“New Creation” on John 20:19-23 by Joe Ellis — April 12, 2026

To grasp what Jesus is doing in this passage we need to look back to the very first book in the Bible, to Genesis 2:7, to the moment when “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into His nostrils the ruach of life (the breath of life); and the man became a living being.”  The moment that started it all for humankind — God breathing life into a mound of soil and the soil became flesh.  It is this moment that Jesus is building upon and adding to in John 20. That first evening of Easter, Jesus is performing a very similar act of New Creation as when God gifted life to Adam through His Spirit-breath.

In many ways, John has been preparing us for this moment of New Creation throughout His Gospel — that’s one of the reasons John begins His Gospel in chapter 1 with these immortal words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Through Him all things were made.” John is signalling to us that this Word — this Christ Jesus — is, in some mysterious sense, one with the Creator — and the Word played no small role in the Creation we read about in Genesis 1. Further, John is signalling that Jesus, the eternal Word, has come to build on the creative work of God that we read about in Genesis 1 and 2. That’s strong stuff. Jesus is pretty up front about this agenda in His conversation with Nicodemus. You can read all about it in John 3.  Jesus says in John 3:5-6, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit.” In this conversation Jesus is describing the New Creation He is bringing about — humans born again, born of the Spirit (Pneuma). The Greek word Pneuma has the same meaning as the Hebrew word Ruach: it can mean wind, breath, God’s Spirit, or the human spirit.  So you could translate Genesis 2:7 with “God breathed into Adam’s nostril’s the Spirit of Life” or “the breath of life,” just as you could translate Jesus’ words as saying “What is born of flesh of flesh, what is born of breath is breath.” God’s Spirit gives birth to a new Spirit within us… and God does this through breath. In Hebrew and Greek these concepts are linked together in a way that’s not as apparent in English. So being born anew through the Spirit-Breathe of God is the way we are born into His Kingdom.

Now, here in John 20, after His resurrection, Jesus is making good on what He promised to Nicodemus would soon come.  Jesus breathes Spirit into His disciples and they are born again.  Our translation says Jesus “breathed on” the disciples, as if Jesus just blew on His disciples form the safety of a couple feet away.  But the word used here, “breathed into”, is the exact same word used in the Greek version of Genesis 2 where God breathes His ruach into Adam’s nostrils.  This paints quite a bit more intimate picture — Jesus is performing spiritual CPR on His disciples.  On that first Easter evening, Jesus is performing an action with the same power, authority and significance as when God breathed into that mound of clay and brought forth humankind — Jesus is bringing about a new Adam — He is transforming His disciples into a New Creation. 

Now, let’s pause for a moment. What do we mean by New Creation? Christians can use that phrase a lot, but what exactly are we saying? After all, the disciples probably didn’t look any different before and after. There are different ways of thinking about what it means for something to be created, or newly created. Most often when we think of creating something ‘new’, the item created has just been made, it’s fresh. The Greek word is Ex Nihilo, out of nothing. God uniquely makes things Ex Nihilo, out of nothing — but that’s not the only way the Bible talks about God creating. In Scripture, we see God also creating by taking old material and giving it new purpose. Stated differently: one way that God creates something new (i.e. a New Creation) is by taking something He has already created and reordering it so that it has a new purpose. In fact, that’s what God is doing in Genesis 2:7 when He takes a mound of dirt and breathes on it. God is creating something new out of something He has already created. This isn’t Ex Nihilo, but its still a New Creation. Through this type of creation, God brings something new out of old material. God has given this mound of dirt new being, new purpose, new honour and glory — behold, a New Creation! No longer dirt, but a body animated by the breath of God. In fact, the first chapter of Genesis is best read in this way. God is taking old, disordered material — the watery chaos described in Genesis 1:1, and He orders it into something new — in Genesis 1, God is there, the Spirit-Breath is there, and the Word (Jesus) is there — and together the Godhead brings about something new from the old. They transform the watery chaos into a New Creation. This New Creation has new purpose, God is reordering Earth to be His temple. Before that, earth was just another chaotic planet in space — but now He has transformed Earth into His temple. 

In fact, this is precisely the type of creating that is going on when Jesus breathes His Spirit into the disciples. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul says that when humans receive the Spirit we become God’s temple on Earth. Behold, a New Creation! This new from old is the type of creating Jesus is doing when He breathes His Spirit into the disciples — He is not creating new material in the disciples. His disciples are not the equivalent a new car coming out of a factory, rather it’s like installing a new operating system on a computer. Jesus imparts His Spirit to the disciples, and they become the temple of God. His disciples have a new operating system, a new purpose, a new reason for existence. Now they can function as they were always intended! They are so fundamentally repurposed that the only way to capture the difference between the disciples before and after they receive the Spirit is that they are a New Creation. 

Jesus breathes the Spirit into the disciples — and as He does so, He tells them what sort of new operating system they have received. He says: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”  Their previous operating system resulted in a people whose default mode was to stay hidden in fear behind locked doors. No longer. With their new operating system, Jesus tells them their default mode is to go forth into the world with Christ’s message of Peace. To bring the peace of Jesus into a world where there is no peace. That is the mark of the Spirit empowered operating system of Christ followers — to announce the coming of the Peace of Christ and His Kingdom.  The peace that Jesus brought to Earth — this enemy loving, cross carrying, capacity to die for enemy type of peace — the disciples are now charged and empowered to do just that. And not only that, Jesus goes on to commission His disciples with, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  Followers of Jesus are to announce God’s message of forgiveness.  In doing so, followers of Jesus are holding out the possibility for all who hear the Word of Christ be born of Spirit, to receive new life, to themselves become a New Creation.  To go forth into this world announcing the good news of God’s Kingdom: the possibility of peace, forgiveness and reconciliation. This is message is wholesale: peace, forgiveness and reconciliation between human and God, between human and human, and between humans and creation. This is what it means for us to be New Creations — we have a new operating system, a new reason for existence, and that is to proclaim and embody the reign of God.

Theologians have developed a name to describe this group of people who have been made into a New Creation, who are called to embody and proclaim the peace, forgiveness and reconciliation won by Christ Jesus. The name typically given to this group of people is the Church. There are other names like Christ followers or family of God — but the name for this people who have been given this New Operating System of the Spirit is the Church. Jesus breathes the Spirit into His disciples and the Church is born.  So let us be who we are: the church — a people filled with the Spirit, made for new purpose: to go forth into the World to bring peace, forgiveness and reconciliation into a broken, hurting world.