The Spiritual Man

The Spiritual Man

The whole counsel of heaven is available to us as His children, made in His image. The image and likeness is not a physical likeness, as one day the physical shall pass away and we will be given glorified bodies. The image that bears likeness to God is the potential of our spiritual image. 

God created man with the possibility to become like God. No other creature has this potential. Before the fall of man, Adam and Eve were walking in wholeness. Although spiritually they were not fully mature at creation, God’s destiny was for them to grow to maturity by walking with Him and obeying Him. Through their disobedience, they ate of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” while still in their immature state which was their downfall. Some things God denies us at present because they are not good for us in our immaturity, but later He desires for us to have them. After Adam and Eve matured, I believe God intended to give them not only the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” but also the “tree of life’‘ to eat in order that they would live forever. However, because of their disobedience they fell into sin and darkness, and all mankind followed.

The Lord Jesus then had to die as a substitute for men’s sins so we could find our way back to God. When we accept Jesus as our Saviour we become “born again” and are once again created in God’s image. God created man with a very precious gift, one that He never violates. This gift is the free will of man. Creating man as a free moral agent resulted in the possibility of not only sons that would become like Him, but also sons that would become like the devil.

Man would be able to choose his own destiny by exercising his will. Why didn’t God just create man so that He would obey? He

could have thus avoided this world full of sin that is all due to the moral evil that proceeds from the will of man. God had such high

and lofty intentions for man that He desired more than a robot who would say “I love you” on command. He wanted sons to

fellowship with Him who would have His same desires and interests. He desired to have intimate communion with a “like being.”

He wanted sons that would have a genuine love for Him, not beings that would be forced to love Him. In making man with a free will he could choose to become like God.  We have neglected teaching the power and the role of man’s will in the walk of the overcomer, and thus many have been defeated by the enemy. Let us see how this important truth concerning our free will can help us to be victorious in our daily walk with the Lord.

We need to understand first that man is a spirit, with a soul, that lives in a body. The physical body is only the house or temple that holds the real man. Let us first look at the real man which is the spirit man. The Greek word for spirit is pneuma or “breath.” The spirit man is unseen with the natural eye, but is the hidden or inward man. This is the part of man that is referred to in Scripture as the heart of man. It is the sphere of divine influence. But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price (I Peter 3:4). The spirit man, being the real man, will live eternally. He will possess a soul and a body, but in essence the spirit will rule over the other two.