John 20:22 – Narnia: A New Breath of Life
Tonight we are finishing our dual series. We are wrapping up our series on walking in the Spirit, which we started in September. And we are finishing up our series on the Chronicles of Narnia, this being the 4th and final sermon for that.
I’d like to look at one main thought tonight, and it is found in John 20:22.
Before I go to explain this verse, let me recap what has happened so far in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Four children end up in another world called Narnia. One of the children, Edmund, betrays the others to the White Witch Jadis. Edmund is rescued, but there is a fee: someone has to pay for his betrayal. Aslan does this. He gives himself to Jadis, and in a horrible scene, Jadis takes a stone knife and kills Aslan the lion. Then she runs off to gather her armies to attack the remaining forces of good. With no leader, they are powerless against her.
Now, Lucy and Susan, the two human sisters, run up to the Stone Table, the altar upon which Aslan was killed. They shower his lifeless body with tears and affection. By and by, mice come and gnaw away at the ropes that held him fast.
As the sun begins to rise, Lucy and Susan walk away just a bit, only to clear their heads. In that moment, there is a tremendous noise. They turn around, and Aslan is gone. Not only that, but the altar where his body had lain, is broken in half. They wonder what it all means, when they hear a voice from behind them. It is Aslan, very much alive, risen from the dead. It is a beautiful scene as the fully alive lion plays and frolics with the 2 girls who love him so much.
Well, the time comes for Aslan to set things right. The girls grab hold of his mane, and Aslan bounds off to the White Witch’s castle. You see, part of the fear that Jadis has had over the people of Narnia was that she has the power to turn creatures to stone. So, as she defeats her enemies, she brings their frozen bodies to her castle, where she keeps them on display of her victory. This is the scene we find on p167-168.
I find it a beautiful picture that the breath of the lion brought the stone statues back to life. It reminds me of our passage tonight. The resurrected Jesus has shown up behind locked doors, appearing to His disciples, with the exception of Thomas. He wishes them peace in the middle of their fears, doubts and confusion. He tells them that they are to be His witnesses of His resurrection to all people. Then He breathes on them and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit.
Now, this is not the 1st time in the Scriptures that we see God breathing into or upon someone. But there is something strangely different about it, too. Most times that we read God breathed into or upon someone, the person was not yet alive, or already dead. In our passage tonight, the people Jesus breathed upon were not dead. Let me show you what I mean.
In Genesis 2:4-7, we read this: “When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Now, understand that Adam was made but not yet alive. Then the breath of God entered his lungs and he was alive, or quickened, as the KJV often says.
There’s the really neat passage in Ezekiel 37:1-14. This is a vision that the prophet Ezekiel has. He ends up in a valley of bones. They were dry, which means that they had been there a long time, long since picked clean by scavengers like vultures. These people were not recently dead – they were a long time dead.
Ezekiel spoke to them and they came together with tendons on their bones. That is, they had meat on their bones again, assuming that means all the internal organs as well. Then they had skin covering them, so that instead of dry bones, they were complete bodies.
They were still not alive, though. Ezekiel prophesied again, and wind came from all around, and blew into them, and the bodies came to life. They stood up and became an army.
Now, what’s important to know is that a certain Hebrew word can be translated in 3 ways. This word, “ruach”, can be translated with “breath”, or “spirit”, or “wind”. It leads to a little confusion, wondering exactly what was meant. Did God mean for the bodies to be filled with wind? More likely breath, but perhaps spirit.
Or like in v9: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.” The 4 winds is likely translated correctly, but Ezekiel may have been talking to the Spirit – “Breathe into these people, Spirit…”
At any rate, the life that entered them came from God. They had been alive, but were killed somehow a long time ago, perhaps in a war, but now they were alive again. God breathed into them, and they were alive again.
And again, we see that God’s breath came into those not alive. Like with Adam in Genesis 2, the recipients of God’s breath were not alive. But, flipping ahead to John 20, we see Jesus breathing on people who were alive. Jesus’ breath was meant for the already alive.
