One of the most important issues in life is…life itself. There are multiple Gr. words translated “life” in the NT. The most important of which is the root “zoe” which occurs 326 times in the NT in all its various forms (as a noun, verb, etc., and compounded with prefixes and affixes). The key idea is that zoe life is something much more than physical life (Gr. bios) or even the thing we call our nature (Gr. psyche). Zoe is about our inner being which of course includes physical life and our inner nature, but goes beyond space-time aspects of life.
Zoe life was the life created into man, God’s highest creation as recorded in Gen. 2:7. The Gr. word zoe occurs twice in this verse in the ancient Gr. OT (known as the Septuagint): “God blew into the his (man’s) face the breath of zoe and came into being the human soul zoe-ing.”
There were two trees identified in the Garden of Eden (additionally, there were many other trees), one the famous Forbidden Tree with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. The other tree was the Tree of Zoe (Gen. 2:9). The fruit of the Zoe tree was blockaded by God to newly fallen man–Adam and Eve–after they ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:22, 24).
In Eph. 2:5 and Col. 3:13, citations given at the very bottom of this page, we see that the Zoe which had been blockaded has now been restored to us through the completed, redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ, by virtue of another tree, the Cross of condemnation wherein the eternal penalty we each deserve was fully placed on Christ in our place.
The multiple screen shot images below constitute all such NT uses where zoe is the root word:
