The Word of Life
The Word of Life
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have gazed upon and touched with our own hands—concerning the Word of life — and the life was manifested; we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And this fellowship of ours is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We write these things so that our joy may be complete. 1 John 1:1-4
You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me; and you are unwilling to come to me that you may have life. John 5:39-40
Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate, and died, he who eats this bread shall live forever. John 6:53-58
For Those Who Seek Life
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The Mystery of the body and blood of Christ, given by Him to His disciples at the Passover, which He kept with them on the night He was betrayed, has eluded Christendom – either too sublime to be understood, or else materialized in keeping with a whole system of externals that are no different from the practices of the priest cult of Israel. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
But what is troubling in this world where multitudes of religious adherents and New Age dilettantes are desperately seeking the highest and most mystical reality they can find, is that the Creator of all things physical came down into the world freely offering the gift of a Life that surpasses anything the cosmos can produce. And He, as the Logos made flesh made the paradoxical statement “the flesh profits nothing.” (John 6:63)
Yet, Christianity has produced a number of solutions to this Mystery of the mystical body and blood of Christ which are all fleshly. This is a simple consequence of the fact that the mind of flesh cannot comprehend the things of the Spirit, a truth which Paul brilliantly uncovered in the first two chapters of First Corinthians. The communion feast established in Roman Catholicism is but the most ubiquitous example of something that sounds logical but fails to bear the freight of the Lord’s words. It is a tradition of men that was fought by the disciples of the disciples who strove to keep the commandments of Christ Jesus, but in the end lost the doctrinal battle to pagan synchretists who deemed the wisdom of the world to be essential to keeping the political peace and sought not His kingdom and righteousness, but built their own kingdom in this world.
The Lord’s Passover is the sacrifice that delivers from sin and death, going beyond the physical Passover out of Egypt, the symbol of physical slavery. But this word which John records was a troubling one and it caused most of His followers to desert Him. They could not reconcile the spiritual nature of His teaching within their own fleshly way of thinking. The flesh is hostile to God (Rom 8). Keeping the Passover is a remembrance and honoring of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That does not necessarily make it a food that protects, delivers, or in any way nourishes a growing Christian in their inner spiritual man. The observance which centers around partaking a physical substance that is symbolic of a great spiritual reality ought to also contain a deeply spiritual component that is the reality that does give Life.
Yes, it is the Spirit that gives life. This means that the solid food of which Christ Jesus teaches is not of this world, and though it bears no mass, it has an “eternal weight of glory.” (2 Cor 4:17) Even for those who grasp that there is some sort of higher message that pertains to non-material reality, the challenge remains as to just what the spiritual body and blood are. There seems to be an unconscious belief that the symbolic confers the spiritual. This, too, is a quasi-Judaic solution which believes that consuming the unleavened bread and wine on the 14th grants a year of protection under the blood of Christ. But this solution is a betrayal of the obedience to the gospel which Jesus requires. In many ways the Roman and the Sabbatarian doctrines contain the same essential flaw: reliance upon flesh and blood, which does not avail.
Once again, Christendom has fixed these realities to physical substance. The Lord’s Passover, for example, harnesses this weight of glory to eating the bread and wine on the night the Lord was betrayed, the 14th of the first month according to God’s calendar laid out in Exodus. And while this is a commandment of the Lord, and one that must not be taken lightly, there is still more spiritual substance to eating His body and blood. For if it only amounted to eating the Passover feast of bread and wine, then we should be stopped at the words quoted above from John 6. Academic theologians claim that this was codification of the holy communion feast by the early church – an anachronistic and unsupportable argument. For we still must contend with reality of the Bread of Heaven, and without some kind of hocus pocus – hoc est corpus meum – there needs to be a way to eat this bread.
Once again, what is the body and blood of Christ when the flesh profits nothing? And how does one eat these since they are incorporeal? These questions are the stuff of which solid food is made, the mysteries which Paul had hoped the Corinthians were spiritual enough to consume. Alas, neither in Corinth nor in modern America can one find those with the maturity in the mind of Christ to contend with this truth for it is of the Elect. It is solid food indeed.
