And here the reality goes far beyond the illustration. The plant cannot give the clay life. It can only take the substance of the clay into itself. But Christ gives spiritual life to individuals having only natural life. The basic principle, of course, still holds true.
Life comes only from life.
Spiritual life cannot develop out of anything that is not spiritual life. Christ is the Source of spiritual life. We are definitely aware that there is a difference between what is alive and what is not alive. No man has ever taken the non-living atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen and made something living out of them. But God did.