Gwen Frangs / Templemore, Ireland / 2 December 2022
The Bible teaches that human beings are spirits. In Genesis 1:26a we read:
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…
Genesis 1:26a
The pronoun ‘us’ is referring to two Spirits, the Father and the Holy Spirit. It cannot be referring to Jesus Christ because the Bible teaches that Jesus was begotten at the beginning of the New Testament. If we look at the meaning of the word ‘begotten’ in https://biblehub.com/hebrew/3205.htm. You will see that the word is derived from the word meaning ‘to bear, bring forth, beget’. The word translated ‘begotten’ in Psalm 2:7 means that the Son of Man was begotten. Psalm 2 also makes it clear that the Son of Man was only begotten after there were already nations on the earth:
7 I will tell of the decree:
Psalm 2:7-8 ESV
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
There were no nations present at the creation, because they had not been created yet, therefore the Son of Man could not have been begotten before the creation.
In Zechariah 3, the second last book of the Old Testament, the Father is speaking through the Holy Spirit about the Branch. In verse 8 Yahweh says: ‘I Am bringing forth My Servant the Branch….’ Zechariah 3:8. He is describing a future event. He is not describing something that had happened in the past prior to creation. The Son was begotten only at the beginning of the New Testament when Mary became pregnant with Him, as a result of the Holy Spirit overshadowing her. When the Holy Spirit took up residence in the body that the Father had prepared for Him, the Son was begotten:
5 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
Hebrews 10:5-7
but a body you prepared for me;
6 with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
7 Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—
I have come to do your will, my God.’”[a]
The Son did not exist as a man prior to that point. The speaker in the verse makes it clear that He sees Himself as separate from the body that was prepared. In other words He is not the body. He is in the body. This is because the speaker is the Holy Spirit.
The Bible teaches that Jesus’ spirit is the Holy Spirit. For example in Acts 16 we are told:
Paul and his companions travelled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to .
Acts 16:6-7
We see here that the apostle Luke calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Jesus.
As Christians we know that the Holy Spirit was in the prophets in the Old Testament so that they could prophesy. In 1 Peter 1:10-11 the apostle Peter refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ:
10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow.
1 Peter 1:10-11 NIV
In Romans, Paul says: ‘But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.’ (Romans 8:9, 10 NRSV). Paul refers to ‘the spirit of Christ’ as ‘the Spirit of God’. We know that ‘the Spirit of God’ is the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it follows that the spirit of Christ is the Holy Spirit.
As Christians we know that the Holy Spirit is living in us and that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). However, the apostle Paul tells us that it is Jesus Who is living in us. The apostle Paul called this a mystery:
24 Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. 25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Colossians 1:24-27
Jesus Himself told the disciples at the Last Supper that He would be coming and living in them. In John 14:18-20 He says:
18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
John 14:18-20
In John 17:22-26 He says:
22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you[a] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”
John 17:22-26
In John 14:23 Jesus makes it clear that if we obey His commandments that both Himself and the Father will come and live in us:
Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
John 14:23
The only way that Jesus can live within the believer is in the form of a spirit.
The apostle Paul taught that Jesus is the Holy Spirit because he writes in 1 Corinthians 3:17:
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
2 Corinthians 3:17
Therefore, according to the Bible the Spirit of Jesus is the Holy Spirit. His body and soul were those of a human being, but His Spirit is the Holy Spirit. This is why in churches you hear people say that Jesus is living in them and you hear people say that they are the temple of the Holy Spirit. They are saying exactly the same thing, because the spirit of Jesus is the Holy Spirit.
In Isaiah 63:11 the Holy Spirit is called ‘the Shepherd of His flock’:
11 Then his people recalled[a] the days of old,
Isaiah 63:11-13 NIV
the days of Moses and his people—
where is he who brought them through the sea,
with the shepherd of his flock?
