So far in this blog I have been discussing life of two types–temporal and eternal. This distinction may seem confusing to the English reader of the Bible. After all, my critic may object, “Life is life. What’s the difference?”
In comparison to the common Greek language of the New Testament, our modern English lacks words to specifically translate the Greek, and this impoverishment in the English may cause us to misunderstand the biblical message. Study of the original language helps to fill in the gaps in English.
In this post, we shall see that our English word “life” translates two different Greek NT words: 1) bios and 2) zoe. The distinction between bios and zoe is important.
The overriding theme of the entire Bible is God’s redeeming people from death to life through the giving of His own life in His Son, Jesus Christ. In other words, through the advent and sacrifice of Jesus Christ God intends to provide life to people who will receive His redeeming Son. Referring to His Son, God says through the apostle John,
John 1:4, 12-13 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men . . . (12) As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, (13) who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
And Jesus Himself declares,
John 10:10b-11 I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (11) “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.
How can Jesus give life to men who already have life, and are living life? Clearly there is a different kind of life being given here than we ordinarily consider. This is where the Greek words become important. People have life when they are born into this world in the usual physical process, but they have yet to have the status of being “children of God,” which is a different kind of LIFE. In this post I italicize the word life, and I capitalize one of the two Greek words for life to show the Bible’s distinction between two different kinds of life represented by the two different Greek words, bios and Zoe. Of course, this emphasis is not in the biblical text, but I use it to help you the reader see the distinct meanings of the scriptural passages about life.
First, let me define the Greek words for life in Biblical context.
bios – life in time, life of physical metabolism always changing, growing, then running down, running out to the end of its time. This is life of the physical body that is so familiar to us from the temporal perspective. This is life treated and enhanced by medical science, but it is life always destined for death.
Zoe – eternal life, life as God has it, never ending life, abundant life, life of the eternal soul (psyche is the Greek word for soul) that is free from the degenerating virus of sin. This is the life that God’s Son promised to the repentant thief on the cross beside Him, and it is the life that repentant people who trust Him receive as the rightful children of God, who inherit the eternal estate of God.
We all come into this fallen world with one kind of life, bios, but God seeks to redeem us and give us His kind of life, ZOE. The message of God from His eternal perspective is all about His Son, Jesus Christ, who communicates His LIFE into our temporal perspective.
bios life
Life with a small “l”, or bios, refers to biological physical life and all the activities associated with it and necessary to sustain it. This biological life is what people have in common with other living creatures on planet earth. This is the “life” which science researches and medicine treats. It is human life full of business and pleasure, economics and sociology, anthropology and archaeology, and pain and death. Bios is time constrained life in all of its stages—conception, ascendancy, decline and terminus. The Greek word bios appears in a number of revealing New Testament passages, a few of which are listed below to illustrate the biblical view of worldly bios life. The reader might want to do a concordance search for further examples of the two types of life. A Greek-English keyword Bible may be helpful in such a search. Notice that the underlined words in the following quotes from the New American Standard translation are the words used to translate either bios or Zoe. The English word “life” is not always used to translate bios, depending on the context of the verse.
(1 Timothy 2:1-2) I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life [bios] in all godliness and dignity.
(1 John 3:17) But whoever has the world’s goods [bios], and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
2 Timothy 2:4) No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life [bios], so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.
(Mark 12:44) “for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on [bios].
Luke 15:12) The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth [bios] between them.
(Luke 8:43 KJV) Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years; and though she had spent all she had [bios] on physicians, no one could cure her.
(Luke 8:14) “The seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life [bios], and bring no fruit to maturity.
(1 John 2:16) For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life [bios], is not from the Father, but is from the world.
Analysis of the above passages reveals many things about bios life in the New Testament. In the first four passages bios is not demeaned, but is recognized as important. Christians are not called to be ascetics, but are called to right priorities in the life of this world as stewards of the bios life that God has given them.