What would eliminate the possibility of profaning the eternal and Living Word Jesus Christ, and reducing His glory to a material construct? It doesn’t matter whether it is a weekly tradition of men such as ‘holy communion’ or an annual remembrance of the Passover of our Lord as He commanded His disciples to keep, if it is done with an earthly objective in mind, with a view to the flesh, or with a fleshly understanding, then it profanes the Sacred and Divine nature of the Son of God.
More seriously, if it is eaten to protect the life of the physical body against a Second Passover, for the sake of saving one’s life, then it is to no avail, for the Life that the Lord has come to give is the Life of the Spirit. Such intention could cause loss of one’s life. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matt. 16:25)
I have come that they may have life, and they may have it abundantly. John 10:10
and
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. John 6:63
It is, therefore, another breath of Spirit which the Lord brings, another life than the life of our earthly breath. The word ‘abundantly’ in the Greek means something beyond the usual, and therefore has nothing to do with abundance of material wealth. And Jesus suggests in His use of words that the life He comes to bring is ‘beyond the usual,’ and so it is.
Relating this back to flesh and blood, we know that our earthly life is a flesh and blood reality and that without the breath of life, our physical body has no life. Yet, as Logos, Word of the Father, Christ is telling us that this is the true Life while our physical life is in reality a dead form. For without Spirit, the form will pass into emptiness and void again.
For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. Romans 8:6
The spiritual upshot of being “under the blood,” in Baptist parlance, is that to have the blood of Christ circulating through the body of Christ, viz. the members of His body, cannot be equivalent to keeping any observances, but must be spiritually substantial as the physical blood is physically substantial. Anything less would render meaningless the glory of this heavenly body, a subject for the next section.
[Author’s note: the subject of the blood of Christ will require an entire writing because it is mystery of unparalleled depth as well as importance for salvation.]
Heavenly Flesh
In his profound treatise to the congregation in Corinth, the apostle Paul shed a great deal of light on the stark distinction between the realms of the physical and those of the spiritual.
“All flesh is not the same flesh. The glory of the heavenly is one sort, the glory of the earthly is another.” 1 Cor. 15:39
Now the Greek word for glory, doxa, generally carries a meaning of ‘brightness,’ ‘splendor,’ or ‘radiance,’ and thereby can be used to convey state of being, such as participation in the radiant light or glory of Christ in the next life in Heaven. The verb ‘doxazo’ means to clothe in splendor or glorify.
The idea of being clothed in the glory of God, or of Christ, has abundant support in the New Testament, such as the bride coming down clothed with the glory of God. Notice: her glory in Rev. 12:1 is contrasted with her glory in Rev. 21:11 [see our paper The Woman Clothed with the Sun]. The glory of one sort of body is electromagnetic, which though often invisible to the human eye, is still a physical phenomenon. The glory of the heavenly sort of body is clothed with a Heavenly radiance, that is, the “glory of God.”
Thus, as we have borne the one type of body, so shall we bear the other. And this is the firm foundation for the knowledge of Christ’s nature which reminds us that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood. It is spiritual food and drink for a spiritual body and a blood that creates unity and homogeneity within that One Body.
To gather insight from the analogy of our own physical body, we see that our cells have individual life and vitality but outside of the body, without blood to circulate the breath they need, they can have no life. In a sense they simply cannot have a separate life. We too, cannot have a separate life apart from Christ. To live apart from Him is death. We either have His blood circulating through us, with His breath or Spirit, or we have no live in ourselves at all.
So how then, do we keep His word on this matter which drove away most of His disciples when He walked on the earth? Well, as Paul observed to the Romans (7:12-20), the Law is spiritual, so we must observe it in a spiritual manner, and no physical observance can substitute for that, or else walking in the Spirit would reduce to a new Pharisaic practice.
The impact of this for 21st century disciples is that Passover must be observed spiritually, the feast is to be celebrated, but it is to outwardly reflect the inner state of living on the Word of Life, and having His Heavenly Blood circulate His Spirit, or Life throughout our spiritual body.
What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life – and the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us – what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:1-3
This sublime description of the spiritual reality made flesh really underscores just why a spiritual practice would have to be a remembrance that the greater reality of Passover is the spiritual deliverance from this body of sin and death. Any notion of a second Passover in the physical sense would be corrected by the knowledge of the Lord that He came to bring to naught the works of the Devil (1 John 3:8), which becomes completed when death the last enemy is conquered, something that does not occur until Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14).