Where is he who set
his Holy Spirit among them,
12 who sent his glorious arm of power
to be at Moses’ right hand,
who divided the waters before them,
to gain for himself everlasting renown,
13 who led them through the depths?
Like a horse in open country,
they did not stumble;
The New Testament teaches that this Good Shepherd, the Holy Spirit, became incarnate as Jesus Christ. The reason why it was not possible for Jesus Christ to be present at the creation in Genesis 1, or throughout the Old Testament for that matter, is because His spirit is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit was present at the creation and in the Old Testament as the Holy Spirit, but not as the Son of Man, because the Holy Spirit became incarnate as the Son of Man only in the New Testament.
In the Bible the Holy Spirit appears on occasion as two or more forms simultaneously. In Genesis 15:17-21 He appeared as a smoking firepot and a blazing torch:
17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi[a] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
Genesis 15:17-21 NIV
In John 6: 46, Jesus says, “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. “ This means that none of the appearances of God in the Old Testament were God the Father. Jesus did not exist yet as Jesus in the Old Testament. He existed as the Holy Spirit. Therefore, every appearance of God in the Old Testament was an appearance by the Holy Spirit. This means that both the smoking fire pot and the blazing torch were the Holy Spirit.
In Ezekiel 1:26-28 He appeared as a fiery man and a rainbow:
26 Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. 27 I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. 28 Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.
This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.
Ezekiel 1:26-28 NIV
The appearance of the rainbow is described by Ezekiel as ‘the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord’. In Ezekiel 8:4 the fiery man is described as the Glory of God. Therefore, when it says that the rainbow is the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord’ it is saying that the rainbow is another form of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit appeared as a dove at Jesus’ baptism, even though Jesus was Himself the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, because the dove was a symbol of a sin offering. The Jewish people could offer doves as sin offerings if they couldn’t afford a lamb or a bull. Seeing a dove would immediately make them think of a sin offering. At Jesus’ baptism, John the Baptist testified that Jesus, the incarnate Holy Spirit, was the Lamb of God and the Holy Spirit appeared as a dove, symbolizing that it was the Holy Spirit Who was going to be offered as a sin offering.
On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit appeared as both a mighty wind and tongues of fire. This is a perfect fulfillment of what is said in Hebrews 1:7 because the word that is translated as ‘spirits’ in this verse in many Bible translations can also be translated as winds:
7 Of the angels he says,
“He makes his angels winds,
and his ministers a flame of fire.”
Hebrews 1:7 provides concrete evidence that the Holy Spirit is, in fact, an angel. In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was called the Angel of Yahweh or the Angel of His Presence. Hebrews 1:7 makes it clear that angels can change their form to become winds or flames of fire.
A number of scriptures in John 14 and 15 in which Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit would seem to render it entirely impossible that Jesus is the Holy Spirit:
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever
—John 14:16
26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
John 14:26
26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.
John 15:26
It would seem that Jesus is indicating that the Holy Spirit is an Individual entirely separate and different from Himself. However, a similar thing occurs when Jesus refers to the Son of Man.
“The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness.”
Matt. 13:41
“The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men and they shall kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day.”
Matt. 17:22-23
“Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
Matt. 19:28
“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up.”
Matt. 20:18-19
“But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.”
Matt. 25:31
When Jesus refers to the Son of Man in these scriptures it also seems like He is referring to an entirely different person from Himself. However, in Matthew 16:15 Jesus identifies Himself to be the Son of Man:
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.
Matthew 16:13-17
It is clear from verse 15 that Jesus is Himself the Son of Man and that there is no separate or different Son of Man.
It would seem that in the verses in John 14 and 15 in which Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit in the third person that He is doing the same thing as when He referred to Himself as the Son of Man in the third person.
Although He speaks of Himself as the Holy Spirit in the third person, He indicates in John 14, that He Himself is the Holy Spirit. For example, in John 14:7 Jesus tells the disciples that the Holy Spirit lives with them:
17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you…..
