The Divinity of Man

By Noel T. Hernandez

Man is a divine creation. It is written in the Bible that he was created in God's image, not
necessarily in physical appearance, but rather in righteousness and holiness. More than
that, he was endowed by God with a life far different from any other living creation (on
this earth, at least). God saw him fit to receive a part of himself: the Breath of Life, His
Spirit. That Spirit is no different from that which descended upon Mary at the
incarnation. It couldn't be because there can only be one Spirit. Thus, the Spirit that God
bestowed upon man can and should be considered divine.

Does this mean, therefor, that Christ and man are no different? Yes and no. Yes, because
both have the same components of Spirit and flesh. Both can be considered as coming
from the Father. However, the Spirit that gave birth to the Christ was undifferentiated or
undivided with the Father as can be gleaned from John 1:1 - the word, that is Jesus, has
been with God from the very beginning, indivisible from Him. Whereas, the spirit given
to man had been, upon bestowal separated from the Creator.

To understand this separation one has to go back to the raison d'etre for man's creation.
God, in His deepest essence, is Love. Love, by it's very nature needs to be expressed.
How else can God express Himself except through creation. Thus, in Genesis 1 we read
that God created the world and everything in it in six days before resting on the seventh.
From the narration it appears that Man was the last in the whole of creation to be created.
After God saw that everything was good, he saw that it was not enough: there was
nothing in it that could fulfill his nature as Love. He had to create man.

God saw that in order fulfill his nature as Love, this love must continue amid the whole
of creation until it all comes back to him after fulfilling its purpose (Is. 55:10-11). God
must surely have seen that the only thing capable of loving was something or someone
like him. He had to make man in his own image, an image that has the capacity to hold
something as great and powerful as love. Then, too, he had to animate that being with an
"element" that would serve as an extension of himself - a portion of himself with the
actual capability of loving. That capability was a portion of his own Spirit which he
breathed directly into the nostril of the image he created, something he never did to any
other of His creation.

Then again, in furtherance and to give emphasis to his purpose for creating man, God
also saw that man "needed a companion." In Gen. 2:18, He said: "It is not good for the
man to be alone." So he created woman. And just as Man received something from within
God, so woman received something from within man: his rib. Just as God needed
someone in his image to fulfill his purpose of love, so too, man had to have woman,
someone with his likeness to express his love, too, in fulfillment of the law of Love.
This portion of God's spirit is the very thing that undeniably marked man as divine, even
godly or holy, but certainly not as god, precisely because of man's separation from the
creator. After all, every creation is necessarily less than the creator. (Only in the world's
sense can an earthly creation grow into something bigger than its creator. Not so with
God.) However, this gift by its very nature and with its bestowal entailed a great measure
of "sacrifice" from God. God had to give up practically all control over this particular
creation. This is because for Love to continue and remain valid it must be free. It had to
be unrestrained nor inluences by any force or power other than that proceeding from its
very nature as Love.

Thus, man's free will was an indispensable element in man's nature. He was absolutely
free to choose to reject God and act according to his pleasure. Amid the novelty of all
creation around and because of man's innate curiosity, it must have been easy for him
to wander and forget his purpose in creation. His further separation from God led to his
expulsion from Eden.

All this was inevitable. The farther Man drew away from God by his sins the farther he
drew away from the ideal of his divinity. The more he chose the pleasures of the flesh,
rather than the purpose of his divinity the weaker the power of the spirit worked in him,
the farther God's singular purpose of Love's fulfillment would come about. For this God
proposed a solution: He would have to intervene to save man from perdition. In the same
manner that he had to create man, who was possessed of a divine nature and image to
fulfill himself in his nature as love, so did He come to man, this time in man's own
earthly nature - in what might be called an incredible "reversal of roles" - so that man
could once again discover his true divine nature as an expression of God's Love, and and
that he may find his way back on the path of fulfilling God's purpose of Love.

In God's own words expressed through Jesus Christ he bade man to "As I have loved you
so must you love one another" - in complete surrender of the self for all. Such is Love.
Such must the divinity of man be regained: in absolute consonance to the will of the
Father, the God of Love.

All rights reserved, 2006

by Leonilo T. Hernandez