“For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given the Son to have life in Himself” (John 5:26).

The Hebrew verb bara, translated as “created” in the first chapter of Genesis, is used only when God is the subject. Man can make or form things out of pre-existing matter, but only God can create something from nothing and life from non-life. It is God “in whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:10). It is He alone who can give life to the “new creature” born again by His Spirit (II Corinthians 5:17; John 3:3–6). Whether a man is saved or lost depends upon whether he is alive in Christ (I Corinthians 15:22) or “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1).

Only God can impart that life through His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51). Adam’s sin brought death into the world and in him “all die” (I Corinthians 15:22). “Without shedding of blood is no remission” of sin (Hebrews 9:22), and it is the “precious blood of Christ . . . foreordained before the foundation of the world” (I Peter 1:19,20) which “taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Jesus’ death was the perfect, wholly acceptable offering for our sin. His resurrection from the dead is the Creator’s powerful display of an endless life and of His victory over death and its sting. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (I John 5:12). “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). CJH