John 14:17
As the Holy Spirit only came on Pentecost and Jesus was the One Who was living with them at that time and the One that they knew, this indicates that Jesus Himself is the incarnate Holy Spirit.
In John 14:18-20 He says:
18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
John 14:18-20
Notice that at the end of verse 20 He tells them that He will be in them. Obviously there is no way that He could come and physically climb inside of them to live in them. The only way that He could be in them would be in the form of a Spirit. We know as Christians that the Holy Spirit is the One Who is in us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
In verse 18 Jesus is telling the disciples that He will come to them. This happened on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down and filled the disciples. He tells them that He will come to them in a way that the world cannot see Him. The world cannot see Jesus living in a Christian as the Holy Spirit.
The apostle Paul seems to be the person who fully understood that the Holy Spirit is Jesus Himself. He described it as a mystery:
24 Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. 25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Colossians 1:24-27
In Galatians, Paul says: ‘And because you Gentiles have become his children, God has sent the spirit of his Son into your hearts, and now you can call God your dear Father’ (Galatians 4:6 NLT).
This is the glorious mystery that the Holy Spirit is Jesus Himself and that He lives within the Church. Years ago I asked the Holy Spirit what I should call Him because I thought it seemed very formal to call Him Holy Spirit. The answer came back as clear as anything. He said: ‘Jesus.’
In Colossians 1 the apostle Paul distinguishes between Jesus’ physical body and the church as Jesus’ body:
22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—
Colossians 1:22
24 Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.
Colossians 1:24
It is clear that Paul understands Jesus to be living inside the church as the Holy Spirit and that the Church is His body. A few verses earlier Paul described the Son of God:
12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you[f] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and into him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Colossians 1:12-20
In verses 15-18 Paul is clearly describing Jesus as He pre-existed as the Holy Spirit. Then In verses 18-20, Paul is describing the Holy Spirit after He became incarnate as Jesus. In verse 16 Paul says that all things were created through the Son. The Old Testament makes it clear that God used the Holy Spirit to create everything:
The Spirit of God has made me;
Job 33:4 NIV
the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
All creatures look to you
Psalm 104:27-30 NIV
to give them their food at the proper time.
28 When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
29 When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
30 When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.
Clearly, the Son is the Holy Spirit incarnate or Paul would have been contradicting the Old Testament by teaching that the Son had created everything.
The apostle John also had the revelation that Jesus was the Holy Spirit incarnate. In John 1:1-3 we are told:
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word. He was in the beginning with God. All things through Him came into being and without Him came into being not even one thing that has come into being.
John 1:1-3
In the Book of Revelation John sees the spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, on the island of Patmos. In Revelation 1:13 the apostle John says that he sees One like the Son of Man. It does not say that he sees the Son of Man:
12 And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;
13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
Revelations 1:12-16 NIV
It must be remembered that John was the beloved disciple. If he had seen Jesus in the vision, his reaction would have been different. They would probably have been hugging each other with joy. Instead John falls down in terror when he sees this Person, Who is like the Son of Man, but isn’t the Son of Man:
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.
Revelation 1:17 NIV
This is because the Person that John sees is the Holy Spirit. We know that this is the Holy Spirit because we are told in Revelations 2 verses 1 and 7 that it is the Holy Spirit:
2 “To the angel[a] of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands.
Revelation 2:1 NIV
7 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Revelation 2:7a NIV
Also, Revelation 2:12 says:
“To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:
These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.
Revelation 2:12 NIV
Ephesians 6:17 says that the sword belongs to the Holy Spirit:
Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Ephesians 6:17 NIV
Therefore, in the Book of Revelation it is revealed to John that the spirit of Jesus is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit then reveals to him what is to come, just as Jesus said that He would do:
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
John 16:13 NIV
In Revelation 1 and 2 the apostle John is seeing the Holy Spirit as He was before He became incarnate as the Son of Man. He was seeing the Holy Spirit as He appeared in the Old Testament as El Shaddai, the Ancient of Days:
9 “As I looked,
“thrones were set in place,
Daniel 7:9-10 NIV
and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His clothing was as white as snow;
the hair of his head was white like wool.
