Jesus told the woman at the well that God is a Spirit.
Now most everyone already knows that, but it was important for Jesus to tell us so.
Therefore, if God made man in His image, why is man not spirit or why is God not human? Well, man is or rather has a spirit as is testified to in both the OT and the NT.
Several Scripture passages also reveal that God has a soul.
Therefore, in that respect we do characterize His image and likeness, but what about the body, the fleshly state of man.
This is where the infinite wisdom of God came into play.
You see, God meticulously thought out and designed every small detail of His enormous plan for humanity.
Still, what was the reason God even create man? Was He lonely? He had the angels! Did He want more to Lord over? No, that could not be because He promised to give us everything we could ask for, and even sent His only begotten Son to earth to die for us.
So, the question is even more persistent, why did God make a being like man? God wanted someone like Himself to fellowship with, someone in His same image and likeness.
For that reason, the man had to have the same characteristics of God.
The Bible tells us God is love, yet He is also just and pure and a host of other things.
However, there was a problem in making a being like man.
Since the biggest characteristic of God is love, the man must have the capability of loving God back.
What happens if that man did not love God back? Can you imagine living in a house full of people who hated you? Every morning when you woke up, they would be glaring hate at you, standing in the hallway with hatred all over their faces, and you had to live with them for eternity? Woe! God faced that situation in making a being like man in His image.
On the other hand, if He made men to only love Him and not hate Him, they would be like robots and only loving God because that is the way He made them.
What was the answer? One of the most important things God had to do when He created a being like Himself was provide him with a free will.
That was imperative so the human being could choose either to love God or not to love Him.
That way the choice belonged solely to the man and not to God.
God still looks to love as the number one requisite required of man.
Jesus condensed all the Commandments into these two, "Love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself.
" A verse in Romans chapter 8 declares, "All things work together for good to those who love God, to those called according to His purpose.
" To work out His plan, God arraigned an opportunity of temptation and enticement for sin through man's own lust.
Notice, God did not tempt the man.
The man had a free will, but God did allow a situation to occur allowing the man to exercise his free will.
Thus, Satan came on the scene and deceived the man and woman into sinning in the "Garden of Eden".
By disobeying God's directive not to eat of the forbidden tree in the Garden, sin entered their heart and separated them from uprightness before God.
In God's infinite wisdom, His plan was the only way to find out if the man really loved Him.
Adam was a perfect being before he sinned, but sin transformed him into an imperfect being.
That meant each of Adam's offspring would also be imperfect with an inherited sin nature.
The Bible declares that the result of sin is death.
The need for a perfect human being was necessary to restore fallen man back to a state of right fellowship before God.
After Adam sinned, no more perfect beings existed on earth.
Angels are not perfect, because Satan was one of the hierarchy's of the angels before he sinned against God.
Beasts were not of God's image and neither beasts nor angels are human.
Therefore, there were no perfect beings left anywhere, except God Himself.
Nevertheless, God (as a Spirit) devised a way to come down to this earth as a Perfect Human Being to redeem fallen man.
Moreover, God (in His Spirit and Soul) and in all His wisdom and in all His logic, made Himself in the image of man (in a Body of Flesh and Blood), the very image of the man whom He had created.
Thus, God meticulously thought out His perfectly designed blueprint for humanity.
God provided His love for us first, not the other way around.
This passage from Romans proclaims, "God acclaimed His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
" God loved us first by manifesting a part of Himself into a Man whose destiny was to die in our place and free us from bondage to sin.
Now each of us has a choice to make.
We can choose to believe or we can reject God's love.
The Apostle Peter stated in his epistle that, "God desires no one to perish, but that all should come to repentance and make Jesus their Lord.
" May you choose wisely, Amen.