Well, once again, we see the connection. In the NT too, there is one word for “spirit”, “wind” and “breath”. It is “pneuma”. In Biblical Greek, they pronounced the “p”, so it was “peh-nooma”. In English we make the “p” silent. It’s a word we still find in common use. A pneumatic drill uses air pressure to work. Pneumonia is the inflammation of the lungs, which you use to breathe.
And the word “pneuma” also means Spirit. So when Jesus breathed on them, it was symbolic of the Holy Spirit. Jesus connected the mandate to witness with the receiving of the Holy Spirit. But, we go back to the fact: up until now, whenever God breathed into or upon someone, that person was dead.
Which leads me to some conclusions about why Jesus breathed on them. Yes, it was about receiving the Holy Spirit, obviously, but what’s the point of that? What is that for?
1) Spirit-filled living is about dying to ourselves. It means putting to death all our own desires and what we want. It’s not that we won’t get them back. It’s not happy we’ll never be happy in this life. It’s not that we’ll never get what we want. It’s that we have to give them up for something greater. It’s that we submit to God’s plans. Addison Leitch said, “When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die.”
And that is you. Spirit-filled living means doing what He wants, when it happens that what He wants and what we want are not the same thing. Listen: when you decide that you really want to do God’s will, when you decide that you really want to be God’s, 100%, then you have to be willing to put aside any of your own plans. God’s plans for you are far more important than your own plans for yourself. And a believer torn between His will and God’s will is an unsatisfied one. Thomas a Kempis, a great spiritual thinker, said, “What hindereth thee more than thine affections not fully mortified to the will of God?”
2) Spirit-filled living is about a new start. Jesus was saying that everything that the disciples had ever done was about to end. All the good things, all the bad things. Every success, every failure was about to be in the past. He breathed on them, giving them new life, because their old ones were over.
He called them to new jobs, not necessarily because their old ones were evil. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with honest fishermen or honest tax-collectors. But they were going to have new lives. For them, receiving of the Holy Spirit meant that everything that had known and been and done was over, and things were going to be different.
In a way, their old lives died. Sometimes we cling to the way things used to be. We like things done the way they always were. We like some changes in our lives, but we don’t really want everything to change. We like to harbor our old grudges. We like church done our way. We like our theology.
But Spirit-filled living means that God gets His way. And it’s good for us. Sometimes God’s way is fairly uncomfortable, but it’s still good for us. So be glad that when God comes into our lives, He changes things around.
3) Spirit-filled living is about a persuasive lifestyle. That is, how you used to get people to agree with you has to change, to die out. If you look at the disciples before our passage, you’ll see how they won converts to their view of thinking, that their methods were lacking. James and John tried to sneak around with their plans to rule. Peter likely yelled a lot to get his view across. Judas plotted. They talked amongst themselves, trying to get people to agree with them.
Not so anymore. Jesus said that they would be convincing because they would have a new power. Trying to win people to their side would become less important than winning people to Christ. Plus, the Holy Spirit would help them in their new mission. The old method and old motives for persuading others would die out, and new methods and new motives would rise.
Darrell Robinson wrote, “I came to realize that to love Jesus and to love people mean we will do our best to bring the two together. To reduce it to the simplest terms, loving Jesus and loving people is what Christianity and the church are all about. I came to understand that unless I genuinely care about the person with whom I am sharing, my witness will lack compassion and sincerity. Also, unless I study the Word of God, my witness will lack content. The caring witness sharing the message of the Word of God give the balance needed to reach people.”
That’s a persuasive lifestyle, which only the Holy Spirit can do in you. Spirit-filled living is not about getting people to your side. Spirit-filled living is about being persuasive to others to follow Christ, as you do. It takes a lot of dying to be unselfish, but it’s what needs to happen. It’s what Jesus intended to happen. Witnessing in the power of the Holy Spirit, instead of in our own powers and abilities and gifts of persuasion. It means listening to His leading, to speak about spiritual things when God intends us to.
I believe Jesus breathes on us today, too. He wants part of us to die: our own selfish plans, our own comfort zones, our own abilities. And He also wants us to rise to new life as well. Allow Him to breath into you tonight. Allow His life to rise up within you.