His throne was flaming with fire,
and its wheels were all ablaze.
10 A river of fire was flowing,
coming out from before him.
Thousands upon thousands attended him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.
The court was seated,
and the books were opened.
Therefore, the Bible makes it clear that Jesus’ spirit is the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it was impossible for the Holy Spirit to be present as Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, because He had not yet become incarnate as Jesus. Jesus made it clear, when He was on the earth, that nobody had ever seen the Father. Therefore, every time that somebody saw God in the Old Testament, they were seeing the Holy Spirit. He was called the Angel of Yahweh. This Angel was the image of God in the Old Testament. He was the image of Yahweh, because when people saw this Angel they all said that they had seen God:
- In Genesis 16:13 Hagar calls the Angel of Yahweh, God.
- In Genesis 48:15-16 Jacob calls this same Angel, God.
- In Judges 13:22, Manoah calls the Angel of Yahweh, God.
- In Exodus 3, when the Angel of Yahweh appears as fire in a bush, He is referred to as God by the author, both in verses 4 and 6.
- In Genesis 22:12 the Angel of Yahweh calls Himself God.
- In Zechariah 12:8, God the Father calls the Angel, God.
- Hosea calls the Angel, God in Hosea 12:4-5.
When, in Colossians 1:15, the apostle Paul calls Jesus ‘the image of the invisible God’ he is identifying Jesus as the Angel of Yahweh, the Angel within Whom the Father is present. We can know this is true because in Exodus 6:2-3 the preposition on the word בְּאֵ֣ל means either ‘in’, ‘at’ or ‘with’ in the ancient Hebrew (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%91%D6%BE). It does not mean ‘as’ because כְּ is the prefix which means ‘as’ (8af3842462324e4d5443b28852f9368b3e9aa672.html). If you look at the blue parts of speech under the original Hebrew text the preposition is listed as Prep-b. Prep-b, according to the Hebrew parsing, means ‘in’ (https://biblehub.com/hebrewparse.htm). Therefore, the verse does not read:
….. I am Yahweh and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shaddai…
Rather, the verse reads as:
….I am Yahweh and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob in El Shaddai…
In the ancient world people believed that if they made an image of a god, that the god came and lived inside of the image. They must have gotten this idea from God, because God the Father is living within the Holy Spirit, the Angel of Yahweh. The Greek word εἰκὼν, which was used by Paul in Colossians 1:15, and is translated ‘image,’ can also be translated as the word ‘statue’. The Father is an invisible Spirit (Colossians 1:15 ; 1 Timothy 1:17 ; Hebrews 11:27) and, therefore, cannot be seen. In order to relate to His creation He lives in and expresses Himself through the Holy Spirit, the Angel of Yahweh.The people who saw the Angel of Yahweh, understood that they were seeing the Angel with the Father present within the Angel. That is why the Angel is called the Angel of His presence.
The Bible teaches that the Angel of Yahweh is the Holy Spirit. In Isaiah 63:8-13 we read:
8 He said, “Surely they are my people,
children who will be true to me”;
and so he became their Savior.
9 In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.[a]
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.
10 Yet they rebelled
and grieved his Holy Spirit.
So he turned and became their enemy
and he himself fought against them.11 Then his people recalled[b] the days of old,
Isaiah 63:8-13
the days of Moses and his people—
where is he who brought them through the sea,
with the shepherd of his flock?
Where is he who set
his Holy Spirit among them,
12 who sent his glorious arm of power
to be at Moses’ right hand,
who divided the waters before them,
to gain for himself everlasting renown,
13 who led them through the depths?
This is why Jesus Christ, the incarnate Holy Spirit, kept telling His disciples that the Father was in Him. Jesus Christ is the incarnate Angel of His Presence.
