I recently read a piece of C.S. Lewis taken from Mere Christianity. It is the page where he attempts to help the reader conceptualize the difference between Bios, physical life and Zoe, spiritual life. His encapsulating synopsis is that we are all like a bunch of statues standing around with some anticipation that some will become living human beings. A dead lump of clay or granite or bronze might breathe and think and strut about. You might as well believe that corruptible flesh and bones could be raised from the dead to travel amongst the cosmos.
And you do, or least many of you who have heard and accepted the message of the Gospel, do. Believing is not acceptance. It is merely acknowledgment. You might acknowledge it is possible to stay under water for four minutes without breathing because of evidence which causes you to believe it is so. Yet you fully accept it to be truth when you rise from the water after actually demonstrating it in your life. Believing it gives you the mental ability to acknowledge the existence of its reality. Acceptance occurs when the acknowledged truth is lived out in your life as an undeniable reality.
Zoe is exactly that. You may say that you have Jesus and live for Him but if there is no tangible observable reconstitution of your old bones and aging flesh into the spiritual being God designed you to be, then there is no surrender, rebirth, baptism or resurrection. A change both internal and external takes place. The desires of the heart are removed and replaced. The gaze of the eyes turn from temporal beauty to eternal joys. The stone becomes flesh with warmth and softness and mental acuity.
Impossible! Some would say it has never been done. No one has the power to change the molecules and DNA of an inanimate object and allow it to become alive. And in a strictly two dimensional sense they would be correct. God, however, operates outside of the physical; outside of time and in ways that we cannot even imagine. When Adam and Eve were created they were spiritual beings, temporarily inhabiting physical bodies. Rebellion imprisoned them in the physical. God in His mercy and grace made a way for them and us to become fully alive spiritually as they once were.
Have you ever witnessed a mime or street performer attempting to reduce their movements so much that observers wondered if they were living or not? They made a valiant attempt to appear as though they were something they were not and yet, they could not maintain their intricate facade. Eventually they moved. After perhaps hours or stillness they departed from the character they had attempted to become. Even repeated efforts could not permanently alter their true condition. They were alive in spite of their best efforts. No real change had occurred. They appeared immobile for a while. Many who passed by admired their form and might even have accepted them as statues. Their Bios had not become stone.
In the same manner neither can a Bios become Zoe just because they desire to act like it. A soul is Zoe only because the creator has made them so. He provided a truth to believe, a means to receive and evidence that it was done. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Believe in you heart that God has raised Him from the dead. Confess (agree with God) with your mouth that He is Lord of all. Then He sends His Holy Spirit to dwell within and change the Bios to the Zoe He has always intended. He set the inescapable conditions for restoration and redemption. Acknowledging who He claims to be is not the same as accepting His remedy and His person for yourself.
There is no change simply by willing or wishing it. Stone is free within its nature to do all it is able to do. You as an unrepentant lost sinner are free within your nature to do all you are able to do. Only when you permit Him to change you will your nature change from a stiff necked Bios to a new creature in Christ Jesus, His Zoe.
