In our journey through twelve stones of remembrance, we have talked about the nature of Creator God and of His creation Out of Nothing. In talking abut that, we have talked about His relationship to His creation and what that all means for us.
Today, we focus on the pinnacle of God’s creative activity, His creation of human beings, both male and female, to be more like Him than anything else in the universe. That God is to us as we ought to be to our children.
I. The Creation of Man
Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."
I want to start this morning by making just a few simple observations about the passage and then asking a couple of basic questions, before we look at what it means to be created in the image of God.
Then God said - after seven “and God said” statements in the creation narrative, here Scripture draws a conclusion by using the final “Then.” That is to say that this is the final movement, the crowing achievement.
Let us make - The text does not specify who the “us” might be. The court of God and angels can be eliminated because man is not made in the image of any of these.
Most Christians and some Jews have taken “us” as God speaking to Himself, since God alone does the making in verse 27. This would be the first hint of the Trinity in the Bible.
Man - Is it appropriate to use the word man to refer to the entire human race?
This is one of those places where the arrogant half-informed would make our children feel like they have not heard the truth by objecting to ever using man to refer to the human race in general. They would prefer that we use gender neutral terms such as humanity, humankind, or persons.
It is appropriate because there is divine warrant in Genesis 5:1-2; When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. Adam named all of the other animals, but God named humanity Man.
Some use the fact that we can use “man” to refer to the entire human race as proof to say that there was no literal Adam and Eve because the Hebrew word translated “man” is “adam.” They imply that Adam was simply a figurative symbol for all of mankind. However, the use of a direct article in Genesis 2:7-8, 20, clearly makes the universal man “Adam,” which literally means “The Man.”
"Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him."
Why did God create man?
As we saw a couple of weeks ago, God did not need to create man, yet he created us for His own glory. In our discussion of God’s independence, we saw that He speaks of His sons and daughters from the ends of the earth as those “whom I created for my glory,” in Isaiah 43:7. Therefore, we are to, “do all to the glory of God,” as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:31.
This fact guarantees that our lives are significant. When we realized that God did not need to create us and does not need us for anything, we could have concluded that our lives have little importance.
However, we also saw that Scripture tells us that we were created to glorify God, indicating that we are important to God himself. That is the final definition of genuine significance in our lives: If we are truly important to God for all eternity, then what greater measure of significance could we want?
What is our purpose in life?
This is a big question, but the fact that God created us for His own glory determines the correct answer to the question. Our purpose must fulfill the reason that God created us; to glorify Himself.
That is enough when speaking with respect to God. However, when we think to our own interest and individual purpose, we make the wonderful discovery that we are to enjoy God and take delight in Him and in our relationship to Him. Jesus says in John 10:10 that, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” David tells God in Psalm 16:11, “in your presence there is fullness of joy, in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.” He longs to dwell in the house of the Lord forever, “to behold the beauty of the Lord” in Psalm 27:4. Asaph cries out to God in Psalm 73, Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
We are to be enjoying our relationship with God, not living as though it was a burden to bear. It is and inheritance to pass down to our children and grandchildren, not a debt that we try to leave them saddled with. The answer to the first question in the old Westminster Catechism “What is the chief end (purpose) of man?” is “Man’s chief end (purpose) is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever,” Directly from Psalm 86 and 16. Real joy is found in knowing God and delighting in the excellence of His character. To be in His presence, to enjoy fellowship with Him, is a greater blessing than anything that can be imagined.
Therefore, the normal heart attitude of a Christian is rejoicing in the Lord! As we glorify God and delight in Him, Scripture tells us that He rejoices in us. Isaiah 62:5 says, “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” Zephaniah prophesies that the Lord, “will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” (3:17)
This understanding of the doctrine of creation of man has very practical results. When we realize that God created us for His glory and begin to act in ways that fulfill that purpose, then we begin to experience intense joy in the Lord like we have never known before. When we add to that the understanding that God himself is rejoicing in our fellowship with him, our joy becomes inexpressible praise filled with heavenly glory.
So, the more we know Him, the more we delight in Him, the more we delight in Him, the more He rejoices in us and reveals Himself to us. The more He reveals himself to us, the more we know Him, and more we know Him, the more we delight in Him, the more we delight in Him, the more He rejoices in us and reveals Himself to us. . .
II. Image of God
So, what does it mean to be made in the image of God? Out of all of the creatures God made, only man is said to be made in the image of God. In the most basic sense it means that man is like God and represents God. There has been much theological discussion and debate about what exactly this might mean. It would be best for us to focus our attention primarily on the meanings of the key words in the passage, image and likeness.
A. Image; is best understood as a shadow, reflection or picture of some original subject.
Many point to a common near eastern idea of the king who was the visible representative of the deity; thus the king ruled on behalf of God. Verse 26 links the exercise of dominion over the earth with the image of God. So, one can see that humanity is endowed with authority to rule as God’s representatives.
Others point to the creation of man as male and female and conclude that humanity expresses God’s relational aspects. Since verse 28 ties the call to pro-creation to the image of God, one can see that humanity bears the image of God as it functions in community, both in marriage and wider society.
B. Likeness; is best understood as similitude, or being of similar character or imitating an original. Traditionally, the likeness has been seen as the capacities that set humans apart from other animals - ways in which humans resemble God, such as in the characteristics of personhood. What is a person? What makes God three persons? Each member of the Trinity has what we have in the likeness of God - personhood; will, intellect, and emotion.
1. Will; is the capacity to make moral or volitional choices. The faculty of conscious and especially of deliberate action; the power of control the mind has over its own actions.
