Who Is Man?

Today, man hopes to be able in the future create a robot with artificial intelligence; but can you imagine if the robots in future start creating stuffs by themselves with absolutely no input from anybody (as in, you get home and a robot cooks for you without your programming it to do so). Of course you know that a robot can’t create by itself let alone do things by itself, without a man first creating the robot. Same way with everything in nature; the very beauty and essence of every living (plants, animals, bacteria etc.) and non-living (air, ocean, land, planets, stars, galaxies, the universe) thing points to the fact that intelligence was involved in their creation and existence.

Take this into consideration as an example, if the gravitational force that exists on earth today were to increase by just a tiny bit, then every single man will be crushed into the earth, and if the force were to decrease, we will all float away into the empty, airless and vacuum blue sky. So is the very good and conducive gravity which we experience a thing of chance? As humans on this planet with free will and the ability to choose what we want and how we want to live, did this happen just by-the-way and coincidentally? Did man come into existence by the order of the survival and selection of the fittest? Our ability to talk, reason, understand, manufacture, empathise, study, rule and dominate, did it just happen to be or is it all part of a plan? I know you will have an answer, mine is illustrated in an analogy: ‘for man not to have come into existence via an intelligent Being will also mean the Lego toys that you played with while younger simply metamorphosed from the thermostat raw material plastic with no contribution from the intelligent makers –humans’. So who exactly is man, what is our source and origin?

So who is man?...

Where you come from, your upbringing and your past experiences will influence your answer to the question above. A man with a scientific upbringing will easily say man is an evolutionary by-product of primates (apes), someone with a free-moral upbringing may say: ‘I don’t care who man is’ or ‘I don’t know’. An atheist will easily quote philosophies to justify his/her opinion; an individual with a religious background will say man was created by a deity. Today, kindly consider the intelligence, the conscience and consciousness of man, the creativity and love which we are capable of expressing. Then you understand that man came from an intelligent source. The best answer for this question will however come from the source of man.

You see, man was made and created by God!!! Are you surprised or do you feel scornful? Well you can’t change this truth, just like a BMW vehicle can’t change its mind to say it was made by a KFC food company. Genesis 1:27 says God created man! The idea of man’s existence came from God, the execution is from God and the continuity of man today is also due to God. Before man was created, God had a plan for man; vs.26 of this Scripture says God’s intent was for man to:

·         Exist in the image and semblance of God.

·         Rule over the earth and everything on the earth.

So who is man, well God’s answer is this: man is a creature (in fact, the only creature) made in God’s image. When man came into existence, man was shaped and fashioned to look like God. This is very interesting because we therefore have to look further, not to man but to God to see and know who man is! The answer to the question of who man is therefore leads to the question: ‘Who is God?

Jesus Christ actually answered this question very fundamentally in John 4:24. You see, God is a spirit, i.e. God is a Spiritual Being/Entity. Therefore, it follows that man also is a spirit, why? Simply because man was created in the image of God, even to look like God. So God is a spirit and He created man as a spirit, but that ain’t all, there is still more information to be gleaned. So we know, God is a spirit and man is a spirit; but Psalm 104:4 and Hebrews 1:7 also introduce us to another class of beings: angels too are spirits. God made angels to be spirits. Hebrews1:14 gives further clarification on what category of spirit all angels are, they are made by God to be ministering spirits. So what sort of spirit is God? For whatever category of Spirit God is, the same applies to man (as man was made in the likeness of God!!!)

Psalm 62:11 explains that God owns all power, Romans 13:1 reinforces this by saying all authority belongs to God and Jeremiah 32:27 proclaims the Lordship of God over all. So Dear Reader, God is a Domineering Spirit i.e an Authoritative Spirit. Daniel 2:21 further expatiates that God is a Ruling Spirit. Therefore we are not surprised to see in Genesis 1:26, 27, 28, 29 and 30 that God made man to be a spirit that: dominates, subdues and rules. This is what it means to be made in the image of God! So God fashioned man to be the only creatures in the very class and status of God – Domineering Spirits!!! (by the way this status of man changed after man fell, but we will talk on this in the future topics). Psalm 24:1 and Psalm 115:16 explain that God gave man the earth for man to dominate on it (… so this ought to begin answering your question on why bad things happen on earth; but we will also talk more on this subject hopefully in the near future). This is the way God made the first man.

Living in an age where people were still trying to understand who God is, Elihu, a friend of Job declared that there is a spirit located inside man (Job 32:8). However, with the better illumination provided by the spirit of God, now that Christ has died, resurrected and ascended (Romans 8:34 and John 14:26), we know that the spirit is not just in man, rather that man is that spirit and man has a soul while we live in this body as a tent and covering for the spirit to function in (Hebrews 4:12). Our next discuss on this matter will be to look at who God is and how man mirror’s His image.

A New Series Coming Up...

