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During my freshman year of college, I was confronted with the doctrines of election and reprobation. I immediately became defensive because of my preconceived notions of God and man, and I wrote a paper titled “Calvinism and Arminianism: A Controversy That Should Not Exist.” Thereafter, I vehemently attempted to maintain my anti-Calvinistic sentiments—until I commenced a Biblical study of the doctrine of man. It was than that I was awakened to the desperate condition of human beings and their need for God’s regenerating breath of life. That image of man to which I held so dearly was shattered instantly as I was brought to understand the depraved state of the human heart.
The relationship God established with Adam was a most intimate one. In Genesis 2:7, we observe a beautiful illustration of this divine intimacy. As a potter delicately fashions a lump of clay with his hands, so the Lord God of all creation took the pure dust of the earth and carefully fashioned man. He then brought Himself face to face with the creature upon whom He had bestowed His own precious image, and He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
It was in this anthropomorphic manner that Moses characterized God’s regenerative role in the conception of human existence. What is more, in the Septuagint, the word translated “breathed” conveys the notions of God’s power and blessing. It was no mere creaturely breath that Adam inhaled—it was the powerful and sustaining breath exhaled by the living God Himself.
Similarly, after Jesus’ resurrection, He commissioned the apostles and breathed upon them, saying ‘ “Receive the Holy Spirit” ’ and giving them the ordained authority to forgive or retain the sins of any (John 20:22–23). Such power and blessing were not to be held with little regard. On the contrary, the breath of God was imparted to the first man with ordained authority and dominion as it was imparted to the apostles prior to the ascension of Jesus, who is the last Adam, the true Man. The image of God that was shattered by the Fall was restored in the person of Christ, and the breath of God that sustained the divinely generated life of man was again exhaled by Christ Jesus Himself as He bestowed the Holy Spirit upon the apostles of His church.
In what manner, then, do we regard the image of God that was so distorted by the Fall? The ramifications are far-reaching, and the image that we once bore immaculately has been renewed by Him who was born under the law, redeeming those who were under the law. As Adam received the breath of God with power and blessing, so we too have become sons of the Father, receiving His Spirit with renewed power and blessing.