by Ken Hamrick
Of all the creatures. Man alone is a spiritual being. Man and all other creatures have bodies, but only man has a spirit. It is significant that God, inspiring His inerrant, written word, chose to call the immaterial nature in man a spirit, which is the same word He chose to describe His own nature –John 4:24, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” Every functional similarity of God in man that has been labeled as the image of God, such as man’s moral nature, his relationality, his dominion over the other creatures, and his reason and rationality, his personhood, etc., are only possible because man is a spiritual being. Without his own spirit, man could function in none of these ways. Because man is a spiritual being, he is a person. Only spiritual beings are persons. Animals without spirits can never be persons and men can never lose their personhood. Men are innately moral beings because they are spiritual beings.
There is another aspect of the image of God to be considered. There is a real sense in which what we gain in Christ we lost in Adam. We are spiritually resurrected—brought to life spiritually—when we are saved by Christ. Prior to salvation, we were spiritually dead—alienated from God and without the Spirit of God inside us. God sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ I suggest that Adam was created not only as a spiritual being, but also in spiritual union with the Holy Spirit inside him. As he chose to sin, the Holy Spirit left him and he spiritually died. Spiritual death is disunion with the Spirit of God who is the only Source of spiritual life.
Continue reading “The Image of God”