Hey Guys,

Have you ever wondered where man came from? Why we act the way we do. What exactly it means to be made in the image of God. How death feels like; or How it'll be in Heaven or in hell? Why the devil is after man and not after animals. Who is greater - angels or humans? What is the difference between the spirit and the soul? and on and on...

Yeah those are questions that I've considered and sought answers for, and some, I'm still seeking answers to. GOD has been faithful to open my eyes to some of them, and that's why I will like to share them with y'all on this blog.
 
Kunle and I will be going through a special series on MAN this year, and we would like you to ride with us on this. Kunle is more knowledgeable on this topic than I am, so I'll let him lead, while we all learn :).

To make it easier for you to follow this series, there is a section on the right pane of the blog page that is solely dedicated to this series. So, you can always go there anytime to click on the topic you'd like to read.

Thank you so much for being great readers and followers. Your comments inspire me to keep going. 

God bless you.

He Was Worth More

I don’t know if I was the only one that wondered why Jesus sent the devils in the Gadarene ex-demoniac into a herd of swine. I mean, I always felt some sorta pity for the owners of those swine. I often wondered, “Couldn’t Jesus have sent the demons straight out into the sea, or into some ants, or into a bunch of insignificant animal whose loss wouldn’t hurt people? Why did He have to allow the loss of the source of some people’s livelihood just to set one man free?” I’m hoping I’m not the only one who’s reasoned like this.

Recently, at an event, while waiting for the organizers to get started, I pulled out my little Bible and opened to Mark 5 – the same story. As I read, I began again pondering on why Jesus had to let such waste happen. This time, rather than subtly judging my glorious King, who’s always right and is blessed forever… amen, I pondered to get answers. As faithful as He always is, He answered and said, “His soul was worth more.” I realized at that moment that Jesus allowed that to happen because He needed to make a point. If you look closely at verse 13, after it was mentioned that the swine “ran violently” into the sea, the Bible was careful to add in parenthesis that the herd of swine was about two thousand. That information wasn’t relevant, we would think; except that it was. If you think about it, two thousand pigs aren’t cheap today. Then imagine that they would have been even more expensive 2000+ years ago. The loss of those pigs was a lot of money gone down the drain. That day, Jesus had a number of onlookers around Him, and what He did proved to them that not only did He have authority over demons, but also that that supposed mad man was treasure to Him and Jesus would give anything to have him delivered from Satan’s grip. Jesus and His disciples were chased out of town, but the man was free and saved.

I don’t know if you’ve ever wondered what it took Jesus to save you. We all know of His ultimate sacrifice for all men. That was a great sacrifice and cannot be compared to any other. But what extra thing did it take Jesus to “bring you out” from that grip of sin and Satan. Some of us quickly forget, and so toy with sin or take Him for granted, or refuse to share His love with others.

One day, in College Station TX, I went out evangelizing on campus with a wonderful woman of God. (I’ll call her Anna for the sake of anonymity). We got into a building and encountered a young lady like us who was relaxing in a common room. As we spoke to her about our faith, we mentioned that it is only in Jesus that one can find salvation. She seemed puzzled, and maybe, upset at what we had said, and honestly, we couldn’t get through to her beyond that, but if I remember well enough, we got her number. As we left, Anna said, “I’ve told her the truth and it’s a pity she doesn’t like it, but her salvation is more important to me than my friendship with her.” Of course, that struck me. Many times, we try to protect our friendships, try to not-offend anybody, try to not be overbearing, or as someone called me, a nuisance to people of other beliefs. We pat ourselves on the back hoping God understands: “you know, I’ve been friends with such and such for years, it’ll be wrong for me to just throw my beliefs in his/her face… yadiyadiyah.” If we’d allow God to speak, I think He’ll ask a question, “So, is it better he/she ends up in hell?”

To Jesus, like that ex-demoniac, you are worth more than anything else in the world. That’s why He left His glory high up in Heaven and came down to this dilapidated earth to die for you and I. If you think about it very well, it probably cost you the loss of a friendship, a job, family ties, etc. to be free from sin and Satan. You may not know but it probably cost some people around you abstinence from food and lots of prayers before you saw the light. I heard about a woman who fasted and prayed every Friday for seven years so that an Islamic chief in her neighborhood would see the light and come to Jesus. Thankfully, he eventually did. Different people, different story…

The point, however, is in view of these great and practical demonstrations of God’s love, what is your response? You see, God still depends on you to show His love to the unsaved. We are His hands and feet on this earth. We are all He has on this earth. Will you continue to ignore that lost soul that you meet every day or will you proclaim and expound God’s care and loving-kindness to that friend, relative, work colleague, neighbor or boss? At times, just one more word is needed for a man to believe in Jesus. We all know that some unbelievers test God in prayer, wanting God to do something physical before they believe. My dear friends, we are the physical witnesses to the Invisible God. Let us go show the world that Jesus – man’s One and only Savior is alive and that they are worth more to Him than anything else in the world.