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
great insights... tHANK YOU
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