Sunday, August 3, 2014

Anthropology 4 - The Human Spirit (Pneuma)


Last post, I discussed that man has not only a soma (body) and a psyche (soul), but also a pneuma (spirit). Since when does man have this spirit? Where did it come from? How did we get it? Why do we have it? What does it do? Let’s start at the beginning and take a look at the creation of man.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” -Genesis 1:26-27

And it was good. We know Genesis goes on to say that God’s creation was perfect. Because man was created in the image of God, Adam and Eve, could walk and talk with God, and could look on his face directly. Man’s will was in perfect harmony with God’s will, until man sinned and it wasn’t, and we lost the image of God. So, what is the image of God? What does it mean to be made in the image of God?

“God is spirit.” -John 4:24a

“For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” -2 Corinthians 3:18b

“[T]hen the Lord God formed the man (body) of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (spirit), and the man became a living creature (soul).” -Genesis 2:7”

God created us this way. “Breath of life” in Hebrew is Neshemah, the spirit, or the character, or “image” of God. Your psyche is what makes you, you. It is your essence and is the union, or intersection, of the physical and spiritual. God is spirit, but man is spirit in a soul in a body, or a pneuma in a psyche in a soma. Our animal nature (body) does not reflect God. The rational and intellectual nature (soul) reflects Him only partially, since God is much more than just a reasoning being. Going back to the creation story we see that the image of God, given to Man was his spirit.

“God’s image, they say, still shines now in the spiritual essence of our soul.” -C.F.W. Walther in a sermon in 1841

Adam and Eve were made for immortality and perfect harmony and union with God, but this immortality was contingent on his spiritual likeness to God through obedience and love. Therefore, Adam and Eve were given a will that was perfectly in tune with God’s, but not enslaved to it. This state of being was God’s intention for man. This is how God wanted it to be.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” -Genesis 2:15-17

Notice, that verse says they will die that day. Did Adam and Eve’s physical body die the day they ate of the tree? Did their souls die? Their death that day was a spiritual death. Their spirits died because they disobeyed. They had to leave the Garden of Eden, because they could not be with God without his likeness. People cannot stand to be in the presence of God when they are spiritually dead. Adam and Eve’s bodies began to die, not directly because they sinned, but because they could no longer eat of the tree of life after being kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

“Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever-” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” -Genesis 3:22-24

Man’s immortality springs from his being given a spirit made in the image of God, but that when he lost that image, he became dead in his sins and fell under the law of mortality and became under the sentence of death. In the instant that Adam sinned, his spirit died. People are left with nothing but a guilty conscience and seek to fill the hole, left by the dead spirit.

So, the spirit is the image of God, but besides being able to be in God’s presence, what else does the spirit do? Actually three things.

God-Consciousness and where God Lives in Us

The spirit is what allowed man to understand spiritual things. When people say they are spiritual but not religious (SNR), I always laugh because without faith in Jesus, we are spiritually dead, and you can’t be spiritual if you are spiritually dead. This is how the fall of man causes original sin, and why we are in a state of total depravity.

“The spirit (neshema) of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts.” -Proverbs 20:27

In this proverbs verse, the Hebrew word for spirit that is used is the same as the “breath of life” from the Genesis creation story.  Paul tells us that only those with a spirit can interpret spiritual truths.  This goes along with the distinction between wisdom and knowledge discussed previously.

“But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”-these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” -1 Corinthians 2:9-14

People need a divine faculty, or “organ”, in order to understand divine truth. The eye is the organ for seeing, the ear for hearing, and the spirit, or pneuma, is the organ or faculty by which we know God. The natural man (who still has a soul) cannot understand and does not accept spiritual things, because they are not discerned by the soul, but by the spirit.

“The first part, the spirit, is the highest, deepest, and noblest part of man. By it he is enabled to lay hold on things incomprehensible, invisible, and eternal. It is, in brief, the dwelling place of faith and the Word of God.” -Martin Luther, Commentary on Luke

Communication and Communion with God

Next people need the spirit to commune, worship, and talk to God. True worship, praise, and prayer come from our spirit.

“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” -John 4:24

“What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit… I will sing praise with my spirit….” -1 Corinthians 14:15

God does not hear the prayers of those who are spiritually dead, because they cannot truly pray to him, without faith in him.

“The Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous.” -Proverbs 15:29

Children and Heirs of God

In so far as man is only a rational being (having a body [soma] and a soul [psyche]), he is not the offspring of God, but the creature, or created of God. God is the father of spirits. Those who are spirits are the children of God.

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” -John 3:6

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?” -Hebrews 12:7-9

“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” -Romans 8:16

How do we become children and heirs of God? The story with Nicodemus directly addresses this. The body cannot be born again, neither can the soul. Only the spirit can because it is dead. Some people erroneously think of baptism/conversion as a rejuvenation of the old birth a fixing of the old, rather than an actual new birth. We a spiritually, stillborn. That is, we are born with a living body and soul, but a dead or dormant spirit. Once faith is received, you are not a better man, but a new man.

“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” -John 3:1-6

Or another way to say it is that when God calls us, he restores the image of God (the spirit) in us, through the work of his Son, Jesus Christ.

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” -Romans 8:29-30

He must still remain in you to sustain it. We cannot sustain it ourselves.

“No man has power to retain the spirit.” -Ecclesiastes 8:8

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