The Apostle Paul therefore instructs people to pray in order that they may live peaceful lives (bios). The follower of Christ is not to hoard life or the world’s goods (bios), but share these essential means of life with those in need. Neither should the Christian become preoccupied with the worldly passion for obtaining ever more bios, and thereby become increasingly absorbed in the affairs of bios. Rather, as a soldier of Christ, the Christian seeks to serve and please God.
A striking example of this priority of devotion is the story of the widow (Mark 12:44) who cast two small coins into the temple treasury as Jesus stood watching. Christ’s analysis of her gift was that she had given more than the wealthy donors had. Why? Because while they had actually deposited more money into the treasury, she had put in “all she to live on” (all her bios). Her devotion to God had priority over her worldly living (bios). In other words, from God’s eternal perspective bios is important and significant because it is necessary for physical survival, but it is not the first priority of people who trust God.
The eternal perspective on life is contrasted with the temporal in the second four passages above, which serve to illustrate the perspective and priorities of the person bound in the temporal realm. Preoccupation with bios leads the prodigal son to seek worldly wealth prematurely and without warrant. He asks for and receives his share of inheritance (bios) from his father. That inheritance was intended to sustain his father until he died, but the son cannot wait because of his preoccupation with bios, and his father, who is a shadow (type) of God, gave him what he wanted and waited lovingly for him to return to his senses.
A woman with an incurable physical ailment spent everything she had (all of her bios) for healing, but without relief or cure, until she came to Jesus. In the parable of the sower, the seed represents the word of God, and Jesus warns that preoccupation with bios chokes and kills a person’s ability to relate to God and to realize the fruit of the seed of that relationship. John warns that the priority of bios is worldly lust that competes with God for the attention and devotion of a person’s soul.
In the end bios is a temporal thing with a temporal destiny, which is death and dust. As such, bios competes for the attention and devotion of people. In the Bible, whatever competes against God for people’s devotion is an “antichrist” and pulls a temporal shade over their eternal vision so that they miss life with the big “L,” or Zoe.
Zoe life.
Life with a big “L,” or Zoe, embraces a less confining sort of life than bios. Though Zoe may be used in secular Greek literature to refer to life in the ordinary sense, the New Testament writers are more specific in their use of the word. In the New Testament Zoe refers to life as God possesses it. Zoe is life that transcends time and space. Zoe is life that is much more than mere biological metabolism and existence. Zoe is life unending, life which depends on the very words of God, not merely on satisfaction of physical needs and lusts.
(Mat 4:4 NNAS) But He [Jesus] answered and said, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.’”
Zoe is the fullness of life that God originally intended for people created in his image to possess with joy and total satisfaction. It is life that does not decay in time. Zoe appears more frequently than bios in the New Testament, always in the sense illustrated in the following representative contexts.
(John 6:27) “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life [Zoe], which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.”
(Mark 9:43, 45) “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life [Zoe] crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, . . . “If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life [Zoe] lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell,
(Matthew 7:14) “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life [Zoe], and there are few who find it.
(John 1:4) In Him [Jesus] was life [Zoe], and the life [Zoe] was the Light of men.
(John 6:40) “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life [Zoe], and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”
(1 John 1:1-2) What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life [Zoe]—and the life [Zoe] was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life [Zoe], which was with the Father and was manifested to us . . .
(1 John 5:11-12) And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life [Zoe], and this life [Zoe] is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life [Zoe]; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life [Zoe].
The first two passages above make it plain that Zoe is life without parallel or peer. It is the life to be desired and sought above all else by a right-minded person. Even if bios is impaired or handicapped, Zoe should be sought preferentially. That is how valuable Zoe is, according to God!
