Compared to a human being’s spirituality, our physicality is almost simple in its being. Well, no, that’s not really true. Matter of fact, there is nothing classified as simple regarding any aspect of our being. Yet, comparatively speaking, we do comprehend a lot more about our physical being than we do our spiritual, and the reason should be intuitively obvious. Virtually everything about our physical selves can be dissected, weighted, observed, x-rayed, and analyzed while we’re alive, and after we’re dead. The human spirit, however, does not lend itself to understanding via any of those avenues. Then, really, how do we even know we have a spiritual, non-material self the Bible calls the human spirit? That’s it right there…the Bible tells us so. And, pray tell me, how in the world would the writers of the Bible, who lived a minimum of 1900 years ago know that? If we struggle to know it now, how could they possibly have known? Yet, the Old and New Testaments refer to the presence and activities of the human spirit dwelling in the human body repeatedly. They knew because God, the Holy Spirit, who inspired them to write Scripture as they did, revealed it to them. They never knew because they were smart enough to figure it out. They knew it on the basis of divine revelation, in the same way it is revealed to us.
First Corinthians 2, for instance, states, “What man knows the things of a man except the spirit of man that dwells in him.” The fifth chapter of 1st Thessalonians records the prayer that the Thessalonians would have their “spirit, and soul, and body preserved complete and without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Our Lord was said to have “yielded up His Spirit” when He died upon the Cross, and we are reminded that God’s “Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God.” No question about it…we have an intangible, non-physical part of our being called the human spirit. But, we still don’t really know what that is, what its properties are, or how we humans came by this spirit part of our being. We know how our physical self came to be. That was through a physical egg released by our mother and fertilized by a physical sperm produced by our father and…voila! You and I came to be, and it was all through physical means. Microscopic perhaps, but still very much physical.
But all this only accounts for a part of our personhood, and the more obvious part at that…our physical body. A physical contribution from both our parents accounts for our body, but how was the non-physical essence of spirit transferred from one generation to another…or was it? Exploration of this concept must surely be forthcoming. Utterly fascinating stuff upcoming!
CC-08-10
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