You are not a physical person in a physical body, but rather you are a spiritual being in a physical body. Do you need to think about that for a minute? You are not a physical person in a physical body. You are a spiritual being in a physical body. We live in physical bodies, with physical senses, and we live in the physical world. It is hard to imagine being anything but a physical being.

Almighty God, who created the universe, is a Spiritual being. David tells us in Psalms 139:7 that the presence of God is everywhere, His spiritual presence extends to the end of the universe and beyond. He created the universe, therefore it cannot contain Him. He is the absolute ultimate spiritual being.  

Spiritual beings are everywhere. God, the angels, and yes Satan and his demons are all spiritual beings. Not just in heaven, but on earth and probably anywhere in the universe if they chose. Therefore it is not unreasonable that we are also spiritual beings.

Genesis chapter one, verse 27 tells us that God created us in His image. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

God is a spiritual being. He created us in His own image. He created us as spiritual beings, just as the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all spiritual beings with spiritual bodies. He created us as spiritual beings with a soul. We are not purely physical, our souls are spiritual. The animals do not have a soul, they are purely physical. They live and die and that’s the end of them. We, however, will never die! Oh, our bodies will eventually waste away and die, but when that happens, it simply means that our spiritual being will be released from being imprisoned in these earthly bodies, and we will soar away to heaven.

In a way we are like butterflies, they begin life as a caterpillar. For a short part of their life, they crawl around on the ground and on plants, they are confined to this earth. But then their caterpillar part of them dies away and what remains is this beautiful creature, that is no longer confined to crawling around on the earth, but can soar to new heights. At no point did the butterfly ever die when it went from being a worm to being a butterfly and we will not die when we shed this earthly body for our glorious bodies and fly away to glory. 

2 Corinthians 3:17-18 tells us: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Think about this! Let this thought envelop your very being. It will change the way you think about the world, world events, your own role in this world, and your life itself. We are talking about two very important aspects: who we are and what is happening to us.

We are actually spiritual beings having a human experience and not the other way around. We are immortal and eternal beings on a never-ending journey. If you ask somebody a simple question, “What is the opposite of death?”, 90 percent of people answer: “Life”. Seems like a simple answer. But it is the wrong answer and you will see why. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal and therefore has no opposite. Birth and death are simply entry and exit points. They are doors that open from the spiritual world into the physical world and then back again.

We are not defined by our physical being, but rather by our spiritual being. When we understand this it changes everything.

For most of my life, I was a builder. People knew me as a builder. I built several commercial buildings, I built many log homes. I looked at log homes as a thing of art. Each one was different. I was proud of them. I was building something that would be around at least a hundred years. That is looking at it from the physical. But looking at it from the aspect of being a spiritual being, it was simply a way to make a living. Nothing more and nothing less. Those buildings have no eternal value. They will burn up like everything else on this earth. It is only what is done in the spirit that has eternal value. 

The word tells us: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18 BSB

Because we live in the physical world in a physical body with physical senses, we tend to think in the physical. God has created a beautiful world for us to live in. He has endowed us with the senses of sight, touch, taste, smell, or hearing so that we might enjoy this world. Everything around us is physical; our work, our play, our homes, automobiles, and etc., even the church. Everything around us is physical and is part of this physical world. It would certainly be easy to fall into the trap of believing that our physical lives are more important. Because we live in the physical world and the spiritual world is invisible, we might even forget that there is a spiritual part to us and that there is a spiritual world. 

The spiritual world is just as real as our physical world. And much more important. The physical is temporary, the spiritual is eternal.

We are not made for this world, as Christians, we belong with the Lord. Paul in his letter to Philippi, says we are citizens of heaven.

But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. (Philippians 3:20)

As citizens of heaven, we will always have a desire to go home. This world is not our home, we are just visiting here for a short time.

There are many scriptures in the Bible that speak of how short our earthly life is. In James 4:14, James says life on earth is like a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

When we are a child the years seem to go by really slowly, but once we become an adult the years start to roll by more quickly, each one seems to go by quicker than the one before, until we are an old person looking back, wondering where all the years have gone. Fortunately, this life on earth is only the beginning, not the end.

Can you imagine, growing old and not being a Christian, thinking you are going to die and that will be it. Having no hope for anything more than what this earth offered? How sad and empty that must feel.

I want to leave you with this thought; yes we are physical creatures in a physical world, but that’s not our real identity. Our real identity is in our spiritual being, our spiritual soul that will never die. When we can wrap our mind around that concept, it will change how we live, how we look at the world, and how we look at our lives. Our spiritual desires will be more important to us than our physical desires. 

The physical is temporary. The spiritual is eternal. The work we do spiritually will have eternal value, we will be laying up treasures in heaven for ourselves when we go home.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)