God is a Spirit. There’s no doubt He can’t be confined to a locale like most of us would have love to. If you take on the Samaritan lady who met with Jesus at Jacob’s well, she was made to realize that God is such a Spirit that seeks mobile houses of worship that are not built by hands. Like a renter, it’s amazing that the Spirit is the one knocking at our heartdoors as though He is homeless, like a snail without a shell. Thanks for joining us, you are about to experience His indwelling in a way you would never sack Him again, if you ever have.
While God is often seen as invisible, we less often come to terms with the reality that He can chose to be visible. You actually read that right. That God is Spirit transcends just being omnipresent or celestial, that His manifest presence when He chooses to can’t be limited by any form would be our the focus here. Now, this is not about making up figments of God or claims as one seeing men as trees walking. That God can chose to be visible isn’t about speaking in parables or adding layers of frames to those conjured popular portraits of Jesus. While it’s easier to believe that God is Spirit and unseen doesn’t mean being unreal, has it ever occurred to you that limiting the Holy One to an invisible Spirit entity is also boxing Him up as not-Almighty? Perhaps this is why some think God can’t have come in flesh. Yet He said, “I am the God of all flesh, is there anything too difficult for me to do?” Perhaps what we should be asking is how can God the Spirit be visible, not that He can’t.
He can, through the flesh hosting Him. And like anyone would wonder, why the flesh of all? How could God be visibly hosted by this despised package of dust from which all animals were formed? To say the least is that this flesh of ours was even indirectly made from God - through the ground - compared to the Soul and the Spirit. But like a shell dragged along by the hosted snail inside, the flesh appears weak because it was fashioned originally to follow the lead of the Spirit. Or if I may say, the strength of the flesh is in followership.
The moment the minds of Adam and Eve surrendered the lead to the flesh that they were built to obey, the pride and the lust of the flesh had crack through this glorified dust of the ground. And in a rapid sequence, while the serpent the trickster was cursed to feed on the ground - which is the source of the flesh, the ground itself was cursed for man’s sake and then the flesh itself judged to become dust to dust. Though God still went ahead to cover this fragile flesh by the glory of animals, we can’t be more right to accept that the flesh is weak, unwilling in spirtual calls and helplessly mortal. Such that if it were possible, some of us so spiritual would rather shed our bodies rightaway and live as ghosts. Yet it was not so, God has chosen the foolish things such as our flesh as His host to confound the wise. And if the Word became flesh directly, He can decide to be too visible to remain spiritual.
What’s all this hogwash! That was my first reaction too. But would it make any difference to realize that the ground we walk upon, the water you last drank, the apparently invisible air we still breathe and all seeables - with or without our naked eyes were actually formed from things not seen! Yes everything without an exception, all things tangible were inside the intangible, not beside it. The Spirit and the flesh were originally not word and opposite, but the latter an expression of the former. God is a Spirit that contained flesh in it. The world framed by the word, the ground not the least, was inside the Spirit. As are deep seated seeds after their kinds, the flesh God formed was actually in the pregnancy of the Spirit, the same way Eve’s flesh was hidden inside the rib of Adam. It was actually God’s desire to host the Spirit and the soul that birthed the flesh.
If we take a step back from the moulding of Adam himself, we would see that the first man and woman were already created in perfect image of God - Gen 1:26. ‘Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over…’ If we slide a bit into verse 28, ‘So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created HIM; male and female He created them... ” We would spot quickly that there was a time lag between man’s creation and his formation, even if it is believed that both occurred on the sixth day. But you just might be in for a surprise that man’s creation which isn’t a substitute to his formation actually occurred long before the sixth day.
Long before the ground, the mother of dust from which human flesh itself was made, God already created and chosen us, ‘just as He chose us IN HIM before the foundation of the world.’ – Can we hold it here in Eph 1:4? Before what! It quickly draws attention to that yearning question, where were the Spirit and soul of man before his flesh was formed from the dust?
