The Spirit is Life

Ok, so sometime in the next week or two starts tonight with the oldest thoughts.  Have you ever had a time where you were just driven and couldn't stop thinking about something?  Well, the Spirit is driving.  May God allow me to speak what He wishes to be said throughout these posts - and hopefully I'll learn what I'm meant to learn; for every where I go He is speaking on the topic of who the Spirit is.  So here goes...

The very first thought that ever comes to mind about who the Spirit is has always been Galatians 5:22-26 on what the fruit of the Spirit are, and how we can see the Spirit through people.  But, that really isn't who the Spirit is - as actions do not define the individual.

That said, the first (recent) thought that the Spirit has given on who he is was just one simple word: Life.  And strangely enough, it was the rememberance of 1 John 5:11-12 that gave me this thought.  In fact, where it says "Son" my mind replaced with "Spirit."  Imagine my surprise when I could not find the reference that my mind so clearly recalled.  And then I did find it, and the words were "hath the Son" not Spirit.  I was at the same time both floored that I actually misremembered the quote, and also certain that what I recalled was also true.

But in the search for this passage in the Bible, other passages floated up to the top - they just weren't the passage I was looking for.  But now that I found the passage I was looking for, and it wasn't what I remembered, I went back and looked at a couple of the other passages.  The primary passage was from Genesis 2:7: "and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being."  The Hebrew word for breath is nashamah.  Another word used for breath at times is ruach.  It is also the word for the Spirit.  (In fact, to me, it seems like as time passed the words became used more and more interchangeably.)

The next passage that I saw was in fact one of the passages that ties the breath (nashamah) and the Spirit (ruach) into the same thought.  That passage is Job 32:8 - "But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty...."  And once I made it to Job (I keep coming back to this book), then I came to another passage Job 34:14-15.  For if he withdrew his Spirit and his breath, then man would perish.

And then Ezekiel 37:1-14 gives some more description on this breath and Spirit is life.

But this closes the first round of thought.  In this first round the Spirit told me that one part of who he is - not his fruit, but who he is - is Life.  It is the Spirit that is in all and through all and gives life to all living things.  And thus, one of the tenants of most other non-Christian religions is shown also to contain a glimpse of the truth of God (just as Paul states in the book of Romans). 

The Spirit is within all living things and gives life to all.  For without the Spirit-breath (ruach/nashamah), all life would perish.