“The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” (Job 33:4)
Contrary to the proponents of deism, God did not create the universe and then leave it alone. He continues to be actively at work in His world, intimately involved with you and with me. We’re all familiar with the creation account, which tells us that God made Adam and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” (Gen. 2:7). But what we may have overlooked is that Job 33:4 says the same Spirit of God also made you and me… and breathes life into each one of us as well!
Consider how beautifully consistent this verse in Job is with other passages which tell us that God is spirit (John 4:24), and that He is the giver of life (1 Tim. 6:13, Job 10:12). In fact, the very term spirit means “breath of life.”
The life-breathing Spirit of God is not only the source of all life, He is its sustainer. “He gives to all, life and breath and all things” (Acts 17:25), to every man, woman, boy and girl, as well as every living thing in the whole of creation – plants, beasts, and fish in the sea.
All the powers in heaven and earth together are not sufficient to give life. The triune God alone possesses self-generating life, as Christopher Love put it, “He is the living God, as having life originally in Himself.” The Father and the Son have life in themselves, John 5:26, “For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself.”
God chose to share His life with us in the form of His Son – as the “image of the invisible God” who “was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Christ descended to this sin-ridden world so that we might see the living God and experience His life… not just life as we know it, but abundant life at the point when the Holy Spirit of God is again at work, intimately and actively breathing everlasting life into the believer’s soul!
“I am come that they might have life,
and that they might have it more abundantly,” (John 10:10)
- O merciful Father, I am Your child, but I acknowledge that in light of my many sins, I am not worthy to ask any blessing for myself at Your hands. And yet You have commanded me to pray, and ask, and seek, and knock. You tell me that my prayers shall avail much with You, in obedience, because You are the Lord of life and grace. Help me have confidence in Your gracious promises and to be bold to come before Your divine Majesty that I might raise my requests to You who are life itself.
- Lord Jesus, when You were laid in the tomb, the keepers of hell’s gates shook with fear for You are the God of life! Although You descended into the grave as a mortal man, You destroyed the strength of hell and swallowed up death in victory. By Your life-bringing resurrection, You raise up corrupted men, people like me, and make them living beings with hearts that beat after You. You, who destroyed the one that brought death to the world, I pray, be mindful of me.
- Where should a dead soul go for life, but to Jesus Christ the Lord and Giver of life? Where can an empty and graceless sinner go, but to You, Lord Jesus, to receive of Your fullness and find grace for grace? And where should a dead soul go for quickening and life, but to You who quickens the dead?
Further References for Job 33:4
Gen. 2:7; Job 32:8, 27:3, 12:10; Num. 16:22; Ps. 8:5, 33:6