In Exodus 6:2-3 we are told by God the Father that the name of the Holy Spirit is El Shaddai:
2 And God said to Moses, “I am Yahweh—‘the Lord.’ 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob in El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty’—but I did not reveal my name, Yahweh, to them.
Exodus 6:2-3
This is confirmed in Genesis 48 when Jacob speaks about El Shaddai, Who appeared to him at Luz (Genesis 48:3) and Who had helped him all of his life:
15 Then he blessed Joseph and said,
“May the God before whom my fathers
Genesis 48:15-16
Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,
the God who has been my shepherd
all my life to this day,
16 the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
—may he bless these boys.
May they be called by my name
and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and may they increase greatly
on the earth.”
The apostle Paul recognized that Jesus was this Angel incarnate and identified Him as such in 1 Corinthians 10:9:
9 We should not test Christ,[a] as some of them did—and were killed by snakes.
1 Corinthians 10:9 NIV
If one reads the account of some of the Israelites being killed with snakes in Numbers 21:4-9 in the original Hebrew, the text says that it was Yahweh Who killed the Israelites with the snakes. So, why would Paul be linking Jesus with this incident? He does this because he knew that in Exodus 23 Yahweh tells Moses that the Angel of Yahweh will go with the Israelites:
20 “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. 21 Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. 22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. 23 My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.
Exodus 20:20-23 NIV
Paul knew that the Angel’s name was Yahweh because God the Father told Moses that the Angel was also called Yahweh. He also knew that in Exodus 33, Yahweh tells Moses that He Himself will not be in the midst of the Israelites on this journey because He might kill them on the way:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ 2 I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 3 Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”
Exodus 33:1-4
If one reads these verses in the original Hebrew, Yahweh actually says to Moses that He will not go up in the midst of the Israelites (Exodus 33:3 Interlinear Bible). Therefore, Paul knew that Yahweh, the Father, Who is an invisible spirit, was not in the midst of the Israelites on the journey. The Father was not present in the midst of the Israelites in the form of an omnipresent Spirit because He did not want to kill them. It was the Angel of Yahweh Who was with them. This is confirmed in Judges 2:1:
2 The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.
Judges 2:1
Paul identified this Angel as Christ in 1 Corinthians 10:9 because he understood that Jesus was the incarnate Angel of Yahweh. He understood that Jesus’ spirit is the Angel of Yahweh. We have human spirits, but Jesus doesn’t have a human spirit. His spirit is the Holy Spirit, the Angel of Yahweh. Jesus is the Angel of Yahweh, the Holy Spirit, incarnate.
In Numbers 12:7-8 we read that Moses saw the ‘form’ of Yahweh:
Not so with My servant Moses. He is faithful in all My house. I speak with him face to Face and even plainly and not in dark sayings and he sees the form of Yahweh….
Numbers 12:7;8 Interlinear
In Philippians 2:5-8, Paul writes:
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,[a]6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,[b]7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[c] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8 ESV
You will recall that Paul understood that Jesus was the Holy Spirit incarnate. By linking Jesus to the Angel of Yahweh, Paul is linking the Angel of Yahweh to the Holy Spirit. It is clear that Paul understood that the Angel of Yahweh is the Holy Spirit, the ‘form’ or image of God. It follows that our spirits are created in the image of the Holy Spirit because we were created in the image and likeness of God. Jesus said that when we die we become like the angels in Heaven. This makes perfect sense when you understand that we have been created in the image of an angel, the Holy Spirit.
We saw that in Genesis 1:26a it says that human beings were created in the image of God. When we understand that Jesus had not yet been begotten at the creation and that only the Father and the Holy Spirit were present and that they agreed to create man in their image and likeness, then we can begin to grasp that we must also be spirits, because they are both Spirits. People who think that Jesus was present at the creation, think that we were created in His image and that we are both body and spirit. However, because Jesus was not present, it means that our human bodies are not actually a part of who we really are. It is not our body or soul that is really who we are, but our spirit. Our body and soul are made of matter and are a sort of container for us to live in while we are living on the earth. Our body and soul allow us to interact with this world of matter in a meaningful way. However, it is our spirit who is what we really are, not our body and soul.