We are here shown how the reality of salvation is co-extensive with the passage of the old heaven and earth that flees from before the throne, all of its corruption unable to find a place any longer (Rev. 20:11).
To participate in the Heavenly Life which was manifested as the Word made flesh, we must participate in that Life in the spiritual man we are within. And that means a much more concentrated effort on Romans 8:6 earlier quoted. Setting the mind on the Spirit and life, partaking of the Spirit and Life within the Heavenly food and drink which comes only in fellowship with the Father and the Son – these are the nutrients to grow our spiritual body which partakes of another degree of glory altogether.
It is a tremendous testimony to His Sonship and Godhood that Christ has made a way for us to grow in our new Heavenly life, even while the decay of the world continues in the body of the old Adam and Eve.
Sons of Light
The foregoing sheds light – pun unavoidable – on the inner truth of Paul’s teaching and John’s teaching about sons of Light. It is not a metaphorical statement, but something quite literal, albeit literal of the Heavenly worlds, not the earthly.
The apostle John taught this knowledge of Life in Christ using these words:
“All things were made through Him [’o Logos], and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not received it.” John 1:3–5
Thus, truly walking in Him, taking in His substance and Life, His Word and His Spirit, is to walk in new Life, and to be remade according to the image and likeness of Christ Jesus. Again John teaches us:
While Light you have, walk in the light that sons of light you may become. John 12:35
Remember, then, in keeping His Passover, and in keeping His Sabbaths, to not mind the fleshly things, but keep focused on the things above where He is seated at the right hand of the Father. Remember, too, that it is not taking in the unleavened bread and wine that grows the spiritual body, but it is in taking in the Living Words of the Living Logos, and in drinking in His Spirit in His blood, that we receive true Life, and receive it abundantly.
John 6:63 and Peter’s proclamation in John 6:68 “You have the words of eternal life,” provide two witnesses to the reality that the “Words” of Christ are not like ‘words’ as we know them. Our words convey something but they do not carry what the Word of God bears. And a person must come to the Living One, the Word of Eternal Life, if they want life. This means that searching the scriptures will not grant that Life. The bread which came down from Heaven is eaten daily just as the manna was eaten daily in the wilderness, but this manna is not of this cosmic domain – it is from the ancient Heaven of heavens (Ps 68:33).
The Body and the Blood
Finally, we must push these linguistic images to their fullest because the cargo they carry is heavenly. In the remembrance of the Lamb of God, slain for the forgiveness of sins, He ordained a new sacrament for the Passover feast. And that sacramental food was to typify in this memorial a testimony to the greater reality. To receive the greater understanding of these non-material realities we need to examine just a bit more the body metaphor, and the true meaning of the blood of the covenant.
The difficulty we face is that English word ‘blood’ and the Hebrew word ‘dam’ are worlds apart, if only because language has suffered extreme degradation over the course of history. But in the designation of physical blood by a radical <daleth-mem> there is a profound connection with the more glorious spiritual substance of which our blood is just a shadow. Still, the shadow does convey the shape of that which lies beyond in the light.
Bringing in other analogous images to link the body and the blood will help unveil the mysteries contained in them. Above we lightly covered the idea of blood as a unifying substance that brings life to all the cells in the body. And again we are dealing with material constructions that are but a shadow of spiritual reality.
First, the reader and true seeker of truth will do better to understand that in the Hellenization of scripture due to the sojourn in Babylon and the corresponding reduction of meaning to that which is fleshly, the great genius of Moses was lost. Thus, whether by the fundamental materialists on the right or by the super-spiritual Kabbalists on the left, the literal spiritual meaning was sacrificed on the altar of man’s own image-making capacity and in this Man himself lost the understanding of God’s image-making process.
One strain of thinking in the Coptic community in Egypt (see Gospel of Philip) strove to recover the deeper linkages of Word and Spirit, Body and Blood, Male and Female, by drawing this parallelism, to which we could add “Image and Likeness.” In fact, Genesis 1:26-27 does suggest a parallel structure between “image and likeness” and “male and female.” Without exploring the depths of all that God had Moses invest in the hieroglyphic of these expressions it would be impossible to reach the treasure. Much of it was re-invented in Babylon and placed into intellectual systems in which Adam and Eve typified Partzufim or Divine Personae/visages Zeir Anpin (an aspect of God) and His Nukvah (analogous in some ways to His Shekinah). All this is very ear-tickling, but it squanders the treasure that Moses left for us.