Perhaps it also resonates with the question God asked Job out of whirlwind, “where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” If anyone dared to answer this question posed by God, it would not be less right to say, right there inside the mind of God. Yes, in His mind. That was where we were. That He has chosen us IN HIM before the foundation of the world is an imaginative proof that we were created in His mind, though not yet as living souls in human reality – back then, no physical hosts.
While we can’t wait to unwrap the mind in BICQ 6, you can mark it down that the mind is an outward projection if the soul. And just as it takes a Spirit to create a spirit, it takes a Soul to make a soul with the mind as an extension. If we then who are Gods replicas have minds, God is definitely not without a mind. Little wonder Jeremiah 32:11, Zechariah 11:8 and Matthew 26:38 are all doubt clearers that God also has a Soul with a mind.
So, how are we so sure we were inside His mind? He’s is a reasoning God, a Let-Us God do this and that God; ‘Let Us make man in our image’, 'Let Us go down and confound their language' , even for sinners, 'come let us reason together', It’s the same way He would reason with Adam in the cool of the day, he would with Abraham to negotiate Sodom and Gomorrah before it was roasted.
In fact, in His Spirit and mind, He had blessed both the Spirit and Soul of the man and woman He created and was already seeing them multiplying and dominating over all creatures. So, we are okay that we were first fully created a Spirit and a Soul with a mind and we were existing in the mind of God even before the soil that formed our body was formed. Great!
BUT THE MAIN QUESTION IS, IF GOD IS SPIRIT WITH A SOUL WITHOUT A BODY UNTIL THE WORD BECAME FLESH IN JESUS, IN WHOSE LIKENESS THEN WAS THE BODY OF ADAM FORMED FROM THE DUST, WOULD IT THEN NOT MEAN THAT ADAM WAS THE FIRST BODY PATTERN?
Invariably, exactly in whose likeness was that body that hosted Adam’s Spirit and soul? Answer, it was after the likenesses of Jesus. How so? Back then, the Word was a spiritual body, always in the beginning with God as His spitting image. Deep inside the Spirit image of God existed Christ’s yet unformed body. Yet, right inside the mind or the soul of God, His body or glorious flesh called Jesus was already born and slained long before the foundation of the world, or the soil.
So, the serpent feeding on the cursed ground the source of our fleshy hosts was not a breaking news to God. As revealed in Rev 13:9, “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” So the Word was going to be formed into flesh, God the Spirit knew what the head, neck, shoulder, waist down to toes and the thinnest hair of Adam would look like before building this first copied host from the dust. Little wonder Col 1:15 reads of Jesus, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” So God like a sculpturer, wasn’t molding without a reference or slapping clay and moist together in a try and error. Adam‘s body was a first copy He made, by looking at the original first born of creation. His flesh wasn’t created it was born from the Sprit, that’s why He is the son and the Spirit is the father. Things not seen giving birth to that which is seen.
This was why Jesus’ birth and death could almost be vividly revealed way ahead of time to the prophets. For instance, foretold to Isaiah seven centuries before Virgin Mary was born. By the time of the flesh in the pregnancy of the Spirit was fulfilled around BC 4, the Spiritually incorruptible body of Jesus not made from the cursed ground but the Word which was in the beginning made flesh became a reality to host the Spirit. Or why do think when the prince of this world came to Him, to be bruised and pierced by the searching bow of Satan - the old serpent searching for his food, the cursed ground, it found nothing in Him tied to the cursed ground but our own sin for which He laid down His life by Himself? Oh! This was why His flesh could not rot in hell but instead was resurrected, leaving behind the sackcloth in the empty tomb. The original flesh God will have us host our Spirit and soul was what Jesus came with. It is one which was slained from the foundation of the earth. This was the one from which the flesh of Adam was fashioned after.
