Adam was made in the image of God. He was not
triplets but he had a trinity nature. He was alone in the same
sense that God was alone. Yet, he was made of body (ability to
manipulate material things), soul (life) and spirit or the "mental
disposition" or the proper intellect to direct the God-created body
into which He "breathed the breath of life." All people have
God's Spirit in them and when this spirit and breath are taken away
Job says that the body will decay.
Genesis begins:
IN the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth. Ge 1:1
And the earth was
without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit
of God moved upon the face of the waters. Ge.1:2
God is a generic word for real as well as the
pagan gods who were supposed to have destroyed
the father and mother sea and created the dry land in the Babylonian
accounts. These pagan gods always had a trinity or triad of gods at
the head of a large pantheon of thousands of gods:
Elohim
(h430) el-o-heem'; plur. of 433; gods in the ordinary sense; but
spec. used (in the plur. thus, esp. with the art. of the supreme God; occasionally applied by way of
deference to magistrates; and sometimes as a superlative: - angels, * exceeding, God (gods) (-dess, -ly), *
(very) great, judges, mighty.
The Spirit does not speak of a second person
but of the life principle of a rational
God. In many parallel accounts, God
used the literal wind (spirit) to blow the water away to make the
earth. The earth is not the "world" but it is the "fruitful place"
God prepared for mankind to live. The message is that God was at work
in the material universe. Spirit in Hebrew is:
Ruwach
(h7307) roo'-akh, roo'-akh; from 7306; wind; by resemblance breath,
i. e. a sensible (or even violent exhalation; fig. life, anger,
insubstantiality; by extens. a region of the sky; by resemblance
spirit, but only of a
rational being (includ.
its expression and functions): - air, anger, blast, breath, * cool,
courage, mind, * quarter, * side, spirit ([-ual]), tempest, * vain,
([whirl-]) wind (-y)
Man in the Trinity Image of
God
Despite many very clear, almost dogmatic,
statements, it is easy to abandon the clear Biblical teaching and try
to interpret one word in ancient Hebrew. Some suppose from the
plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26 that a committee or trinity of three
divine persons performed the work of creation. However God's work may
be personified, it is generally agreed that God does not break apart
in the mechanical, human sense of three people.
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.
1:26
When God speaks or swears it is usually
to or
by Himself
because there is no other person by Whom He can swear. Therefore,
when He says "we" it is probably the imperial we. A good golfer, for
instance, never says: "I won that tournament by myself." At the same
time, God's plan is to reveal His nature in understandable terms.
Jehovah is always One God and it would never
occur to the writers of Genesis to make Him into a trinity
family of
gods. Yet, Scripture is clear that Jehovah is our Adoni or He is
our
Elohim. The One God stands for all of the pagan trinity concepts and
beyond. The Psalmist spoke of the creation as the work of the One
God:
O LORD (Yahweh) ,
our Lord (adown or adoni), how majestic is
your name in all the earth! You have set
your glory above the heavens. Ps 8:1
When I consider thy heavens,
the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
Ps 8:3
What is man, that thou art
mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? Ps
8:4
For thou hast made him a little
lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Ps
8:5
Thou madest him to
have dominion over the works of thy
hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: Ps 8:6
God did not create Adam as a family, trinity
tribe or trinity of kinfolk. He was not triplets. Because God
is one God, likeness (in the literal sense) means resemblance, model,
similitude, image or picture.
Celem (h6734)
tseh'-lem; from the unused root mean. to shade; a phantom, i.
e. (fig.) illusion, resemblance; hence a representative figure,
espec. an idol: - image vain shew.