To really get at the body and blood of Christ and to see how essential it is in building the divine image and likeness in us, we are compelled to go on this difficult excursion apart from kabbalistic temptations and fundamentalistic and simplistic comforts. It is difficult to push through to the truth, but the rewards go to those who love the truth, and the reward is Life, for all who would consume His body and His blood as He said. Apart from this, how can one grow up into the head, even the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13)?
In the Genesis 1 creation narrative we find the use of ‘we’ and it becomes apparent that this must be the Father and His Word disclosing the plan of creation to make more images, i.e. instances of themselves, as the fractal template of the Christ provides the substance of life for a form and consciousness that can partake of eternity.
The word usage is absolutely critical here and the Hebrew words ‘tzelem’ and ‘demuth’ exhibit in their roots, and the signification of the grammatical signs used, a very clear meaning that echoes all the way through into the New Testament, where the apostle Paul reveals that ‘woman’ is the ‘glory’ <doxa> of ‘man’ (1 Cor. 11:7).
The word ‘tzelem’ has become image through Hellenization, evident in the Septuagint translation of Genesis, but the word evokes more and recalls the sense of ‘shadow’ on a deeper level, and we can see this in David’s psalm 23 where he speaks of the shadow of death as <tzalmaveth>. ‘Demut’ as well has the radical dam in it, which is as we have seen the word for blood, and still it is much more. The full word ‘b’tzalmaynu’ is better translated as the “like-making of ourselves.” It is also useful to remember that dam is a substantial part of Adam.
Fabre D’Olivet, in his definitive work The Hebraic Tongue Restored, showed the meaning of Dam, consistently translated as ‘blood,’ as:
In a broader sense it is that which is identical; in a more restricted sense it is blood, assimilative bond between soul and body, according to the profound thought of Moses, which I shall develop in my notes. It is that which assimilates, which becomes homogeneous; mingles with another thing: thence the general idea of that which is no longer distinguishable, which ceases to be different; that which renounces its seity, its individuality, is identified with the whole, is calm, quiet, silent, asleep.
Can you see the application?
Yes, the blood of Christ, the blood of the Covenant, is that which assimilates all of His members into the unity of His body, making us abundantly alive, and in mingling with us, makes us homogeneous, ceasing to strive for difference, but renouncing our seity, our separate and illusory life, so that we become identified with the whole, namely Christ Himself. Thus are fulfilled the words of Zechariah 14:9
And YHWH will be king over all the earth; in that day YHWH will be One, and His name One.
This unity of Christ and His body is the hope of the saints, the promise of the prophets.
To look at it from the realities of image and likeness, then, the blood is what conveys the likeness of God. This makes it even more crucial that we take the blood and remain under His blood and within the New Covenant.
As Adam married what was taken out of his body, it is clear that Christ weds what is from His own body. Thus, the New Covenant is best understood within the contours of a marriage covenant.
In the marriage covenant, each party to the union pledges faithfulness to the other. It is this faithfulness which shows in human beings in their desire and their efforts to be like their Lord. This means that the obedience of the gospel is the willingness and effort to keep walking in the ways of Christ (Isaiah 2:3). That practice of walking in the Spirit, carried by the blood of Christ, is what defines sons of God, to wit Paul’s word to the Romans (8:14):
For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
And if they are sons of God, then they are one with Christ and the Father as the Lord’s final prayer in John 17 reveals. That is what the Zechariah message is really all about – those who shine the glory of God bear “the Name” and in the unity of Christ and His holy ones, the Name is one. In the third part of this series, we will explore in more depth this Mystery of the Name.
Returning now to the group of linked pairs to which scripture gives credence, the parallel structure and complementary meaning helps inform the pair we are looking at now, viz. the body and the blood. In the words zachar (also part of Zechariah) and nukvah, ‘male’ and ‘female,’ one can probe the deeper meaning of those spiritual realities. Zachar is the word used in Exodus 3 when God confronts Moses and tells him “this is my name, and this is my memorial forever.” The word for ‘memorial’ is zachar, and it signifies a testimony, something left behind to bear witness to a reality. In that passage, YHWH is the zachar left with Moses to bear witness to the reality of God which is far beyond words and nametags.