We can now see why the first Adam was made a living soul but the last Adam became a living Spirit. Jesus flesh can live as a Spirit because it was born directly by the Spirit. Its a special kind and real to naked eyes, remember that God is Spirit doesn’t mean we should limit the Holy one. Becoming a living Spirit isn't creation but becoming flesh from a Spiritual body. Jesus’ flesh was from the Spirit overshadowing of virgin Mary’s womb and the virgin tomb of Joseph of Arimathea in resurrection. This is the original body, the permanent address of the Holy Ghost, not rented. This is Spiritual body Paul wrote of in I Cor 15:49 as incorruptible, glorious and powerful which we shall put on when we shed off the corruptible, dishonored, weak and natural body at Jesus’ coming in the twickle of an eye.
Jesus had only come to express that spiritual body to us. It’s a body that is only revealed by His father. The father is the Spirit, the source, so that body the host is the son which is visible. ‘No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” – John 1:8. The Son, the flesh was in the bossom of the Spirit. And it’s a wonder. When the Spirit overshadowed Marys womb, the result was the Son, the flesh. When He appeared at his baptism as the father, all He was saying was announcing Him as the son. When the the identity of Jesus was still unclear to the disciples, the son or the flesh didn’t puff or reveal himself, it was the Spirit; Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”– Matthew 16:17. That father is that Spirit. It was high time we stop seeing the Holy Spirit as one fighting for the third place in the trinity. It is this same Spirit of adoption that make us cry Abba father – the source. And it’s as many that are led by this same Spirit that are the sons of God. It takes the Spirit, the father to reveal the son.
With a lot said there on how the flesh came about, can we now focus on this flesh as a retuning host?
It actually takes the flesh too to declare the father. Little wonder the discerning test for any Spirit of truth is that which profess that Jesus actually came in FLESH. Like the old temple with parted curtains for the new temple built in us by the death of Christ, I can’t wait to have this Spiritual flesh and it’s a marvel that it’s so visible that it even admitted the doubting finger of Thomas.
God’s plan was for flesh to host the Spirit and the spirit to reveal itself physically through it. This was why the man and woman were naked but not ashamed until they let the flesh take the lead and became like shells driving the snails. It’s a given that the flesh and the Spirit would struggle to lead in the mind. As it was in the Garden of Eden, so it was in the Garden of Gathesemane. But Christ revealed that this flesh can be brought into the submission by the Spirit for the Spirit to reveal his glory in the flesh in unison. That’s the unity of Let-us, the marriage of the unconscious soul and the dummy body by the inspired life of the Spirit is the full expression of God’s image, all parts the flesh inclusive matters to Him . Adam was meant to be a whole copy of Jesus, even in physical expression. The same way divorce of the body from the spirit and soul was not so from the beginning, the divorce of the Spirit and flesh called death wasn’t until sin. Breathing or not, “… for as the body without the Spirit is dead…”
So, it’s understandable that when Adam’s body became corruptible and was judged to SURELY die, it died spiritually as a result of God taking away His Holy Spirit from him. In fact, it died that VERY DAY he ate the fobbiden truth. And then by extension, the flesh too started dying, pining away into the soil until the soul left it at Adams age of 930 years. But, does that really finally condemn the flesh? Not if we realize that God would rather make a new earth and a new heaven than let sin mess up His original hosting purpose of the flesh. Then, we might understand why He said blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth – not as fleshless ghosts. Pinch yourself if you can! God made this flesh for a reason! To host His Spirit. The son to host the father that has been hosting him all along before formation.
It is the presence or otherwise of the Holy Spirit that determines if one is dead or alive to God. The absence of the Holy Spirit on the soul and flesh is the death God told Adam of, the day he ate the forbidden fruit. “For the body without the spirit is dead”. This was why Jesus would say let the dead bury the dead: let the dead in the Spirit bury the dead in the body. That was why He said Lazarus was simply sleeping because his soul was still connected to the Holy Spirit though the body was dead. Even, the residual creative power of God in our flesh is so far reaching than we have ever thought. This is such that the body, even when seemed to have been casted dust to dust or burnt to ashes, only hibernates. All flesh and souls, great and small will be resurrected either to life or to death of the Spirit. In fact, when death is killed eventually, this corruptible body still continues into eternal life in a new glorious flesh or the old to damnation, imagine what the incorruptible would be like. So, this body is actually beyond its hibernation in the tomb or cremation.
