“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God” (Psalm 42: 1 KJV).
“If man is to live a religious life that is worthy of the name, he must know God, he must enter into fellowship with God.” To do this will involve two things: revelation on God’s part and a capacity on man’s part to receive that revelation, to understand its meaning, and respond to it in obedience and thereby experience God’s fellowship.
But is man capable of knowing God and walking in fellowship with Him?
God has disclosed Himself or revealed Himself to man. God would not have given this revelation had man not the capability to receive and understand and respond to it. Man has no capacity to know God except as God reveals Himself to man, and God would not reveal Himself to man if he had no capacity to know Him. Each implies the other. If man did not have the capacity to respond to the creative and redemptive power of God, then God could not bring him into fellowship with Him. Nor could God ultimately judge man for his response to this revelation.
Man was made by God for fellowship with Him. Man is body, soul, and spirit. He does not have a body, soul, and spirit but is made up of body, soul, and spirit. Man has a physical body that is made from the dust of the ground. Man also has a spiritual nature or personality, for he was made in the image of God. The body dies, but the spirit never dies, for it comes from the breath of God and is immortal.
Through his body, man is conscious of the world he lives in. Through his soul, he is conscious of himself. Through his spirit, he is conscious of God. The spirit is dead in trespasses and sin (Eph. 2: 1) and until a person is saved and their spirit made alive, they can not be personally conscious of God. They may know and believe He exists, but not until they’re born-again are they aware of His presence in their life.
God made man in His own image. That basically means that God gave man some of His attributes that we call communicable attributes which are what equipped man with a capacity to know and fellowship with God and to communicate His life to a lost world, as, but not as perfect as, Jesus did.
Some of these communicable attributes are love, knowledge, mercy, and justice. Some of the incommunicable attributes of God are His omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.
God made man an intelligent being with the ability to think, reason, and understand. Man is self-conscious and able to objectify himself and the world around him. He has the power of self-directive or self-will and is able to determine a course of action based on his moral consciousness or sense of right and wrong.
Man is therefore able to receive intellectually the revealed will of God, understand it, and by faith respond in obedience to it and walk in God’s fellowship and thereby live a godly life that the world may see Jesus in him.
Biblical Christianity lived out in the life of a believer is a perfect example of man’s capacity for God.