The feminine part of this pair, nukvah, signifies something hidden and not apparent; it is graven, hollowed out, enveloped. Without this inner, graven reality, there is only superficie, appearance without content, image without substance. This is the demut, the ‘likeness’ which is the internal part of the reality and the substance of the life. As Eve was the mother of all living, so is the blood of Christ that inner reality which gives life.
Finally, to bring our focus back to body and blood of Christ, which after all are the elements which Jesus Christ proclaimed unequivocally to be the conveyors of Life eternal, His flesh must be the food, the Word of the Father that nourishes and forms the image of God which is the divine form. The blood, as drink, is the draught of Spirit, by which the true Life in the image is empowered and sustained. This means that the male and female, the form and the hidden life, or the image and the likeness, must partake of those spiritual elements from Christ who is The Word of Life. His Heavenly flesh and blood are the food and drink that gives eternal life.
It is at the point, the lover of truth must stop and say, “Enough!” Because words from unclean lips among a people of unclean lips, cannot possibly characterize these sublime realities of the Spirit.
And here the lover of God ought to stop and humbly proclaim with John:
Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. 1 John 3:2
It has not yet been revealed so our words can serve only as approximations for we see through a glass darkly.
Summarizing, albeit a repetition of what has been stated already, the body and blood of Christ cannot be reduced to physical flesh and blood, nor to the elements of the weekly communion supper, nor to the Passover feast on the 14th of Abib. They are something else entirely.
And to confirm that understanding just consider the words to the Hebrews:
For you have not come to [a mountain] which may be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness, and gloom and whirlwind . . . But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than [the blood] of Abel. Heb 12:18, 22-24 (emphasis added)
Are you still in doubt? Compare Hebrews (9:21-23) where “heavenly things” are sprinkled with blood, clear sign of another blood at work, the Heavenly blood of Christ. With this confirmation we reach the solid truth that we need this spiritual nourishment to bring life to our souls, not the fleshly life, but the life of the Spirit. It remains now to briefly examine the consequence of this truth for our life and practice.
Taking the Heavenly Food
Through forty years in the wilderness Israel lived upon the manna which came down from the Lord, and they lived on the drink which came forth from the Rock which led them in that journey.
We are, in the very same manner, traversing the wilderness of consciousness, a wild and barren place, where the city of God is still a vision and dream off to the future. And we are faced with a more glorious offer. Should we grumble? Are we tired of the Words of Christ? Do we weary of His body and blood?
Longing for the dainty foods of Egypt, most of Christendom harmonizes the table of the Lord with the table of demons. Why not eat everything? The traditions of God and traditions of men, scripture and kabbalah, lamb and pork, it’s really all the same, isn’t it?
In the words of Gen X, it’s all good, isn’t it? Absolutely – it is not! Such thinking is the consequence of the knowledge of good and evil and the profane simply cannot be harmonized with the sacred. Light and darkness have no fellowship.
Alas, Christendom has tired of its manna, Christ Jesus, the Word; the manna that came down from Heaven. Something more ear tickling and palatable would be better. And in eating the quail, like the food from Egypt, Christendom will choke and die on its rejection of the Lord. Multitudes will fall in the wilderness – victims of their own rebellion, their desire for the world, their rejection of God’s chosen leaders, and love of the magical things and idols of Egypt and Babylon.
Look back at the ironies of the sacred history of Israel. God gave them the Sabbath as a gift and required its observance but he grew displeased at the way they kept it. He liberated them from Egypt, but they never left the idols behind and those abominations have been a part of both Israel of the flesh and the Israel circumcised of heart.
And He brought them back from Babylon – yet once again they lifted the dark magic of that kingdom and wove it into a seductive schematic of the Tree of Life which turns out to be a Tree of knowledge of good and evil because the stone the builders rejected is the true foundation of the Tree, while their foundation of sand will wash away. How could those who did not have the Son, and therefore did not have the Father, how could they possibly bring forth truth of the Father and the Son, the mystery of God, both of the Father and of the Son (Col. 2:2)? No, they brought forth ear-tickling bootstrap theologies that amount to violent seizure of the kingdom in Christ’s own words. And the stone those builders rejected will smash down on that kingdom and pulverize it to dust.