When Adam and Eve had their first son he was
not three sons:
And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and
begat a son in his own likeness
(image), after his image; and called
his name Seth: Ge.5:3
When Adam was first created he was not three
bodies standing side by side and face to face. He had a triune nature
and was intended to dominate the earth. His internal "parts" work in
sequence of time but are not separated:
For which cause
we faint not; but though our
outward
man perish, yet the
inward
man is renewed day by
day. 2Cor 4:16
Do not lie to each other, since
you have taken off your
old self with its
practices col 3:9
And have
put on the new
man, which is renewed
in knowledge after the image
of him that created
him: Col.3:10
The One God is pure or Holy
Spirit. That is, He is not made up of flesh, blood or bones. However,
He is spoken of as having a "body" which means that He is capable of
operating in the physical universe. He has "soul" or life.
Furthermore, God has a Spirit or Mind in the sense that He has
intellect. It is logical, therefore, that God created mankind with a
body which could manipulate physical things. He has a soul or
physical life so that he doesn't just sit there. In addition, mankind
has spirit or mind or the rational thinking ability:
For those God foreknew he also
predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among
many brothers. Ro.8:29
Jesus said, "My Father and I
are one" and "I have my Father with me" or "If you have seen me you
have seen the Father." Therefore, we do not see the Son as three
separated beings.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Holy Spirit
When the One God created "them"
it was not in His own image. Rather, when God created Adam in His
image Adam was
alone just as God was
alone. Paul taught that it was only Adam whom God made in the first
instance. Eve was then taken from Adam's side and, if you will, He
cloned her. Therefore, the female is made in the image of man who is
made in the image of one God. Neither were created triplets.
A man ought not to cover his
head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. 1Co.11:7
Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty. 2 Cor 3:17
And we, who with
unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being
transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the
Lord, who is the
Spirit. 2 Co.3:18
While we are a triune being, it
was Paul's message that the "spirit" being should take control from
the "flesh" being. Only as we are "renewed in the spirit of our mind"
do we become like Christ the Spirit Who is pure Mind.
Paul spoke figuratively of the
body of
Christ or the Church.
The image is not of many "separated individuals" making up one body.
Rather, the members are the "body parts" of the one body. They do not function if they are cut off from the
body. Our spirit directs and distributes signals to make our body
function as one "new man." In the same way, the Spirit of Christ
divides tasks to be controlled by His
direction rather than give us the power to move in our direction.
When one has Spirit power there
is no hint that it makes the body supernatural power. Rather, the one
who can move mountains has the faith or mental power to "say" to the
mountain to move without bulldozers:
But all these
worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. 1Co
12:11
For as the
body is one,
and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many,
are one body: so also is
Christ. 1Cor
12:12
Our bodies have many parts, but
the many parts make up only one body when they are all put together. So it is with the
"body" of Christ. 1Co 12:12LIV
For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body,
whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have
been all made to drink
into one Spirit. 1Co 12:13
Christ treated His Word as "the
water of the Word." When we "drink" of that Spirit word (Jn 6:63) we
are baptized or overwhelmed by the mental disposition of God.
Paul often spoke of the
three-fold nature of mankind who was created in the image of God.
And the very God of
peace sanctify you wholly;
and I pray God your whole spirit
and soul and body be
preserved
blameless unto the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thes 5:23
Paul, in 1Cor 2:16 shows that the Spirit of God
is the Mind of God which is the Mind of
Christ.
For what man
knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which
is in him? even so the things
of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. 1Co 2:11
The Holy Spirit of God is the Mind of
Christ
Paul sets the stage by drawing an analogy: as
the mind or spirit of man knows the things of that person, the Mind
or Spirit of God is God as a rational Being with Mind or Spirit. In
the next verse, Paul had received the Mind or Spirit of God
in order that he could know the things given by God. The Spirit of
God is not disconnected from the one God Himself.
Now we have
received, not the spirit
of the world, but the
spirit which is of God;
that we might
know the things that
are freely given to us of God. 1Co 2:12
Which things also
we speak, not in the words which mans wisdom teacheth, but which the
Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 1Co
2:13
But the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God: 1Co 2:14
for they are foolishness unto
him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned. 1Co 2:14
But he that is spiritual
judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 1Co
2:15
For who hath known
the mind of the
Lord, that he may
instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. 1Co 2:16
Kenneth Sublett
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