Part 6 of 14 - The Created Man

This Article is part of a multi-part Study Series called The Essential Spirit.

As stated earlier, God’s spirit is in every created man by breathing God’s breath of life into Adam’s body of clay. Some refer to God as the Father of all mankind but this is not accurate. Actually, God is only “a father of sorts” to the original created unregenerate man. Adam and Eve were created by God; they were not born of God’s Seed, Jesus Christ. Only a birth father is a genuine father. A father is one whose seed births the child to life. That which God “sort of fathered” when He created humanity was the “spirit of man” in the created man. This occurred when God breathed His own “breath of life” (neshamah, spirit life) into Adam, such that Adam became a living soul. Adam’s body and soul became lively and animated by God’s one breath (Spirit), but this is not what it is to be born of God’s One “Seed,” which is the resurrected “spirit of life in Christ.”

God’s breath breathed into man is called “the spirit of man.” Apart from God’s breath (spirit-life) in man there is no life at all in the created man. Adam’s physical creation, beyond his spirit, was as his outer clothing. Man’s body and soul derive their life from man’s spirit that was given by God’s spirit-breath. The core of men is their human spirit, because the spirit is man’s human life source – the core of man’s whole created living being.

Paul contrasts our  human physical fathers, “fathers of the flesh” as he calls them, with God as the “father of sorts” of every human spirit. Paul writes in Hebrews 12:9 Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits ...?” The spirit of man is God’s Spirit. It was spirit-life that God breathed into Adam’s clay-formed body as noted in Gen 2:7. Genesis 2:7 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 soul. The “life” that is of the “breath of life” is the God’s Spirit-life.

The New Testament Greek word, Zoë, is God’s spirit-life.” The very same word is used of the spirit of man (e.g., 1Cor 2:11) and the “spirit of God” (e.g., 1Cor 3:16), as well as the “spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” This one Zoe, or spirit-life, only comes from God Himself. These are each of God’s one spirit.

The word for “life” in “breath of life” in Gen 2:7 is a masculine and therefore “plural” word in the Hebrew “chay.” Thus, this phrase could be more properly transliterated the breath of lives.The one “breath of life” that God breathed into man kindled three kinds of life in man. The source of life in man’s soul and body is his spirit that Adam received from God’s breath. 2 Corinthians 3:6b (KJV) the spirit giveth life. In the Greek the word for “physical life” is “bios,” and for the “soul life” is “psuche.” The Greek word for “spirit-life” is “Zoë.”

The Father and the Son are One Spirit (Eph 4:4). Jesus prayed that each believer would be one with them. John 17:21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. This oneness is only possible in and by a spirit-union between ours and Christ’s “Spirit of life.” The believer who believes to receive “the spirit of life in Christ Jesus” is one with both, the Father and the Son, by the addition of the all-inclusive “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” into his human spirit.

Romans 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. Man then has gained Christ’s resurrected “spirit of life,” which then makes man eternally justified, righteous, and one with God the Father.