Breathing air is a sign of being alive. But not just any air will do! Asbestos fibers, nicotine, smog, and other pollutants are harmful and should not be part of the air we breathe. For this reason, our governments set up agencies to regulate air quality.

In today’s passage, the resurrected Jesus suddenly appears to his disciples who were gathered behind locked doors “for fear of the Jewish leaders.” These disciples were alive—that is, they were breathing—yet they were paralyzed with fear. We read that Jesus “breathed on them”—and soon everything would change!

Instead of cowering behind locked doors, they were sent out into the world as the Father had sent Jesus. They received this mission because Jesus not only breathed on them but also commanded them to receive the Holy Spirit, whose name in the original languages of the Bible (Hebrew and Greek) means “breath” or “wind.”

Pictures of breath and life are found throughout God’s story of redemption. When God breathed into the man he had formed, Adam “became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). But later sin came into our lives, and even though we were physically alive, we were “dead in [our] transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Through Christ’s finished work, however, we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and through the Holy Spirit we produce the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).

May Christ breathe his life-giving Spirit into our lives today!