrew Bible that foreshadow or hint at the resurrection of the body:

1. “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.” (Isaiah 25:8)
2. “Your dead shall live; Together with my dead body they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust.” (Isaiah 26:19).
3. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12:2).
4. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself.” (Job 19:25-26).
5. “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O Death, I will be your plagues! O Grave, I will be your destruction!” (Hosea 13:14).

The early Church leaders and scholars saw in Ezekiel’s vision a glimpse of the general resurrection at the Last Day. The early Father St. Ambrose of Milan once said, “Great is the lovingkindness of the Lord, that the prophet is taken as a witness of the future resurrection, that we might see it with his eyes.” By the time of Jesus, the general resurrection was commonly accepted in Jewish circles, except for groups like the Sadducees. Any doubts on this would have been put to rest after Jesus the Messiah said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Those very words could have been spoken by Yahweh Himself at the valley of dry bones. This vision makes it easier for us to imagine the New Jerusalem, when God’s people will be resurrected one day at the Lord’s command.

PICTURES. Ezekiel wrote this extraordinary vision down and addressed it to the Jews in exile. They were the intended audience, and the vision was meant for them. This compelling story was not written to us, but very well was written for us. Paul tells us that various stories in the Hebrew Scriptures were written as examples, to “fit us for right action by good instruction” (1 Cor. 10:11). Paul also told the Romans that “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by our steadfast and patient endurance and the encouragement drawn from Scriptures we might hold fast and cherish hope.” (Romans 15:4), Amplified bible). So what can we learn from Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones for our lives today? For one thing, we see a striking picture of how God through His Spirit is the source of life for us. We may have been dead in sin, but God is able to breathe into us through His Holy Spirit and restore us to life eternal. Our spiritual bones were bleached white with no sign of life, and God came to the rescue and breathed new life into us as individuals. We also see in this vision a startling picture of how God can revive a church body to new life. God can take a church that appears for all intents and purposes to be dead, and through His Spirit breathe new life into that church and faith community to bring a supernatural revival. God’s Spirit can make all things new and full of life, whether as individual believers or as a body of believers. Hear the Word of the Lord.

The Death of God. What if we didn’t know the end of the story? What if we didn’t yet know about the empty tomb? Yes, it’s true that Jesus predicted His rising from the dead on a number of occasions with His Twelve. But tell that to the traumatized disciples, who just lost their best friend. Tell that to His mother, who grieves over her precious son. A sword has pierced her heart, indeed. The Son of God gave up His spirit. He relinquished it. No one could take it away from Him, He had to agree to let it go, He waved the white flag of surrender. He deliberately became lifeless. He died. His heart stopped beating. His organs broke down for lack of oxygen and blood supply. The Son of God literally became breathless, the One who gives breath to all created persons. An early church tradition maintains that Jesus looked like an old man when His dead body was taken down from the Cross. He had aged in His suffering and with the burden He was carrying.

The death of the Son of God is nonsensical. Illogical. It doesn’t make sense. Life and death don’t mix. Death and Jesus don’t fit. It is somehow sacrilegious. Death is the ultimate indignity for the Giver of life. As the final result of sin, the death of Christ is the conclusion of sin’s victory over God. Death is an extreme impurity experienced by the only Pure One. Death defiles the world, making a dead person unclean and mortally defeated. Was Jesus unclean when He died? After all, death is this world’s vile pollutant. For the time being, the Son of God was defeated by sin’s final consequence.

An Intimate Conversation. Early on the third day, the Father looked inward and said to His Spirit, “Dear Friend, the time has come for death to finally die. Just as you breathed life into the First Adam in the Garden, this is the moment when I would like you to enter that deathly tomb, bend over the lifeless body of my Son who is the Last Adam, and breathe life into Him. Sing this new life into His mouth with your heavenly breath. My Son has now completed His mission, for He has crashed through the gates of the Place of the Dead. He has planted the holy Cross on that unholy ground, and brought the light of our glory to all whose there who have followed what little light they had been shown during their lives on earth. My Son preached there to those who were largely in the dark about Me and my presence in this world, and He has opened the gates of heaven to all the righteous who came before He appeared in the flesh. So my Son has finished the message of redemption to all people through all time from all places. Now the moment has arrived to breathe your sacred breath into my Son. Rejoice with me, my dear Spirit, as my Son now brings new life to the world! Be glad as your Wind blows through that dark tomb and into the dead body of Jesus. Jump for joy, O life-giving Spirit, as my Son will soon come back home forever!

Ruach at Creation.  “First this: God created the Heavens and the Earth – all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, and inky blackness. The Spirit of God (ruach) brooded over it all like a bird above the watery abyss.” (Genesis 1:1-2, MSG). This is the first time ruach was used in the Scripture, right here at the beginning of all things created by God. The Holy Spirit is a Co-creator, and the very Breath of God as God spoke the world into existence. Whenever a word is spoken, the very act of speaking involves breathing outward. To speak requires the action of breathing. God’s exhale brought everything into reality, and the Holy Spirit is that breath.

Ruach with St. Paul.  “It was because of Him that I gave up everything and regard it all as garbage, in order to gain the Messiah and be found in union with Him, not having any righteousness of my own based on legalism, but having that righteousness which comes through Christ’s faithfulness, the righteousness from God based on trust. Yes, I gave it all up in order to know Jesus, that is, to know the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings as I am being conformed to His death, so that somehow I might arrive at being resurrected from the dead.”  (Philippians 3:8-11). The central truth to our spiritual life according to St. Paul is the Resurrection. It was the singular focus of his writings, and he wouldn’t let any of us forget it. Paul mentioned resurrection 53 times in his epistles just to make sure we got the point. Paul wants earnestly to live in the power of the resurrection, in the power of the Holy Spirit. He would have loved Wendell Berry’s suggestion to “Practice Resurrection” in our Christian life. Live with the knowledge that unexpected renewal is always around the corner, that new life can spring up out of what appears lifeless, that the most discouraging experiences that seem hopeless can actually be redeemed in the power of the Holy Spirit and given new life.

Ruach with the Disciples. “The risen Lord said to His disciples, ‘Peace to all of you! Just as the Father sent me, I myself am also sending you.’ Having said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Welcome the Holy Spirit into your life! Receive the Ruach HaKodesh!!” (John 20:21-22). This was the consecration service for His disciples, the time when they were commissioned to continue the work of Jesus after His departure. The Greek word used for “breathed” does not appear elsewhere in the New Testament, but is the same Greek word for Genesis 2:7, when God breathed His life into Adam’s nostrils. I would have given anything to be so close to Jesus that I could feel His breath. In reality, though, the Spirit of God is always closer to us than our very breath.

“If the Spirit of the One who resurrected Jesus from the dead lives inside of you, then you can be sure that God’s Spirit of Resurrection will also raise your dying body to new life! With His Spirit living inside of you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!”  (Romans 8:11)