The Condition of Man

God’s greatness is not threatened by our importance. God formed man from the dust of the ground; however it is when He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life that the man thus formed became a living being. The physical body of a man is made from the substance of the earth, but the life did not come from the dust, but from the eternal living God.


Moreover in John 17:22 Jesus talks to the Father and says “the glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one. . .” Therefore, the glory of Jesus has been given to us.


Consider I Corinthians 15:46-48 “The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.”


Notice this verse does not says “as was the man from heaven” but “as is the man from heaven so also are those who are born of heaven.”

In the Church there is the view that man is unworthy perpetually even when the fullness of God inhabits man, he continues to see himself as the unworthy scum of the earth. Or another view is often maintained that brings the greatness of God down to the level of a “buddy” completely stripped in all practical purposes of His magnificent greatness so that we can have the intimate relationship with God that the Bible promises.

However, I think it is much more accurate to continue to see God’s greatness as that which surpasses all understanding. Also that this same God lifts us up out of our earthly born nature and sets us in the high places in Christ as Christ fills us with His glory and makes us heirs with Him giving us His righteousness.

Ephesians 2:4-7 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.”

We who are in Christ are already raised with Him and seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We are in Jesus and He is in heaven so we are also now born of heaven, not of earth. We were not worthy of our own earthly nature, but we were made worthy by His heavenly nature.

God can have such an intimate relationship with us because He already stepped down into the depths with our sin and rose without it. We now are raised in Him without blemish fully made righteous for it is written “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)”