Relating Together

I have said that we are like God, in so much as we are three person people. Actually, it was not I who said it, but scripture itself tells us that we were made to be like Them (God). All I have said, is that since we are three person people, it isn’t too far beyond our understanding to conceive that God is also a three person God. It would be dangerous to take it farther than that.

We were made to be like God, not Him made to be like us. It therefore becomes dangerous to look at us, or anything on earth for that matter, and speak at length, claiming He is precisely like what we have observed here in the created world. Neither can we say with complete confidence, by observing what we are, how we are like Him, because who we are, is not who we were meant to me.

I share this now, because after writing my last entry, I received a much anticipated response, and the reason I expected it, was because I had thought the very same things myself.

“So are your saying Jesus is like our Body, the Holy Spirit is like our Spirit, and God is like our mind?”

I really don’t know how far to go with it. Yes. Jesus had a body, just as you and I have bodies, just as our bodies are us. The Bible tells us just as much saying, “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.” Colossians 1:15 I guess I have to say God does have a body, and Jesus is the visible embodiment of His person, yet it’s much more complicated than that.

One doesn’t have to dig very far into the Bible to notice that even Jesus, the bodily, visible person, has a makeup which goes well beyond our own. The rest of Colossians 1:15 tells us, “He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation”. Figure that one out. Christ existed before creation. Depending on how many people this reaches, there are numerous people who figure they have all the answers, who might feel they are able to explain it clearly to me. If it’s a sin to be cynical of such individuals, the day may come when I will have to repent of my cynicism.

The person of Jesus we are told existed before creation. This raises all manner of questions. Where was He before AD 1? What form did He take? Whatever form he held, what happened to it when he became a baby? As if those questions aren’t big enough to handle, looking at the post resurrected Christ presents even more peculiar challenges. We are forced to consider a Jesus who appears out of nowhere, passes through walls and flies up into the sky. It would seem that when we meet Him at the judgment, we will also view him in some kind of bodily form.

Our bodies may have been meant to resemble His visible image, but they are most certainly not like His in the fullest sense. We were made to have eternal bodies (I’m not convinced we were ever intended to walk through walls and fly up in the sky) and the promise for believers is that someday, we will. Receiving imperishable bodies is one of the very things Christians look forward to, and the hope is that these new bodies will be far beyond what we currently possess, in a similar fashion as that of Christ himself.

If The Father were to be likened to ‘the mind’ part of God, I don’t think I can even begin to draw a parallel in any literal sense, although, if we look at how The Father and The Son interact, it might shed light on both how wretched we are, as well as what we were meant to be.

“So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” John 5:19

There is a unity between the Father and the Son which should typify the unity between our own mind and our own body. The Son, we are told, can do nothing by himself. He does only what He sees the Father doing. Jesus tells us he does what the Father does, yet His actions go well beyond simply doing as His Father does. The type of unity Christ has with the Father, is the kind of oneness where He simply cannot do anything by Himself.

My body and mind don’t suffer from the same relationship with one another, especially between my mouth and my mind. I know I’m not alone. In James, we’re reminded of how people are able to tame all manner of wild animals, but no one has been able to tame the tongue. My biggest failures come when I’m caught off my guard. When I’m sitting down to write a letter or a blog post, my mind and my body are in decent sync. I have time to think, to process and to act.

Catch me in a tight situation and my mouth will say things on its own. In the moment, it is more prone to speak a lie, thinking in some hideous fashion, the lie will protect my integrity. How hypocritical is that? And after the lie has been spoken, my mind speaks to myself, “That was really dumb. What were you thinking?”

That kind of thing doesn’t happen between the Father and the Son. The Son does what the Father does, and says the words the Father would have Him say. That relationship, the workings between our mind and our body, should ideally be the same. Should they not? We shouldn’t have to speak to ourselves, “That was a very horrible thing to say. That was a really stupid thing you just did. You can be such a jerk.” Our mind and our body should be one, just as the Son and the Father are one.

Did you catch that? I just brought in the spirit without even thinking. As my pastor says, (and I am certain that he is right) there is an internal dialogue that goes on between our mind and our spirit. It may be that the spirit part of ourselves is the person of us which is most like its own respective person of God. God is Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is God.

Thanks to medical science, we know a reasonable amount about the human body. We also know a little bit about the mind. When it comes to the mechanics of how our spirits interact with our minds and bodies, it is admittedly a matter of having faith in what we see in scripture.

It would seem that a spirit is not meant to exist on its own, that it is intended to live in union with a body. Some people need proof before they believe anything. If you are that type, you’ll be rather disappointed in me. I’m not your author. I don’t have proof, and I don’t much care if you believe me, or if I’m even right on this point. Yet, it’s not too crazy is it? How about reversing the statement? Can a body live once its spirit has left?

There are two passages that comes to mind in this case. One is where is where Jesus drives out the Legion, and the other when Christ was speaking to the Pharisees. If you care to check these out for yourself, these stories can be found in Mark 5:1-20 and Matthew 12:43-45 respectively. For a spirit, (an evil Spirit anyway) living apart from a body is likened to spending time in the desert. So when Jesus drives the Legion out of the man, they ask, no, they beg Him to send him into a herd of pigs. Judging by what happens to the pigs, I’d assume it’s better to be living in a body that also has a sound mind.

It’s just a thought, but what if the experience of being a Spirit without a body, is exactly what scripture describes as being hell. Why else would Legion beg? As I said. It’s just a thought. Don’t take it too far. Believers are promised a resurrected body after they finish this life. There is no similar promise for nonbelievers that I have found. What will it be like to spend eternity without a
body, or a sound mind? I think a lot of people will find out in time.

God’s Spirit is different from ours in His capacity in at least a couple of ways. For one, it’s the only Spirit capable of living inside another person, without messing up the individual. Whenever we find someone with a demon living in them, it’s really not a good thing. If you’ve ever met a demon possessed person, it’s really quite frightening. I’ve known people who have such encounters, but as for me, I’ll do just fine if I go through life without the experience. When the Holy Spirit comes to live in a person, we call it regeneration, the subject being indwelt by His Spirit becoming more loving, kind, gentle, peaceful, patient, good and faithful.

The Holy Spirit is also able to exist in multiple persons. My spirit cannot. Neither do I know of any examples where an evil spirit is able to indwell multiple persons at any given time. The Holy Spirit however, lives in me. He also lives in my wife, and from what I can tell, my children. (My children say they believe, and from what I see in them, I tend to believe it.) He literally lives in all who have authentically received Christ.

There is however one apparent limitation to the Holy Spirit I do not understand. For some strange reason, the Holy Spirit wasn’t able to indwell people while Jesus walked among them, and Jesus told us as much. Shortly before being arrested, Jesus said to His disciples, “it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you.” John 16:7 All right. Maybe it’s not a limitation. Jesus didn’t say the Holy Spirit ‘can’t’ come unless He goes to the Father. He only said that He won’t come. I’m not sure why this was so. I only know that it was. Ask your personal favorite theologian if you want to answer that kind of question.

I’ve spoken on some rather weird things haven’t I? I’ve done all of this, not to impress you. I haven’t even pretended to have all of the answers. My hope, was to bring to life how even though we were made to be ‘like’ God, He is not like us. What do you think of a God who is greater than what we have seen here in this life? Does it make you want to share in the things He has promised to His children? An imperishable body sounds just fine to me.