Genesis 2:7 (NKJV) 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
The story of the Bible is the story of the separation and reunification of a Father and his family. In our last post we saw that God created a physical universe. We focused on the fact that there are two realities that exist. There is the visible world of the natural and the invisible world of the spirit.
God is a spirit (John 4:24 KJV.) His realm of existence is a place called the spirit. If we are going to accept the truth of the Bible, we must also accept that this higher realm or reality exists. We live in the visible world of the natural. According to Genesis the natural was created by the physical. According to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4, the visible is temporary and the invisible is eternal. The visible is is subject to the invisible.
There is an important change in God’s method of creation when he came to man. God spoke the rest of creation into existence already alive. As far as we can see, the birds came forth flying, the fish swimming and the cows mooing. In today’s verse we see that God formed man’s body. The Hebrew word implies squeezing together like molding clay. To me this involves great love and care.
In Genesis 2:19 God uses the same word to describe his creation of the animals. What Genesis 2:19 does not include is the next step in man’s creation. The body that God lovingly formed for man was not alive. Again, everything else seemed to come forth alive. Their source of life was the physical creation. This was not the case with man. The body of Adam was dead. Then God does something very important. It says he breathed into man the breath of life and only then did man become a living soul.
There are many interpretations of what God breathed into man. One thing that can not be disputed is that whatever he breathed into him was the source of his life. It was then that he became a living soul. I believe that God breathed a spirit into the man. He took something from his own life and with that he gave man’s body life.
Let me be clear. I do not believe man was, is or ever will be God. There is only one God. The bible is clear on that point. What I do believe is that man is different from every other thing that God created. In Genesis 1:26 God said let us make man in our image. He did not say that about birds, dogs or even monkeys. He said that about man alone. Man is different from everything else in creation. How is he different and why is he different?
The why is simple. God wanted a family. He had created spirit beings, but they had no right of free will. They could not choose to love God. When 1/3 of them chose not to love and obey God they had to be removed from Heaven. Hell was created for them. Why was that necessary? They were part of the eternal realm of the spirit. Sin and rebellion cannot be allowed to contaminate that world. There could be no redemption for them. To be God’s family and to love him as he so desired, man had to be different.
God created a limited, physical world that exists outside of the world of the spirit. The beings who were created as part of that world were not spirit beings. The creator world could affect the created world but not the other way around. Sin in the natural world could not contaminate the spiritual world. God wanted a family who would chose to love him. Love without choice is not love. Giving a spirit being in the spirit world the right to chose created a situation God was not willing to allow.
The purpose of the physical reality was to allow God to put man in a place where, when he sinned as God knew he would, he would not contaminate the world of the spirit. He would only contaminate the world of the physical. Since the spirit world, the creator world, is higher than the physical world, God would be able to change that world and save the man from his sin.
What is man? Man is a spirit being just as God is a spirit being. He body is made out of the dust of the earth just as any other part of the physical creation. He is physical. He was given dominion by God in the physical universe. He has a right to that dominion because he is part of it and because God gave it to him. However, he is also a spirit being. Though his body is physical, the source of his life is the world of the spirit. I believe man is a spirit being in a physical body. Man is the only one who is both.
In a spiritual sense man has God’s DNA. That does not make him God, but it makes him different from every other physical creation. He is in God’s image. Genesis 1:25 is a statement of a law that God placed into the earth.
Genesis 1:25 (NKJV) 25 And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
God made everything “according to it’s kind.” When things reproduce they would reproduce according to their kind. Cows would not reproduce horses. Fruits would not reproduce vegetables. When Adam reproduced he would reproduce after his “kind.” He would reproduce spirit beings in physical bodies. The bodies would be a product of the human physical DNA. The inner man from which the species “man” drew life would be created by God. Each and every human that would be born would have a spirit created by God. Each would be unique and each would be a child of God.
Let me set the stage as it is at this point of creation. God has created a being that is a part of the physical world. He draws his life from the spiritual world. He is unlike anything in either world. He is God’s child. God adds to the family by taking something from Adam and creating another being like him. This being was female. She was called woman.
God did not desire a world of children in the way Adam and Eve were. He wanted his children to share in creation with him. When the man, Adam, joined physically with the woman, Eve, something wonderful happened. Their physical DNA mingled and produced a physical child. Their Spiritual DNA which came from God produced a spiritual child of God. The creation of God’s family was set in motion.
In the beginning, God and his family were joined in the spirit. Genesis 3 it says God came to walk with man in the cool of the day. I do not know if God took a form man could see and walked with him. What I do know is that man’s connection to his Father God was not just on a physical level. He was joined to God in the spirit. Their connection flowed from the world God lived not from the one he created.
For man to love God in the way God desired he had to have a choice. God placed two trees in the Garden. He gave man free access to the tree of life. I do not have space to speculate on the nature of that tree. Suffice it to say it was a connection to God’s life. He also placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit of this tree they were forbidden to eat.
Why did God place the second tree in the garden? The answer is choice. If man chose to eat of the tree of life, there were only blessings. There was no curse associated with it. If he chose to eat of the second tree, there was a curse. God says that in the day you eat of it you will die. In the Hebrew it says “in dying you will surely die.
Again[BK1] , I am sure you are wondering what all of this has to do with grace. What happens next is the whole reason for grace. To understand grace, we must understand why it was needed. We will continue to explore tomorrow.
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