Chapter 8: The Crowning Touch

With all the land creatures created, God puts His finishing touch on the creation: He creates man in His own image. The sixth day sees the creation of man in chapter 1:26 and in further detail in chapter 2:7.

And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" (Gen. 1:26).

On the sixth day, after creating all the other land animals, God put the crowning touch on his creation: man. Man was not an after thought, but rather the first thought. In man, God's first objective was to rule the earth through him. In the triune personality of God, the Word that became flesh, Christ, who is the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4), who is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15) was the image upon which the created Adam was based. All for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:29) who is the King of kings (Rev. 17:14).

GOD'S PURPOSE

From the outset, God intended them to be Lord of all His creation ruling as God's stead. The verse above states (and is repeated again in verse 28) that they were to have dominion over all the creation. Being the only creature made in the image of God (1:26), they were to be the created hand of God fulfilling his will in governing the Earth. The plan of man was created after all thought had been put into the consequence of that creation. Even with the possibility of their fall, the plan of salvation was ready. The born again man is to put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him (Col. 3:10).

A second objective which equals the first was that God wanted to have a family in man that would be able to appreciate and understand who God is. Just as a cat gives us company, but can not intimately satisfy our human longing for companionship that a spouse and child can, so too with God, only a re-creation of his own self could bring a satisfying fulfillment in companionship. God created man and woman in a symbiotic equality. As chapter 5:2 indicates, he called their name Adam. God did not see them as separate, but one person. After the fall in chapter 3:20 Adam calls his wife Eve, not God, which shows the separation caused by sin.

THE TRIUNE IMAGE

And Yahweh God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7.

The Scriptures in chapter 2 look closer at the sixth day, explaining again the creation of man in more detail (although some theologians disagree, most conservative evangelicals accept this premise). In looking at verse 7 of the creation of Adam we see that Adam was created first from dust, with the breath of life breathed into his nostrils to become a living soul (Gen. 2:7). We know from the New Testament that God is triune "for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one" (1 John 5:7), of which we are made in the same image of spirit, soul and body (1 Thes. 5:23). It would seem from Genesis 2:7 that the adding of spirit (breath of life) to the body (dust) creates the soul. When God breathed the breath of life into Adam, He made a creature that existed simultaneously in two worlds: the physical and the spiritual. Before his fall he was cognizant of both. After his fall, he perceived only the physical and was vaguely aware of the spiritual.

Contemporary Christian doctrine teaches that the body is the "house" of the soul and spirit. The soul is the "seat" of the mind, will, & emotions. And the spirit for the most part is the least understood element of man by most Christians today. Usually it is considered the "door" to God for communication and is the divine imprint of God upon man. Watchman Nee (a Chinese theologian from the 1920's) has provided the most thorough discussion of the body, soul, and spirit in his book, The Spiritual Man. He says, "The body is the outer shelter of the soul, while the soul is the outer sheath of the spirit" [1]. The body "gives us world consciousness," the soul is "the part of self consciousness," and the spirit is the "element of God consciousness" [2]. "The soul stands between these two worlds, yet belongs to both" [3]. In discussing the soul he states that the mind, will, & emotions are the function of the soul since "the spirit like the soul has its thoughts, feelings, and desires" [4]. Therefore his discussion of body, soul, and spirit is in terms of function and not substance. He says the function of the spirit is:

"intuition, communion [with God], and conscience ... These three are merely the functions of the spirit. (Furthermore, they are not the only ones; according to the Bible, they are but the main functions of the spirit). None of them is the spirit, for the spirit itself is substantial, personal, invisible. Our spirit is not material and yet it exists independently in our body. It must therefore possess its own spiritual substance" [5].

We are triune beings of body, soul and spirit. Just as God is Yahweh the Father, Yahweh the Son and Yahweh the Holy Spirit, he was Adam the spirit, Adam the soul and Adam the body. Knowing that we see ourselves as one person, we therefore assume that God sees Himself as one person. As the Scripture says, "Hear, 0 Israel, Yahweh our God is one Yahweh" (Deut. 6:4). We accept the doctrine of the Trinity that speaks of the Father, Word, & Spirit as being three persons in one. Which is usually understood to mean that the three personalities communicate with one another, and speak in agreement as one person. If we are made in His image, then shouldn't that hold true for us, too? Since we perceive ourselves as one person it is hard for us to imagine ourselves as three persons in one. Nevertheless, the body of Adam is a person, the soul of Adam is a person, and the spirit of Adam is a person; all functioning together as one person, the same as God.

When one listens to speakers on the body, soul, and spirit, they usually describe the soul as the mind, will, and emotions; and the spirit as conscience, communion with God, and intuition. When they discuss the body, they usually describe the physical construction of the body, which is changing from the discussion of function to mechanics. Continuity is not maintained. It would be better to describe the body function in correlation to the spirit and soul functions. The three main functions of the body, then, could be appetite, world awareness, and expression. Here is a comparison of the three:

THE UNITY OF MAN

Despite the three elements of body, soul, and spirit that make up a man. In function a man is one entity. The synchronous working together of the three is the function of the heart. The heart is neither the organ that pumps blood, nor an extension of the mind. The heart is the core and center of a man. The thoughts of the heart occur at the subconscious level whereas the thoughts of the mind occur at the conscious level. The mind is the thinking apparatus of the soul, the brain is the thinking apparatus of the body, and intuition is the thinking apparatus of the spirit which occurs in the heart. Therefore, it is appropriate to say that the heart is the main voice of the spirit. All three come together to communicate in the heart. It is from the deliberations of the heart that the will chooses it's course of action. And it is from the heart that emotions come forth. It is in the heart that hope, faith, and love are created or destroyed and these work with the spirit's will.