Zoe: “I Am the Life”

. Word of the Week

August 8, 2026

 

Zōē: “I Am the Life”

 

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.”

John14:6 NASB

 

When Muhammed Ali knocked out Sonny Liston to win the heavy weight boxing championship in 1964, he shouted, “I am the greatest.”  It wasn’t an isolated boast.  He had released a spoken-word album called I Am the Greatest a year earlier, and he often repeated the line later.

When a boxer makes such a claim, we take it with a grain of salt.  But what do you when I man like Jesus of Nazareth says things like, “I am the way, the truth and the life”?

Millions of us have taken him at His word, following the line of countless others who have formed the Christian church for the last two thousand years.   Not an idle bit of bragging, it was a sober description of the facts.

We have spent the last two weeks meditating on Jesus as the Way and the Truth.  Now we turn to Jesus as the Life.  As usual, we approach this by looking at the Greek word for “life.”

The New Testament actually uses two different words for “life.”  The first Greek word is bios, the source of our word biology.  Biology is the study of living things, so it’s an appropriate way to remember this Greek word for life.

Bios is the word that describes our physical life, simply the fact that we are alive.  Our bios consists of the daily routines and events that occupy our time.  2 Timothy 2:4 points out that a soldier is absorbed in his military duties, not the bios of everyday civilian life. And Paul prays for things that will enable us to live a tranquil and quiet life (1 Timothy 2:2).

Bios often refers to the things that keep our physical life going, the resources and livelihood that supply our needs.  When Jesus saw a widow put two coins into the Temple treasury, he praised her because she had given “her entire bios,” everything she had to live on (Mark 12:44).  And 1 John 3:17 points out the hypocrisy of anyone who has “the bios of this world,” the material and financial resources to help someone and yet refuses to help a brother in need.  The prodigal son received and squandered his father’s wealth (bios) (Luke 15:12, 30)

In short, bios is limited to our physical life here on earth.  It is essential, of course, just as flowers and green grass make Spring possible.  But there is another kind of life that is even better!

The second Greek word for life is zōē, the source for our word zoology, the study of animal life.  When you see the word “life” in your English New Testament, the odds are 10 to 1 that this is the word you are reading, and that is the word you find in John 14:6.

Zōē can describe our physical life. As Paul explained to the philosophers of Athens, God has given “life [zōē] and breath and all things” to humanity (Acts 17:25).

However, the word usually goes beyond our present “fourscore and seven years” of earthly existence.  Again and again, Jesus promised eternal life.  The theme shows up most clearly in the Gospel of John.  Some samples:

• For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16)
• He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him (John 3:36))
• But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst, but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life (John 4:14)
• You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me, and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life (John 5:39-40)
• I am the bread of life (John 6:35, 48)

Jesus told His disciples that He was going to leave them so He could prepare a place for them, one where they be with Him forever.  Even though He would die the next day, that death was only a temporary path to eternal life.  Not only was He alive, but He is the fountain, the source of life.  If you come to Him, you find that He is not only the pathway to God and the ultimate truth, He is also life personified.  When Jesus rose from the dead, He opened the door for us to have life that goes beyond this life.  As He said before raising Lazarus from the dead, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).

He gives eternal life to those who trust in Him.  We already possess that life (see John 5:24), and we will enjoy it in the unending ages of eternity.  We may experience physical death, but death has no power in His presence.

 

Study Hint:

The word zōē occurs 135 times in the New Testament, so we can’t exhaust its meaning in a simple article like this.  I suggest that you use a Bible study software program like Bible Hub or Blue Letter Bible to browse all the verses where this word is used.  It’s a major theme of Scripture!

 

Coming Up

Have you heard of the term “the judgment seat of Christ” where the Lord makes decisions about rewards for His servants?  Next week we will look at the Greek word for that judgment seat.

©Ezra Project 2026