We have in our forebears, legends of this body that have hosted the Holy Ghost. Even after the Holy Spirit left Adam for dead, for the body without the Spirit is dead, the residual power of the Spirit of God on Adam and his the offsprings was still so strong that they would live for over 900 years, yet in sin. When Enoch yielded his body to the Spirit, He made the Spirit the landlord rather than a tenant so much that skin barrier thinned out till all of him thinned into the air. For Job, he just knew the Eden sentence wasn’t the final word on his emanciated body even if it got rotten, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, 'That in my flesh' I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, And my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”
For Serah, the hosting of the Holy Ghost physically restored her ovaries and womb. When the Holy Spirit would rent Samson, through his muscles he would not only uproot Philistine city gate, he would climb the hills with it against gravity. Then he sacked him, but by the time he housed him one last time, the whole city hall would crumble under his suicidal wreck. This Spirit breaks physical when the flesh is yeilded to Him. On the move of the joints and muscles of Elijah, the Spirit would physically make him outspeed the fastest royal horses and chariot in Isreal, before physically taking his body away with the Spirit and soul. On the finally surrendered skin of General Namaan, like the ten lepers, the cosmetic effect of the Spirit was a peagant reality.
On the bony tomb of Elisha, the residual power of the Holy Spirit was so much that it would raise another dead. This Spirit of power hosted in the flesh of the three Hebrew brothers would make their body physically fireproofs. Though we know all these hosts eventually kept their appointments with death, and that Elijah who escaped physical death returned in the flesh of John the Baptist like an avatar and that he was beheaded. And that theologians also expect that two prophets, perhaps those whose bodies had also escaped death in the past would have their flesh globally desicrated in future, the Holy Spirit has not spare being physical in every flesh that has hosted Him humbly however temporal.
Because the departure of Holy Ghost from Adam left us for dead and gave space for other spirits, God would manifest the finished work of redemption of our new creation from in His mind right from the foundation of the world. By His Spirit, pregnant with the soul and body as always, He would begin a new creation altogether, one that can House His Spirit permanently. This is why Jesus said, “He Who is born of the Spirit is Spirit and he who is born of the flesh is flesh”. God would start from the Spirit which is bound to be new to us who have experienced strange spirits before. But we know that this Spirit is not new to God as He doesn’t have to create a new Spirit or a new mind but they are certainly new to us as He foretold Ezekiel in verse 26 of his 36th Chapter, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” He only put them in us because it’s the same Spirit which rose Christ up from the dead and it’s the same heart or mind which is also in Christ He wants in us. The next logical question is what of the body? Why would a new flesh lag being in this everthing-has-become-new creation of the Spirit and soul? Why would God put a new Spirit and a new mind in our old body and call the body temple of the Holy Ghost?
The question only got complicated when you read Joel prophesied God in his chapter 2: 28-32? “And it shall come to pass afterward. That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your old men shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maidservants. I will pour out My Spirit in those days”. I thought I got the answer right that God wont even wait for Jesus’ coming to PUT His Spirit in these bodysuits of ours but would rather POUR out His Spirit on this same old and corruptible flesh. What! Sounds to you too like putting a new wine of Spirit and mind in an old skin?
Amazing, He won’t even just put His Spirit on this present flesh, but this present come back in the new creation is a pour. At first a pour down from God on the pagan day of Pentecost and afterwards an outpour from us. In this last days, His outpouring sounds like breaking sweats of fragrance which Act 2:23 confirmed in case of reference. The Spirit outpouring was physically seen and heard by the expression on the hosts. Visible fire landed on them. If the upper room went shy of enough witnesses, audible tongues of all nations heard at about 3 am stole the show on the drunk sleepless party night of pagan Pentecost.
