God’s Word for You

Genesis 2:7 God took a clod and made a clod

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, August 19, 2026

7 The LORD God formed the man out of dust from the ground. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

A clod. God took a clod and made a clod. So far, this was no different from the way that he made the birds and the animals (Genesis 2:19), but God did something to this clod that was different. At first, it might not seem different. God shaped the man from the dust, and gave him breath. The man came alive. Don’t the animals have breath? Didn’t God give plants for food to “everything that has the breath of life in it” (Genesis 1:30)? But here the breath of life is more than the wind and air that fills our lungs. For in Ecclesiastes, the king of Israel declares that when man dies, “the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). It is not breath, or a breeze, that returns to God, but the human soul. This is what the LORD God breathed into the man-shaped soil to give it life. The man was formed by God, given air by God, given life by God, and given a soul by God. “The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4).

Just what is the soul? The soul is more than the thoughts of the human mind. The soul is the living spirit within a person. After the fall we see this in another way: every defect in man’s body that has to do with sin is likewise a defect in the soul, “or else Christ would have died only for the body and not for the soul, since the soul would be sound and only the body would be subject to death” (Smalcald Articles).

Like the body, the soul has characteristics, or as some theologians say, “organs.” Like the organs of the body, they can be harmed, they can become stronger or weaker, they sit dormant when we are unconscious, or asleep, or when we are very young, and in some cases when we are very old. The Bible identifies three of these organs of the soul.

First, there are the emotions. Here are our likes and dislikes, our affections and aversions. The emotions are the most closely connected to the body and are easily affected by the physical senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell). We can “like” a picture, a song, or a person almost instantly on account of our emotions, and this like or affection will be far removed from the will or our human reason. Emotions can be affected by faith, however. An unbeliever can be terrified by thunder and the threat of death that it brings, while a believer can thrill to the same sound because his faith chases away the fear of punishment and he hears in the thunder the power of God who watches over us all.

Second is the will. The will makes choices, and drives us to do or not to do. “Love and hate reside in the will more than in the emotions.” So do trust and faith. Since the fall into sin, these things are all damaged, and we have truly lost the ability to choose to believe unless the Holy Spirit creates faith in us and revives us into spiritual life. But then, he has given us faith, and so it no longer remains as an option or a choice. As the Bible teaches, faith is a gift (Ephesians 2:8; Romans 12:3). Along the same lines, we must acknowledge that unbelief is also a part of the will.

The third organ of the soul is our human reason. The ability to reason is what allows us to set a value on things, and to make judgments. We ponder questions and investigate such things as why and how, or cause and effect.

All of these organs or abilities of the soul are now damaged by sin. Even the will cannot choose or properly seek for God in sinful man. Ambrose said, “Although it is possible for man not to want good, yet he does not have the power to want good unless it has been given to him. His nature contracted the former through sin; his nature received the latter through grace.” Professor Deutschlander anticipates a frequent question when he concludes:

“Emotions usually place a larger role in the life of the child; as the child matures, reason may be given a larger role than emotion. As in the case of the body, so in the case of the soul: some parts of the body may be lost without destroying the essence of a person; some parts or functions or capacities of a soul may change, but they cannot all be entirely lost while the person is still alive. For if there is no longer the possibility of emotion or will or reason, the person is probably dead.” (Grace Abounds p. 167)

All three of these organs of the soul, the emotions, will, and reason, can be terribly damaged in mankind; even ruined. In the unbeliever, reason cannot grasp that God once made man from a clod of dirt. It is a miracle, just as today the creation of the baby in the hidden womb is a miracle. We do not choose to be born any more than we choose to come to faith. But God gives us our form, body and soul, and he gives us faith as well through the preaching of the gospel. We simply praise him as Isaiah says, “We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8).

When we consider the making of Adam, we can say that God took a clod of dirt and fashioned a man, but Adam was no clod or brute. He was made without fault, without sin. Before the fall, Adam appears as the ancestor who is the most like Christ, for he is perfect and a perfect creature of the Father. But after the fall, Christ’s birth becomes necessary to rescue that clod, Adam, and all of his descendants, and most especially the meagerest clod of them all, myself. What a wretch I am! What a glorious Savior is my Jesus, my Messiah, my Christ, crucified, died, and risen for my sake! None of me deserves the gift of Jesus, neither body nor soul, but all of me receives his eternal benefits. Isaiah says (Isaiah 42:5), “God the Lord created the heavens and stretched them out. He spread out the earth and all that comes out of it, and he gives breath to its people; life to those who walk on it.” And that life is the gift of forgiveness, righteousness, and faith. Be at peace. We will rise up from the clods on the Last Day and be united in the clouds with Jesus forever.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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