This is why people who have out of body experiences still feel like themselves when they are out of their body. If we were our bodies, then these people would have no longer felt like themselves when they were out of their bodies. However, in every account that I have read over the years of people who have left their body, a sense of identity has been maintained while they are out of the body. They seem to know exactly who they are during the entire time that they are absent from their body. They don’t become confused about who they are and they don’t feel less like themselves, when they are out of their body, than they felt like themselves when they were in their bodies.
Jesus tried to convey the message to Nicodemus that our spirit is who we really are when He told Nicodemus that we must be born again. Nicodemus asked how it would be possible to be born again when one is old. He pointed out that you couldn’t get back into your mother’s womb and be born for a second time. In verse 5 Jesus clarifies that He is speaking about our spirits being born again:
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
John 3:5-8 NIV
The Holy Spirit, prior to becoming Jesus Christ, was not in any sense physically human. There is no personal pronoun that can accurately identify the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an ‘it’ because the Holy Spirit has a personality. The Holy Spirit is also not a ‘he’ because in the Bible the Holy Spirit is often associated with a feminine pronoun. However, the Holy Spirit is not female either and Biblical writers used this pronoun for lack of a better option because they used feminine pronouns to describe natural phenomena, such as the sun or the wind. While it is entirely impossible for the human brain to comprehend what the Holy Spirit is, it is entirely possible for the human heart or spirit to grasp Who He is. This is because the human spirit has been created in His image. Therefore, our spirits can communicate with Him, spirit to Spirit. Jesus was making it clear to Nicodemus that it is our spirit that needs to be born again, because our spirit is who we really are.
Because the Holy Spirit is a spirit and can change His form, He did not always look the same when people saw Him. The apostle Paul was aware of this because in Philippians 2:8 he says that He was ‘found in appearance as a man’. This indicates that Paul knew that this Heavenly Being did not always have the appearance of a man. He had other appearances as well. Although, at certain times, He appeared looking like a man, there were also times when He appeared to people looking different to a man. For example, when He appeared to Moses in the burning bush He looked like flames of fire. When He appeared to Manoah and his wife and went up in the fire, He must have undergone a transformation from looking like a man to turning into fire on front of Manoah and his wife:
20 As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground.
Judges 13:20
In Ezekiel 1 He is seen by Ezekiel as a man Who is burning with fire:
26 Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. 27 I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him.
Ezekiel 1:26-27 NIV
The Bible also teaches that the Holy Spirit is the breath and Word of God and that He is able to become a wind, or cloud, or an invisible spirit that can live within a human being.
The Bible makes it clear that the Holy Spirit can choose whether to appear with wings or not to appear with wings. In Psalm 91:4 we are told that El Shaddai, has wings. However, when He appeared to people in the Old Testament, He appeared without these wings. Perhaps the reason was that He didn’t want these people to be distracted while He was speaking to them. The wings would have presented a pretty large distraction to anyone who was looking at Him and made it difficult for them to focus on the message that He was giving to them.
Because the Holy Spirit is able to change His form, it follows that our spirits probably can do the same thing and that our spirits also don’t have a fixed appearance or gender. The book Heaven is for Real describes the story of Colton Burpo who went to Heaven when he was three years old and saw people there with wings. If you understand that he was seeing spirits, then you can understand that the people in Heaven can transform their appearance, at will, to include or exclude wings.
It is clear that a spirit is a very flexible and fluid entity. It is rather exhilarating to think that, because we are created in the image of the Holy Spirit, we can also change our form when we are in Heaven. In fact, it is possible that we might already be changing the form of our spirit while we are here on the earth. People often describe how they burn with passion about something or that they have fire in their belly. These may be more than mere expressions and may be an attempt to describe something that is happening to their spirits.
