The Bible emphasizes the spiritual origin of man. We read: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness .... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him."Gen. 1:26,27; The man of God's creating is spiritual, immortal, and indestructible. He coexists with God, and is held intact, sinless, in a state of constant perfection by his Maker. Man is created to declare the nature of God. He is the witness to God's presence, goodness, and love. Through Christian Science we learn to identify ourselves with this ideal man, God's beloved son.
It is obvious that the testimony of the material senses does not coincide with these spiritual facts. These senses conceive of man as mortal and imperfect, subject to negative forces and evil influences, to sin, disease, and death. But our God bestowed spiritual senses behold man as he exists in Mind, as the perfect idea of God, incorporeal, controlled by the divine will, reflecting the eternal substance of Truth.
To prove the fact of our real selfhood as God's likeness, we need to keep clearly in thought the distinction between spiritual man and his mortal counterfeit, hold to the spiritual, to that which expresses God's nature, and put off what the Apostle Paul referred to as "the old man with his deeds," the fleshly concept of self. "Lie not one to another," he wrote, "seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him."Col. 3:9, 10;
