Genesis 2:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul

8. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and there he put the man whom he had formed

9. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

The word formed here is to be taken note of. In the first chapter of Genesis, the mode of reporting God’s activities at creation was “God said, Let us.. and there was…” However in the second chapter, the narrative shows the Lord God or YHWH was doing (and not saying),forming, making….

YHWH formed man, breathed into his nostrils and man became a living soul. We are to learn later that this man became a living, able to breath in and out, able to move, able to reason, and able to do all things that made him answer to the description of being living; but he’s not only living but became a living soul.

From this, it could be concluded that man is made of two parts: a formed structure and then, a soul. But the New Testament gives the ultimate revelation on man as a tripartite being. It teaches that there’s a third entity called the spirit. ….and I pray God that your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 thessalonians 5:23). This third person of man is sometimes referred to as the inner man or the hidden man who needs to be adorned better than the physical body.. ….to be strengthened with might by his Spirit the inner man (Ephesians 3:16). Thus with the spirit or inner man, man interacts with God; with the soul, he reasons as in mathematics, philosophy, in branches of human knowledge and, of course, he displays this inner essence with the physical body.

The God-formed man was a living soul. But his script of existence went far beyond that. This truth was demonstrated by Him that was to come, for whom Adam was a pattern or a figure of (Romans 5:14), the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Man was to be God-and-Christ-centred being, well able to display and express the godhead on earth. But for now, he was formed a living soul, but the spiritual was the destiny. ….If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written, the first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam is a life giving spirit (1 Corinthians 15:44-45 – NIV). The living-soul entity that was Adam at formation was to be a life giving spirit. This was to be a journey. This spirit-entity was Christ, the end of the journey. God had more in mind than to make a few superstars to be worshipped by the uncountable rest. A highly gifted, spirit-filled man of God once testified that he was the result of his mother’s prayer that he would turn to a man to be adored by millions all over the world. Thank God for this grace for this man of God, but God’s self-expression in the physical man was the reason of creation. But God in creation didn’t start with the spiritual, the perfection of creation, but God began with the natural man, the living soul, as the starting point. The spiritual did not come first but the natural, and after that the spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:46).

Father, we pray that you’ll strengthen, with might, our Inner man by your Spirit, which in essence means having our feelings, thoughts, and purposes placed more and more under the influences and directions of the Holy Spirit so that you can manifest your power in us in great measure.

Thank you Lord for this