Mind taking a second look at that croc on the cover page? Though it’s very physical - thick skinned and dirty, raw and rugged but it presented his body, as if he were a living sacrifice to that little bird. The glover in turn, fragile but bold is not a Spirit of fear, but of power, love and sound mind: quenchable but if submitted to, she leads this massive shelter. He allowed her to toothpick his dirts while the croc reflect her purity. If she tell him to open his mouth, he does it. Hold it there, lift his tongue sideway, adjust his Jaw for cleansing – he obeys all.
Like the Holy Ghost, the bird went for the mouth, He knows the power of the tongue, the speech over the whole body member is key to the heart and more than just lips service. Little wonder at the downpour and outpouring of the Holy Ghost, tongues changed. The more I allow him to search deep into me and feed off dirts that have settled down in my mouth, the less I would give out killer speeches, killer writings. The more I allow Him to peck off the lurking morsels I have eaten that may give out bad mouth odour, the cleaner, the healthier I become visibly and prosper even in this body even as the soul prospers.
He would even pick out the clutters from things that we regurgitate or meditate on as Jesus said that it’s those things that come out of us to others – like the odour, the unseasoned speech - that are defiles not really the things that goes in. This croc had broken the pride of the flesh and surrendered his mind or heart to that bird daily like a living sacrifice, without which, he wouldn’t have yielded his jaw. If we yeild our minds, then we can yeild our jaws, He will fill it. His powerful effects makes holiness easy like first nature. If His tenancy in the time past radiated on the skin, you can imagine and experience what His landlordship would be in us! It makes sin difficult that it might take God to lead one into temptation by the devil. The impact of His holy nature can’t be limited by the skin, such that all we have to do is be, holy. That’s as He is naturally holy.
You see, God would not wait for the second coming of Jesus to reveal the essence of the flesh to every generation, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” God want us to host His Holy Ghost despite all that our bodies go through. Because He wants to reveal His treasured Spirit physically in this present body. By residing first as a tenant in this fleshy host where He should have been a landlord, He wants to school this body that He hasn’t given up on it, that He can still heal it, make it make it whole and prosper. That’s why Jesus could create new eyes for a man born blind or why do you think we shall eat deadly things without effects? He breaks physical.
In fact, if the key of this entire body is surrendered to Him, the Holy Spirit would like to take over the ownership of the shell, “Or do you not know that ‘your body’ is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, AND YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN?” - 1 Corinthians 6:19 to me changes the game and assures me that there’s a new life we live even in this shell of flesh that powers the snail, even before the spiritual body is outpoured. Little wonder Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live ‘ in the flesh’ I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” This very body of yours can host Him and manifest.
Adam’s flesh, made from the corruptible dust, was simply a parable of the original it was fashioned after. Our current body is a shadow of the coming glorious body that would become flesh directly from the Word. Left to lead this soul is it still telling the story of the weak caretaker of the Spirit power and how much the Power of the Spirit can be made visible in the earthen vessels. Being His holy hosts is a reality of the paradox that God’s fullness is indeed in expansion from the Spirit to through the soul to the flesh. The measure of the fullness of His stature in the created spirit image is only expressed in time whenever He wishes the physical formation of the glorious body should happen, at the coming of Jesus. What a joy to know that the spiritual body is inside the Spirit, just waiting to break open at the last trumpet, that’s why it’s called transformation – in the twinkle of an eye.
And guess what, His power and influence in this body can’t be limited to dreaming only of things not seen, it instead breaks physical into what eyes have not seen and what hears haven’t heard. While we await our glorious bodies, in this present bodies, we are not to live as if the Spirit of God lives inside us as walking corpses, dead in Spirit burning the dead in body, yet we are not to live as if the body is useless and pretend as though we are holy Ghosts, but holy Hosts!
Join us in BICQMAG6, on how exactly to submit to this Holy Spirit - Sound Mind.
- Olusanya Olusola, Topic Writer, BICQMag
INK AIRERS
Salem Otto - Ghana
Jeremiah Ishaya - Northern Nigeria
Oluwatobi Shoyoye - Southern Nigeria
Olusanya Racheal - Northern UK
Odunayo Olashore - Canada
Olusanya Olusola - Southern UK