Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
No God is not both male and female or either for that matter!. He's above gender specificy. His name is "I AM WHAT I AM". That's neither male nor female, but a Holy Spirit; a divine personality! However, man was created by God in his image! We need to examine God. Exactly how are we as Him?
Man has body, mind and spirit. Our bodies are similar to the other animals. Our minds are different. We are capable of reason. We are much more than instinctual or products of repeated behaviors. We learn from mistakes, gain knowledge, have various degrees of wisdom and we can reason! That's a miracle! Man is capable of harmonizing mind, body and spirit. Although we're born asynchronous, with the knowledge of God, we can develop a unitized system where all our human faculties aid and abet the other! That's a miracle!
The systems of the body are eleven: 1) Skin, connective tissues and the fascia, 2) muslcles, 3) skeleton, tendons and ligamants, 4) respiratory, 5) digestive, 6) cardiovascular, 7) lymphatic, 8) endocrine, 9) urinary, 10) reproductive, 11) and nervous system. (Yahoo Answers).
However, Arnold Gesell added 12) personality, believing and rightfully so, that the personality develops congruously with the other systems , and that all individuals are born with a personality. I submit that there are thirteen, the 13) intelligence or mind! Since the "mind" is the faculty of thought and reason and intelligence is relatively constant, it seems to me that "the mind" is a human system. That's a miracle!
"Chance" is randomness. Chance is based on accidents. According to evolutionists we're freak accidents; based on the random collection of all the right elements, in the right proportions, in the optimal environment. No intelligence was associated with out existence although as products of freak accidents, yet we all have minds! If one thinks of the our systems and their interactions, we're much more than evolved ameba, we're miracles! Mankind is a product of an omniscient mind. It can be said without error, probabilty eliminates the possibility that we "just happened!!
Before we move on to spirit, we need to examine thermodynamics. Don't let the word scare you! It's really simple. Specifically, we're interested in entropy. "Entropy" is a measure of disorder. It's the deterioration of the universe. When a person slams on the brakes of the car, entropy is power lost. The friction causes heat which is lost never to be regained. Likewise, when the air conditioner cools, there is a certain amount of energy lost. It can never be recovered to be put back from whence it came! That's why perpetual motion is an impossibilty; the universe is changing toward a state of uniformity.
What does entropy have to do with evolution? Systems always go in the direction of disorder or randomness. It never, without outside input, moves toward order. That's where God comes in. He is the input which makes all things possible. That is the miracle of existence!
"Creation Fact" (fact because of probability and entropy), can be credited for not only creating the body, but the mind as well! How be it the mind as well? 13) Intelligence in man is another "system" as previously discussed. The body would be incomplete without a mind to govern it. Whereas animals exist on what's natural, man creates what we need! The wolf was given a coat for warmth. Man makes his coat. That's intelligence. Primates hover together in caves. Man discovered and harnessed fire. That's intelligence in action. We must accept that the mind is part of our body. It's referred to separately because animals don't have it!
The third faculty of man is the "spirit". We refer to the spirit as the "soul". We know it's separate from the body because at death, our soul or spirit, leaves our body! It's there as long as our lifeblood flows, but once the body is beyond life, the soul departs.
Luke 8:53 "And they laughed him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. 54 And he put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise. 55 And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway..."
It's obvious from this passage that the spirit is separate from the body! However, in heaven they will be reunited forever!
The "soul" is the faculty containing the spirit. Our spirit is given freedom. Yes, we're all born "free spirits"! Our mind can make decisions for our spirit and our mind makes the body fulfill the desires of the mind. Our spirit provokes our mind do do what's righeous, but our mind evaluates pleasure versus obedience.
Romans 7:18 "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. 20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me."
Paul's self-admission is the same for all mankind. Paul mentioned his "will". He has the "free will" to do "good", but the sin within him deceives his mind to accept something less than what his spirit would have him do! We all struggle with the "original sin" with which we're all born (thank Adam and Eve). Hence, we all have a spirit, but sin in-dwells there. It works on our mind and corrupts. Although we have a spirit, it's not in harmony with God. Once we're born again, our spirit is cleansed of in-dwelled sin. We are in harmony, albeit imperfect, with God:
2 Corinthians 3:17 "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
Sin becomes a choice! Before we're saved, we sin without thinking much about it. Once God's spirit is revived within us, lying dormant since Adam, it ministers to us! That's our "conscience"! The conscience is the netwok between the mind and spirit. The conscience can be operationalized. The scale goes from "reprobate to guilt"! Those reprobate have a damned spirit because there is no communication between the mind and spirit. The reprobate worships the body (flesh) and has no concern for the will of God. God does not commune with the reprobate person, that person being eternally lost!
We need a healthy conscience. That's spiritual health. Without spiritual help, our mind and and body are dysfunctional. They fail to work in unity. Since, the spirit is a separate faculty, it's not in scripture, but I believe that the reprobate person's spirit has already fled a sin-filled mind and body! Contempate that! Salvation IS A MIRACLE! The angels sang as the coming of the Savior!
Salvation is "grace". God's grace is a miracle! Most people don't consider Jesus' miracles before his birth as a man, but Jesus was part of those miracles. Jesus was God before he was born! That brings me to being "created in God's image". Jesus wasn't born in the form of a man, but man was created in the image of what Jesus was to be. God, in his knowledge, knew Jesus, the Son of Man, and planned his fleshly existence. We were created in the image of Jesus, not Jesus created in the form of man! That's a miracle!
Jesus is credited with 37 miracles. I've added the miracle of creation and the miracle of salvation. In the Old Testament were many miracles where Jesus was there!
Jesus worked miracles. It's unknown how many:
John 21:25 "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."
Amen: "And that's the truth!"
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