THE IMAGE OF GOD
The image of God is Jesus Christ (Heb. 3: 1-3; Col. 1: 15-17; 2 Cor. 4: 4). The Lord has a physical body and yet "in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," (Col. 2: 9). So, he is a tripartite being, since the Godhead is three persons. That is, Jesus contains a soul, a spirit, and a body.
AFTER OUR LIKENESS
Man is a tripartite being, as well, since he was created in the image of God. Adam’s image was so akin to the image of Jesus that our Savior is even called the "last Adam" in 1 Cor. 15: 45. In other words, man has a spirit, a soul, and a body (1 Thes. 5: 23). In Gen 2:7, the body was formed from the dust of the ground. The spirit was breathed into him and man became a living soul. Notice, these three parts are distinct and represent the different persons in God.
When Adam sinned, his spirit died (Gen. 2: 17; Eph. 2: 1). His soul became stuck to his body and became synonymous with the body (Gen. 17:14; 19:20; Lev. 5:1,2,4). However, at death, the soul departs from the body (Gen. 35:18; 49:33 w/ 50: 3-5), showing that it is still a separate part of his being. The soul looks just like the body, only it is invisible to the human eye (Lk. 16: 22-31; Rev. 6: 9-11).
CONVERSION
All of Adam’s offspring are born in "his" image (Gen. 5: 3), the image of a fallen man with a dead spirit. Therefore, they all die (1 Cor. 15: 22), just like Adam did. Unless their dead spirit is born again by the Holy Spirit (Jn. 3: 5,6), they cannot recover the image that Adam lost.
If you picture a man as a tire, the outer tire represents his body; the tube represents his soul (which is shaped just like his body); and the air represents his spirit. So, a lost man is like a flat tire, he has a live body with a dead spirit (Eph 2:1-6). When he gets saved, the spirit inflates the tire. Unlike a regular tire, though, a saved man, doctrinally, has a live spirit and a dead body (Rom. 6: 2-10). After his physical death, the Lord returns at the rapture to call his dead body out of the ground and fashion it like his glorious body (Phil. 3: 20-21; 1 Jn. 3: 1-3). Thus, the saved man regains the image of God that Adam lost. Conversely, the man who is not born again can never recover this lost image and dies and goes to hell (Matt. 10: 28; Mk. 9: 43-48).
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