“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).
GOD’S INVISDIBLE QUALITIES (Pt 2)
We live in a mechanical universe; we perform mechanical acts. This is the nature of the physical dimension God has deemed that we live in. Scripture tells us not to look at those things we see but to look at the things we cannot see (2 Cor 4:18). Actions, events, and objects in this material world seem to represent something unseen. Nature itself is speaking to us, if only we could hear it.
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world" (Ps 19:1-4).
Jesus would point us to nature and draws an important spiritual lesson from it: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matt 6:28–30).
Cardinal Newman said, “Nature is a parable.” Using Newman’s words, Malcolm Muggeridge responded, saying, “Nature is speaking to us. It is a parable of life itself, a revelation of fearful symmetry . . . “ The Bible concurs with this view: The Hebrew word for “spirit” is “ruach,” the same word used for “breath” or “wind.” The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The New Testament was written in Greek and the Greek word for “spirit” is “pneuma,” which denotes “wind” or “breath,” and forms the English words “pneumatic,” which means “operated by air,” and “pneumonia,” a disease of our air-breathing lungs. God is Spirit (John 4:24), not meaning that God is the gas that surrounds planet earth; our physical air is a shadow of spirit. In the beginning God breathed into man the breath of life, but God does not breathe; He doesn’t need air to sustain His being. He is something other than the gaseous collection of atoms and molecules that make up the air around us. There is something of spirit within human beings that is put there by God. He deposited something in the core of our being that connects us to the unseen spiritual environment and this is represented by the air we breathe.
We don’t read of God breathing into the nostrils of animals; man alone has been made in the image of God. Air or wind is a parallel or symbol to help us learn something important. The Holy Spirit came to earth with the sound of a mighty rushing wind on the day of Pentecost. The apostles indicated that God’s Spirit was now inside them, by using the air in their lungs to speak in tongues as the Spirit enabled them. As there were flames above the heads of the apostles, so God’s Spirit ignites our spirit making us one with God—"whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit” (1 Cor 6:17).
One burning piece of material can set a whole host of other things on fire. It is because His Spirit dwells in each Christian that we are one with each other.