Moses, in Genesis 2:7 gives the following account of the creation of man:

"Then Yehovah Elohim formed Adam of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the spirit of lives; and Adam became a living soul."¹⁸⁹

In this verse Moses tells us how God created Man: First, He formed man’s body from the dust of the earth. Second, God breathed into man not just life but the breath of lives. The noun is plural lives⁷² not life.⁷³ When man’s living spirit combined with the body, the body came to life and a self-conscious living soul was created. Thus, man has three kinds of life: a living spirit, a living soul and a living physical body.

Jesse Penn-Lewis, in his book Soul & Spirit, says the following about the constitution of man:

"Tertullian, one of the Church Fathers who wrote in the early centuries of the Christian era, calls the ‘flesh’—or physical being—‘the body of the soul’, and the soul ‘the vessel of the spirit.’ The soul stands between the spirit and the body, for ‘direct communication between spirit and flesh is impossible; their intercourse can be carried on only by means of a medium’—the soul being that medium."^80/138

Man’s Soul is the medium between the spiritual and the physical world. Man receives information in his soul from both the spiritual and the physical world, but it is the soul that decides how it is going to use that information. Neither the spiritual realm nor the physical realm can make man do anything. It is man’s soul which chooses his destiny.

This is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 16:24-25 when he said:

"If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his soul shall lose it; but whoever loses his soul for My sake shall find it. For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?"

Jesus tells us in this passage that if we insist on hanging onto our soul-life: our purpose, vocation and destiny in life, we will lose our souls. This means that we will never know the purpose, vocation and destiny in life Jesus created us to have. The person who rejects Jesus as Lord of his life and destiny, when he dies, will go into eternity never knowing who he really was. He will lose the soul-life Jesus intended for him to have and will forever lose any means of expressing and carrying out the soul-life he wanted to have. This is because Jesus is our source of life, existence and this world and all we enjoy in this world.

Jesus gives us 70 years to decide whether we want to have relationship with Him or not. Because He gives us the freedom of choice as to whether to have relationship with Him or not, if we reject Him until we die, He then honors our choice of rejection of Him and separates Himself and all He would have given to us if we chose relationship with Him. The problem, though, is that He is our source of life and all that is. Therefore to be separated from Him is to be separated from everything that is. All that is left is our self-conscious awareness of existence in a fiery black darkness forever with no possible means of ever being able to develop, express or fulfill our soul desires again because without Jesus there is no means because He is the means.

Jesus created man dependent on three kinds of life that are recorded in the First Epistle of John 3:14-17.

"We know that we have passed out of spiritual-death into spiritual-life⁴⁸, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in spiritual-death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal spiritual-life abiding in him. We know love by this, that He laid down His soul⁷⁷ for us; and we ought to lay down our souls for the brethren. But whoever has the biological-means-of-life,⁸¹ and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

These three kinds of life are the following:

Moses gives us further insight into the creation of man in Genesis 1:26-27

"Then Elohim said, Let Us make man in Our image⁸³, according to Our likeness⁸⁴; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And Elohim created man in His own image, in the image of Elohim He created him; male⁸⁵ and female⁸⁶ He created them."

In this passage, Moses tells us many things about man:

1. First, man was created in God’s image and according to His likeness.

2. Second, God created man to rule over the created creatures of the earth and to subdue the earth.

3. Third, God created Man male and female.

4. Fourth, God created man to have children and fill the earth.

Second the Bible teaches us that God’s spirit is invisible to us. The Apostle John wrote in John 1:18, "No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, that one has revealed Him." God’s true self is invisible to us. What we know about God we know through the incarnation of His Son Jesus Christ and through His Word the Bible. Our true self, our spirit, is also invisible to us. Only in the spiritual realm can we see our true self. In this physical life our true self is hidden from us and from others.

Finally, Paul teaches us in 1 Timothy 1:17 that God is immortal: "Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen." Our spirit and soul are also immortal. In this sense we are created in God’s image with one difference: While we had a beginning, God had no beginning but is eternal as well as immortal. When God created us, He created us to live forever.

Second, being created in God’s image means that man’s inner constitution operates the same way God’s does with two differences: God’s is infinite and man’s is finite, and God’s is independent but man is dependent on God. This is why we are able to communicate with and have a relationship with God because our inward workings are the same as His. Just as God has intellect, emotion and will, so we have intellect, emotion and will.

Third, being created in God’s image means man was created with the moral righteousness of God ruling over him through his human spirit. Watchman Nee in His book, The Latent Power of the Soul, explains what this means:

"The words ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ may seem to be alike in meaning and may therefore appear repetitious. But in Hebrew the word ‘image’ does not point to physical likeness, rather it denotes moral or spiritual similarity. Someone has put it as: ‘change into likeness’; that is, ‘to be conformed to a likeness’ The purpose in God creating man is for man to be transformed according to His image, God wanted Adam to be like Him." ^87/18