But Zoe is hard to find because people are distracted by bios and prefer a broad and easy path over a hard-to-enter gate and arduous way in “time.” Zoe is the life that God possesses, and hence can only be found in God, and in his son, Jesus Christ. God wills that those who trust and obey Christ should have eternal life (Zoe). This is not some mystical phantasmal concept of life, but real life, true life (in the person Jesus Christ) which came to mankind packaged in the trappings of bios, in time and history. Reliable witnesses saw, touched, and examined this Zoe life carefully, as John indicates in the above passage from his first letter. Zoe is life eternal, which entered into life temporal, so that each fallen person in this world might have the same option that their first ancestors had before the Fall—trust and obey God, or trust and serve self. The difference between bios and Zoe is the difference between eternal death and eternal life.
These two types of life parallel and reinforce the two views of life, temporal and eternal, which are intimately and intricately interwoven in the text of the Holy Bible. Neither view stands alone, but each is necessary to the balanced biblical view of human nature and mankind’s relationship to our creator God. Analysis of the Bible with this dual view paradigm in mind can resolve some notions of conflict with scientific discovery, as I explain in my series on “The Age of the World” on this blog.
But this paradigm of two kinds of life, and the two perspectives—temporal and eternal—can do more; it can resolve some chronic theological conflicts over apparent contradictions which emerge from the Bible by turning such conflicts into paradoxes that stimulate inquiry into the deeper mysteries of Sovereign God. Contradiction is logically unacceptable, but if contradiction is really only paradox resulting from an incomplete vision or partial perspective, then there is hope for resolution of conflict.
My discussions of conflicts are submitted to allow thoughtful reflection by those who are willing to examine issues from an eternal perspective—that is, those who “have ears to hear,” as Jesus proclaims in Matthew 11:15.
The curse of time.
No one but God is free from the ravages of time, because only God is not subject to time. Time is subject to God. God’s essential nature is Zoe life free of time, but we are born into bios life entrapped in time. Our longing for eternal life and personal rejection of death is evidence that we are created for eternity. But in time the reality of death crushes our longing.
The physical bodies of all people and all things are terminated in time. The first man and woman were given everything in the eternal creation, but with a single prohibition—that they not eat of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” The phrase “knowledge of good and evil” is a Hebrew way of saying “the knowledge of everything.” If man intimately “knows,” for himself and according to his own will, good and evil, he sets himself up as the universal moral authority and becomes his own god. This is inconsistent with God’s kingdom. Because only God is good. And only God knows everything (is omniscient). Man’s pretension to the “knowledge of good and evil” is simply the human will to trust self above God. The first people were tempted to distrust God and become as God themselves, which is what Satan offered them (Genesis 3:4-5), and they succumbed to this temptation. Essentially, they said to God, “We want to live our lives our own way and be sovereign in ourselves.” God’s response to their choice was consistent with His character. Being ever giving and never taking, God essentially said to them, “Alright, you can have it your way, but only for a time! For sin cannot enter or abide in my holy eternal presence!” Heaven is a theocracy, not a democracy!
God is perfectly good. Evil cannot coexist with him. Thus time became the curse for man.
The curse is that in time all things must deteriorate unto disorder and death, which is God’s promised penalty for rebellion. God lovingly places the first people into the ancient time-bound and death-ridden natural cosmos, so that they may have, for a time, what they want. He creates this death-filled natural world from the depth of eternity as the real penalty for those who choose self-will over His will. God’s action is consistent with the Apostle Paul’s description. Paul states that God’s response to people who choose themselves and their lusts over Him is to give them over to the objects of their lust as their penalty (Romans 1:24-28). Those objects of lust always lead to death in time, which is exactly what all sinful people experience.
Hence, I believe that this temporal cosmos that we currently inhabit is ancient— created with as much time as God chose to emphasize the horror of death. Billions of years of recycling life and death! But though this earth is ancient, we humans have only been here for a relatively short time, perhaps about 12,000 years. This is because Adam and his wife were inserted into this ancient world as the penalty for Adam’s sin. All people are descended from this first couple, not from a different kind of flesh (1 Corinthians 15:39), as demanded by proponents of biological evolution (see series Evolution’s Contrafaith in this blog, as well as series The Age of the World).
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