What is Man

WHAT IS MAN 

Hebrews 2:5 What is man that You are mindful of him… 
or the son of man that You look compassionately upon him?
You made him a little lower than the angels;
You crowned him with glory and honor,
and set him over the works of Your hands.
You have put all things in subjection under his feet.

In this Scripture the word for man is Anthropos which generically includes all humans, not just males, and it is where the word anthropology comes from which is the study of mankind and human societies and their cultural development. God is mindful of Man, humanity, and in fact that word mindful (mnaomai) in the Greek has an emphasis of ‘being a fixture of the mind’. That Scripture also says that ‘man has been created of a lower order that the angels’ because humanity is a spirit being with a body and soul
whereas angels are pure spirit beings.  
Humanity is a ‘fixture of the mind’ of God because we have been made in the image of God to reflect his nature of love and creativity and we have been chosen to be his family of sons and daughters in the earth, but not so for angels. 

Everything that God creates has a degree of separation from him because of having a lower order of being than God, but only angels and humanity have a free will and a consciousness of self-identity that can choose to live in loving and grateful obedience to God, or to choose a mindset of independent separation from God. It was an angel of darkness, Lucifer, that tempted mankind to disobey God and from that moment on a state of independent assertion of the human will has been under the sway of that darkness and has acted in favour of its own interest instead of God’s. 
From the time of Adam through to Jesus every human soul lived with an individual sense of identity their ‘I am’ (Greek=ego), which was their idea of who they were. This idea of who they were depended mostly upon what was reflected back to them by those who had influence over them in their world. They also had a conscience that guided them to do what was deemed to be right or wrong and they had a free will to follow their conscience or to break the rules and take the consequences. 

During that time frame between Adam and Jesus, God set aside a nation of people called Israel and he gave them Commandments and a Law of life to guide them in the highest practice of wisdom and knowledge concerning how a person should live before their creator God. This determined their conscience of right and wrong and gave them a sense of identity, of who they were before God and themselves and the world.

That Scripture goes on to say that in time there would come a certain someone called ‘the Son of Man (Anthropos, Mankind, Humanity,)’ whom God would crown with glory and honour and place all things in subjection under his feet - Jesus son of God and Man.
In the days before Jesus died on the cross, he began to explain a mystery to his disciples about how they would become one in being with himself and the Father through the work of the Holy Spirit. It was difficult for them to understand this mystery and he told them that when the Holy Spirit came (after his resurrection), he would reveal this truth to them.

John 14:19 A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you… These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

Jesus was telling them that they would live with a new sense of who they really were, as a new Anthropos, with a new ‘I am’ (ego), being one with God in the Spirit, and drawing life from a new source of being and power, from God himself. Jesus knew he would have to depend upon the Holy Spirit to reveal this individually to each person, but he still said it and assured them that they would remember what he said.

But just to make sure they knew the practical meaning of what he was saying he went on to tell them the parable of the vine and the branches.
John 15:4 I am the true vine, Take care to live in me, and let me live in you. For a branch can't produce fruit when severed from the vine. Nor can you be fruitful apart from me.

Those disciples walked with Jesus and were taught this Kingdom mystery by him through many parables during his ministry and they still found this mystery difficult to understand in their natural minds. But there was another apostle called Paul who did not walk with Jesus during his ministry or hear his parables, and who had to receive this truth of becoming a new creation the way we have to receive it, from a revelation of faith, through the grace of God. Paul’s revelation to us of who we are in Christ is perfect and complete and is waiting, alive and ready for each individual in each new generation of believers to embrace this Gospel of grace and to live it out.

After Jesus died and rose again and the Holy Spirit was sent from Heaven to the earth upon all of Mankind (anthropos – man – humanity) and then everything changed.
The apostle Paul was the one who was able to illuminate the words that Jesus had spoken to his Jewish disciples to all the nations, not just Jews. 

Paul explained the mystery to all the world that the old ‘I am’ (the ego) of the historical old anthropos (Man) could now receive a new ‘I am’ as a new Man, in Christ. This was the good news that Paul was given from God to tell all the world. He called this the ‘mystery that has been hidden through all the ages - Christ in you the hope of glory’ (Colossians 1:27) His challenge was to help people understand how to manage a life with the existence of two ‘I ams’ (egos) in the same person, the old anthropos and the new anthropos. Which ego would win the identity contest about who was the real ‘I am’?

Paul spoke of his personal understanding of this when he explained how to live real Christianity to us. it is no longer I (ego) who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I (ego) now live in the body I live in the Son of God by faith, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I (ego) do not hold back this work of the Grace of God (Galatians 2:20).
The revelation of this reality gives a person an entirely new mindset of who they really are. They are no longer held back by a self-centred ‘I am’ ego which has done its best by trying to be virtuous. They can now adopt the new mindset (repentance) of being one with God and they can live from a new ‘I am’ that is graced with the Spiritual power and love and wisdom of Christ. They need no longer see themselves as being an isolated individual totally dependent upon their own resources and feeling separated from the blessing of a loving God within them. 

Paul writes to us about this process when he says. Discard your old anthropos (Mankind, Ego,) and your former way of life, which is corrupted by deception and wrong desires and instead, let the Spirit renew your mind and attitudes. Put on your new anthropos (New ‘I am’) created to be with God and like God—aligned with God and set apart for him. (Ephesians 4:17)

A person who lives this kind of a life of faith will find themselves pausing to stop and reconsider which ‘I am’ they are living out of. Our old ‘I am’ Ego doesn’t want to die. It wants to win the ‘I am’ contest. The Holy Spirit has been sent into the world to win that struggle within us (John 16:8). He works to renew our mind so that just as we are a fixture of the mind of God – What is Man that you are mindful of him – so we make God  
a fixture of our mind to live within his life. 

Our natural born I am (ego) has been created in the image of God with a uniquely individual personality and a potential for remarkable skills and amazing creativity that can live out of a good conscience and grow in character and integrity. We live with an individual sense of identity which is our idea of who we are, and our natural I am can live a relatively good life and find a personal fulfilment as far as life in this disordered world can afford it. Our natural I am also has the potential to behave in a self-serving and ungodly way that can be harmful to ourselves and those around us, but God knows each heart and will deal justly with each one of us.
Our new spiritually born I am is that old natural born ‘I am’ learning live by faith in a surrendered union with the indwelling life of God. It finds a new sense of identity which is based upon God’s perfect idea of who we are in oneness with his life. This new I am can reach the true potential that God sees in us rather than the limited potential of what we strive to imagine.

The Bible says that The Holy Spirit shows us our true ‘I am’ in God’s Word. It is like a mirror so that when I look into it I see what kind of Anthropos ‘I am’. But when I turn away and do not fix my mind upon God, I forget what kind of ‘I am’ I am. 
James 1:25 But the one who looks into this perfect law of liberty and holds on to what they hear it say to them and lives it and does not forget it will be blessed in everything he does.
Let this be the fixture of your mind that your new ‘I am’ is always you and God together in everything you do. Paul tells us to discard the old limited and isolated Anthropos that gets confused by the uncertainties of life in this disordered world and plunge into the new Anthropos and taste Heaven while living on this earth living a reordered life that begins to reorder everything around you.

A person who puts this into practice and who spends generous time in the presence of the Lord while quietly allowing The Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus and the Father to them will find themselves oddly feeling the things that God feels and thinking the things that God is thinking in a subtle but certain way, and hearing the things that God says. They will go through difficult times being comforted by the wonder of a loving God always with them in the pain of this life. They will do the things that God prompts them to do and they will know that everything strangely happens to bring about his perfect will and purpose for them, and they will give thanks.