Whether you want to hear this or not, and whether you choose to believe this or not.
You are a spirit being.
You were first created by God in His image, and God is Spirit. GENESIS: 1: 26-27;
Then one by one beginning with Adam, God places each of us into a physical human body. GENESIS: 2: 7;
True, in the case of Adam, God creates Adam from the dust of the earth, and then breathes life into him and places a soul within him, but from then on each child born of man receives life through its first breath, even though it is grown in the womb with a soul, a life force that enables it to grow and to learn and become the adult person it is to become.
God needed each spirit he created, to understand the difference between obedience and disobedience because of satan and his fall and the fall of his followers, and being placed into a human form allowed us to learn this lesson.
When we as spirit, in human form, begin our travel through life, we live in sin.
We continue to live in the flesh, in sin until such time as we choose to become re-born again in Christ Jesus and permit God’s Holy Spirit to indwell us to live within us guiding and teaching us.
That instant, Jesus cleanses us from all of our sins, and we become spiritually dead to sin and reborn renewed spiritually re-instated as a child of God, as a brother to Jesus, and as a joint heir with Jesus to the kingdom of heaven.
Spiritually we are purified. Spiritually purified we are born anew in Christ.
ROMANS: 8: 9-17
9 You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature
but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.
And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ,
he does not belong to Christ.
10 But if Christ is in you,
your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead
is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies
through his Spirit, who lives in you.
12 Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation–but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it.
13 For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die;
but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body,
you will live,
14 because those who are led by the Spirit of God
are sons of God.
15 For you did not receive a spirit
that makes you a slave again to fear,
but you received the Spirit of sonship.
And by him we cry, “”Abba,” Father.”
16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit
that we are God’s children.
17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs
–heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
That is the lesson that the apostle Paul is teaching to the Christian followers of Rome as he goes throughout the various towns and cities carrying out the work of spreading the news of the Kingdom and the Gospel of Jesus to those who would become Christian in those days.
That same lesson is one of many lessons that we today, who seek to become followers of Jesus, to become Christian learn. It is this lesson that enables us to understand that though we are seen in the flesh, yet sinning, it is only our body that will die to that sin. Spiritually we are purified and spiritually once we physically die, instantly spiritually our purified spirit returns home to God as his child and God sees us as bretheren to Jesus.
During this Lenten season it is good that each Christian reminds themselves of this lesson as well as experiencing spiritually the suffering that Jesus experienced as he was accused, scouraged, and crucified all for our sakes.
It is these understandings that allow us spiritually to draw nearer to God as a Child of God. It is these understandings and learnings that allow us to fully understand just how important to God we are and how much God truly loves us and desires to have an intimate loving and familial relationship with each and everyone of us, if only we will permit it.