God created man in a marvelous way so that man could contact God, contain God, and receive God as life to express God. Genesis not only tells us that God created man in His image and after His likeness but it also tells us how He created man. First, He created a frame for man with the dust from the earth. Then He breathed into this human frame His breath of life (2:7). God's breath of life is the highest material that He can use to create anything. What else is as precious as the breath of God, the breath of life? And that breath of life from God was breathed into the human frame. What a wonderful thing!

After the breath of life entered into man's frame, it became a part of his human constitution. We were constituted firstly with the dust outwardly and secondly with the breath of God inwardly. The outward frame is man's body, and the inward breath of life has become man's spirit. Man's body and man's spirit came together to produce a living soul (Gen. 2:7). The same Hebrew word for "breath" in Genesis 2:7 is translated "spirit," the spirit of man, in Proverbs 20:27. In Job 32:8 man's spirit is in apposition to the breath of God. A human being is a soul with two organs. The outward organ is the body; the inward organ is our spirit, which is the breath of life. Thus, in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 we are told that a whole man is composed of spirit, soul, and body.

Now in the whole universe there are two big categories of things. The first category of things is material, physical. The second category of things in the universe is spiritual. To contact anything physical, you have to use your body, your outward organ. To contact God as the Spirit with all the spiritual things, you have to use your spirit, your inward organ. In the modern culture of today's world, people mostly care for the physical things and neglect the spiritual things. But the Bible uplifts the spiritual things and depreciates the physical things. The Bible even tells us that we need to put to death the practices of our body (Rom. 8:13) and take care of our spirit. We have to uplift our spirit.

If a human being lives by the body, he is very mean, like a beast. But if a human being lives by the spirit, he is very high, higher than the angels. Many unbelievers live in a very low way by their body. Most of them do not know their spirit, but some know one part of their spirit, that is, their human conscience. Some among them live according to their conscience. This is to live partly by the spirit, so these people are higher. Today we believers are charged to deny ourselves, our soul, and to put to death the practices of our body. Then we live by the spirit, walk by the spirit, and do everything according to the spirit. Romans 8:4 says that we need to walk according to the spirit.

Now we want to see the importance of our spirit. In the whole universe, firstly God is important to us. God has the preeminence. Besides God nothing is as important as our human spirit. For something to be important means that it is indispensable, that you must have it. With all other things besides God and besides our spirit, we have a choice. Whether or not we have them is not vitally important. But we must have God and our human spirit. Firstly, God is the Spirit to us. Then we have a human spirit to contact God the Spirit, to receive Him, and to contain Him. He lives in our spirit to be one with us.