A testimony that I heard years ago bears witness to the fact that our spirits can change their form in the same way as the Holy Spirit. I heard the testimony of a man called Bill Wiese in the 2000s, in which he described that he had been taken to Hell and that while there he had been ripped apart by reptilian-like beings. Then he had re-formed into a whole again and they had then ripped him apart again and he had again re-formed into a whole. I didn’t understand what he was talking about when I first heard him describe this, but recently I have come to recognize that it makes sense that this had happened to him, because Mr. Wiese, a spirit created in the image of the Holy Spirit, the Angel of Yahweh, was being ripped apart and was then re-forming into a single form once again.
In the same way, the Holy Spirit was able to become tongues of fire on Pentecost by dividing Himself into a number of parts. This detail which Mr. Wiese included in his testimony of being ripped apart and then re-forming again into a whole, although very unusual to hear if you don’t understand that we are created in the image and likeness of two spirits, the Father and the Holy Spirit, is actually scriptural and makes me inclined to believe his story.
I have come to recognize that our language serves to entrench the idea that our bodies are a part of us. When our bodies are injured or unwell we ask a doctor to fix us or to make us well again without recognizing that our bodies are merely a container housing us and that we, our self, the spirit in the body, is not unwell. We will ask someone if they like our appearance after we go to the hairdresser, without recognizing that it is impossible for them to answer this question because nobody can see what we, as spirits, actually look like while we are in our bodies. We also make the mistake of thinking that because someone may have an especially attractive body, that the spirit that is in the body is equally attractive. The spirit of a person with an attractive body may very well be very ugly, while the spirit of a person who is not attractive may be very beautiful.
Because of this difficulty with language in the course of this article I have used phrases like ‘our spirits’ or ‘changing the form of our spirit’ as if to suggest that the spirit is an accessory to ourselves, rather than who we actually are. This is because our world is so body conscious that if I were to have said: ‘A testimony that I heard years ago bears witness to the fact that we can change our form in the same way as the Holy Spirit’ instead of having qualified what I was saying by saying: ‘A testimony that I heard years ago bears witness to the fact that our spirits can change their form in the same way as the Holy Spirit,’ it would cause confusion to the reader. This is because in this body conscious world the first rendition of the sentence makes it sound like I am saying that our bodies can change their form in the same way as the Holy Spirit. If it were the case that we lived in a spirit conscious world where we all knew that we are spirits in bodies, I could have used the first rendition of the sentence and the reader would automatically have known that I was referring to the spirit in the body changing form and not to the body changing its form. However, we live in a body conscious world. Therefore, the language we use in this world makes it very difficult to convey the Biblical truth about the nature of the human spirit to others. It has become clear to me that one of Satan’s most successful lies has been to convince us that we are our bodies.
Before the fall, we were living in a world that was spirit conscious. We are now living in a world that is entirely body conscious. We really need to get back to recognizing that the body is not part of who a person really is and to focus on the nature of the hidden spirit, the hidden man of the heart, who is who a person really is.
This will bring about a host of important benefits, such as an increase in morality on the earth, because people will understand that after death they will continue to exist and will be held accountable for their actions. It will also bring about a realization that we are part of something bigger because, as spirits, we fit into a greater reality, filled with other eternal spirits, rather than merely having a brief life on the earth and then ceasing to exist.
Another benefit will be a decrease in the divorce rate, because when people are dating they will look at the person within rather than focusing on the person’s body and will make better choices with regards to who they marry. Also, there will be a decrease in poor self esteem on the part of people who don’t look like movie stars or super models and struggle with this, so that instead of expending their time, energy and finances on trying to improve the appearance of their bodies, they will focus their time, energy and finances on making the world a better place. These benefits are of such great importance that the church needs to start teaching extensively about the nature of the human spirit, rather than seeing it as unimportant to the central message of the gospel or as merely an auxiliary topic to teach on.