The Function of ‘spirit’

Genesis 1:26, 27 NIV   Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness”….So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.

Job 32:8 NIV   But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.

God created us in ‘his’ image. We are molded in his image.  We have some of what he is inside our being.  We are NOT God.  We cannot become God or a God.   We were designed with a spirit capacity, a spirit system, ‘so that’ we can ‘know’ God at the deepest level of our ability to know.  Humans, within their spirit ability/system, are distinct in all of the created life that lives on planet earth.  We have a spirit.  Animals do not have a spirit.   The primary function of our spirit is to provide ‘awareness’.  I am not speaking about physical/audio/visual awareness in the physical realm dimension.  I am saying ‘awareness’ at the spiritual level.  What is the number one ‘thing’ that you are constantly ‘aware’ of?  What is it?  It is ‘self’.   Self-awareness.  If you are asleep and you wake up, what is the first thing that you are conscious of?  You are ware of ‘you’..that you ‘are’…you are aware of your existence..that you exist.  A monkey is not aware of ‘self’.  It does not contemplate the day of its death.  It does not know its birth date.  It does not know the day of the week.  It does not contemplate its offspring.   It does not plan birthday parties or funerals.  It does not know that it is a monkey.  It has no sense of ‘self’ existence.   It has no sense of objective right and wrong.   It does not have a moral code written in its heart.   Objective self-awareness is a ‘human’ ability.  Objective right and wrong, understanding, reasoning, are abilities/capacities of our spirit function. As humans, we operate our bodies from our control center which is our organic brain.  Our ‘mind’, the area of will, intellect, and emotion, is not simply a brain function.   Your ‘being’ is your body, mind, and spirit.  You, your being, because you are a human, you are immortal.  Your body will die, but your spirit being, which includes you, your self/mind, is eternal.  (I must inject herein that the most important reality within a person’s existence in this body is to understand that eternal bliss, eternal peace, an eternal ‘heaven’, is not an automatic spiritual destination after our body dies.  The major consequence of the ‘fall’ was that we are cut-off from a relationship with God, now, and for eternity.  There is no bliss, or peace, or heaven without God providing access.  In the future posts on ‘light’, we will provide God’s plan for reconciling us ‘back’ into a relationship with Him and entrance into eternal life.)

So, when we are born, we do not have a fully functioning spirit. We have already explained this in the posts related to the consequences of the ‘fall’.  God designed us in his image..gave us some of what he is…spirit… ‘so that’…we could know him.  For us to ‘know’ him…God Spirit has to have contact with, be merged with, our spirit.   His spirit needs to live ‘inside’ our spirit.   When we speak of ‘knowing’ God, we speak of knowing God at the ‘divine’ level of knowing.  Spiritual awareness at the deepest level.  When God Spirit merges with man’s spirit, ‘divine knowing’ takes place.

Romans 1:18-23 NIV   “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God or gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.”

In the verse above, Paul is telling us that ‘everyone’ knows God at a ‘general revelation’ level of awareness.  He is not saying everyone ‘knows God’ at the divine knowing level.  He is saying that everyone has a general awareness of God.   Every person, inside his spirit capacity, ‘knows’ about/recognizes/is aware of ‘God’.  Every person ‘knows’ there is a God.  But Paul says that men ‘suppress this truth’.  Paul says that even though everyone knows there is a God, (general revelation) they do not translate such knowing (general revelation) into coming to divinely know God.  He says they do not ‘glorify’ him as God or give thanks to him.  Romans 1:18-23 says that everyone knows God, but everyone doesn’t know Him personally.

1 Corinthians 1:21 NIV   For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him..

Galatians 4:8 NIV   Formerly, when you did not know God..

1 Thessalonians 4:5 NIV   not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God;

1 Corinthians 2:14: The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 

The three verses immediately above all say that there are people who do not know God. Wait, I’m confused.  Romans 1:18-23 says ‘everyone’ knows God.  The 3 verses above say not everyone knows God.  The difference is knowing at a general revelation knowing within spirit function/awareness, and personal revelation at a divine knowing level within spirit function/awareness.

When the ‘sin’ entity, the principle of sin, entered the human body at the ‘fall’, it brought along its nature. Sin installs its own software operating system that becomes the primary default operating system for man in his fallen state.  The purpose of the default system is to ‘blind’ the mind of man to keep him from ‘seeing’ the glory of God.   It is to keep him from coming to a personal level of knowing God.  It is to keep him from coming to a divine level of knowing God.  And it serves to keep him from gaining access to eternal life in God’s presence.

(In the next post we will look at the principles of illusion that the default system uses to blind us to the truth and light of God.)