But now comes the time of the apocatastasis, the fiery restoration of all things, which the days of Elijah usher in. And after that: the kingdom. In this restoration we come to the deep mysteries of God, many of which have lain dormant for 1900 years.
So what is the deep reality for our life every day? Give us this day our daily bread – give us the manna from Heaven. We must live on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
This means that we do need to observe things but not in a superficial way, not by externals only. God’s excoriation of Israel for hollow observation of holy days has been used as a flimsy excuse by Christendom for doing away with the observations altogether. But it should be clear by now that God cherishes loyalty and observance of His ordinances, but only from the heart.
Indeed, it was the Egyptian import of a gnosis that claimed the external observation of feast days was irrelevant, which infiltrated Rome, and troubled Paul, Peter, John, Polycarp, and others no end. This type of spiritualization has destroyed God’s Church. I mean really, is it reasonable to say that what we do with the body doesn’t matter? Why keep the commandments? Well, you wouldn’t kill a neighbor and then use as a defense that you really weren’t angry with him at all, but you thought he really deserved it. No. Then why would you justify not keeping the Sabbath, because you are resting in the Lord on His day? Is that what shopping at Walmart is, or cleaning the house, resting in the Lord? Keeping the Sabbath holy is keeping the entire day holy, engaged in activities that are directed only toward Spirit and the heavenly realities.
With that said, this writing has nothing to do with eliminating the observance of Passover or the other Holy days. They are absolutely expected of sons of God to fully participate. What is at stake here, is the manner of observance. God tired of all the externals which had no heart and understanding to back them up. Folks tapping their fingers and watching the sun waiting til they could get back to business, which after all, is what really counts. After all, aren’t these festivals just an insurance policy with the Almighty? Of course, He sees straight to the heart through all superficiality.
The bottom line on the question is the image is nothing without the likeness or similitude. There must be a correspondence between appearance and reality. Both male and female are required to engender life, and both Body and Blood are necessary to bring forth eternal Life. Word and Spirit work together in perfect unity and must be borne within the disciple for that disciple to find the way through the narrow gate.
Yes, the gate to Life is narrow and few there are that find it. It is belief in the Lord, belief in His every word, and it is the reception of His being, His very body and blood that gives one eternal Life.
Viewing the broad landscape of the story of God’s creation, the observer can take in the simple aspects of the story, namely that Christ, The Word of Life, is the template of all life, and provides the critical elements that are the composition of the life of sons of God, namely image and likeness which are built from His body and His blood.
How could it be otherwise? How could the Logos be the head of All creation if He were not the substance and breath composing it all and holding it all together with the word of His power (Heb. 1:3)?
The psalmist helps to elucidate the difference between word and the additional element that comes with Spirit, Ruach. It is the Spirit that gives Life as the Logos also said to His disciples.
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
And by the breath <Ruach> of His mouth all their host. Ps. 33:6
Notice the distinction? The forms can be structured by the Word, but it is His breath or Ruach, His Spirit, or Life, that can bring forth living beings, seen here as the host.
Isn’t that the distinction of artificial intelligence as well? They have form but no Spirit, thus no life; they are inanimate objects, like any material substance without breath. And no philosophical or natural scientific arguments can change that, it is a fact of the universe and God’s creation of it.
To receive this Life, we must lay down our separate life and thought, we must receive Him, we must take in His Spirit, His blood, and partake of every word He has uttered, each morsel of manna composing a part of the divine image of the Father, and we all become joined together as one collective body which loves with the Love of the Father and lives according to the Breath or Spirit of God.
Living on these elements is our daily bread, and it requires that we look to Him first for Life, and labor not for the food that perishes, but that we do everything we do with eternity in mind, keeping our eyes fixed on the things unseen. The body and blood of Christ, the substance of our image and similitude from God, comes through abiding in Him, that He may thus abide in us. The Word, Christ appearing like the Father, and the Spirit, the life and power of God – these unite in us as we partake daily of the spiritual flesh and blood of Christ Jesus, growing into the full measure of the stature of Christ.