In the Old Testament it referred mostly to a person’s (or God’s) personal desires or wants. In the New Testament it denotes the sense of what one desires to happen as well as the act itself of desiring something to happen. The Thelema is most commonly used to refer to the will of God, and it manifest itself in believers in their being sanctified. It also occurs with respect to human will, especially in contrast to God’s will.
We often mistakenly talk about the will as being free. Our desire for something is always free by definition. What people mean, most often, by free will is that their choice is un-coerced, that they are free to choose. This, of course, is mostly the case. Rarely are we coerced at the level of choosing according to our desires.
What people often neglect is the idea that our will is just like God’s, except He has the power to actually make all of His desires happen. God can desire to do anything He wants, and He can in fact do whatever He desires. However, He will never do anything that is in opposition to His nature and character. He will not desire it, for that is not who He is.
The same thing is true for us, as much as we have the power to execute our will. When we are dead in our sin, we will desire sin and freely choose it. When we are made alive in Christ, we will freely choose life as much as we are able to overcome our flesh. And why would we ever want to desire something that God does not desire?
Now this is all very technical, I know. However, this stuff is the topic of conversation on every college campus I know of and among many High School kids, and it is the blind leading the blind out there because our churches have failed to speak on these issues with any clarity.
2. Intellect; is the ability to reason and think logically and learn. The power or faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands, as distinguished from that by which one feels and that by which one wills; the understanding; the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge.
This sets us apart from the animal world where instinct and trained behavior reigns. Animals can show amazing ability in solving mazes or working out physical problems, but they certainly do not engage in abstract reasoning. Animals are mostly not aware that they exist, but they certainly do not consider why they exist. There is no history of canine philosophy. No horse has ever composed an autobiography.
Our likeness is also seen in our use of complex, abstract language; our awareness of the distant future; and the entire spectrum of human creative activity that we talked about last week. Such aspects of human existence reveal that we differ absolutely from the rest of creation, and not just in degree. In the image of God, we have a unique ability to know and understand.
3. Emotion; is the ability to feel and be affected. An affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced just as God, and Christ in particular, has demonstrated each of these emotions, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.
The degree and complexity of human emotions indicate just how vast is the difference between humanity and the rest of creation. In addition to our being able to relate to God, there are other relational aspects of being in the image of God. The depth of personal harmony experienced in human marriage, in a human family when it functions according to God’s principles, and in a church when a community of believers is walking in fellowship with the Lord, and with one another, is far greater than anything else found in creation. In the image of God, we have a unique ability to be consciously affected by our circumstantial environment.
C. Dignity of our likeness
We should reflect on our being created in the image of God more often! It has been good for me. It is amazing to me that when the Creator of the universe wanted to create something in His image, something more like himself than all the rest of creation, He made us! This understanding gives us a profound sense of dignity and significance as we reflect on the excellence of all the rest of God’s creation. We are the culmination of God’s infinitely wise and skillful work of creation. Even though sin has greatly marred our likeness, we still reflect it, and all the more as we become more like Christ, as we become what God created and called us to be.
We must remember that as sinful as man can be, he still has the status as being in God’s image. Every human life, no matter how much the image is marred, must be treated with the dignity and respect that is due an image bearer of God. This has profound implications for our conduct toward others. People of every race and tribe deserve equal dignity and rights. Elderly people, those who are seriously ill, the mentally or physically handicapped, and unborn children deserve full protection and honor as human beings.
I believe abortion is murder and therefore is breaking the commandment to not commit murder. It is also a violation of the great commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. Most importantly, abortion is a violation of the very nature of God as the giver of life and the image of God in us as His crowning glory in creation. Therefore, I believe that abortion is not primarily a human rights issue, but a sanctity of life issue and that all believers ought to uphold the sanctity of life at every opportunity, not only in matters of abortion, but those of genocide, euthanasia, and other like atrocities.
When we deny our unique status in creation as God’s only image bearers, which some extreme environmental and animal rights people already do, we will soon begin to depreciate the value of human life, as much of our culture already does, and tend to see humans as merely a higher form of animal. The result is that our children and grandchildren have lost much of there sense of meaning in life.
D. Essential Nature of our Likeness
So, what is the essential nature of man? Everyone agrees that we have physical bodies. Most people sense that they also have an immaterial part - a soul that will live on after their bodies die. But that is where the agreement ends.
In the secular realm of thought, where the majority of our culture now resides, there is the prevailing idea that man can not exist at all apart from his physical body, and therefore there can be no separate existence of a soul after the body dies. This view that man is of only one element is called monism.
Among believers in Scripture, there are two views of the essence of man.
Trichotomy is the view that in addition to the body and soul, we also have a spirit. This has been a common view in popular evangelical teaching, and the key idea here is that will, intellect and emotion reside in the soul and the spirit is a higher faculty that only comes alive at conversion and is the part that directly interacts with God.
Dichotomy is a Christian view that teaches that the spirit is not a separate part of man, but simply another term for soul, and that both are used in Scripture interchangeably to talk about the immaterial part of the man; the part that interacts with God spiritually and lives on after we die.
The key biblical understanding is that there is a strong emphasis in Scripture on the overall unity of man, as created by God. We are to grow in holiness and love for God in every aspect of our lives. There is no real distinction between the material and immaterial. However, Scripture is clear that we do have both physical bodies and spiritual bodies. We are said to be both body and soul, and body and spirit; and we live in two worlds, the physical and spiritual. I tend to default to the picture of the Trinity as part of the image of God in us, that we are one person with three essential natures that experience absolute unity in one another.
All of these insights can be put together by observing that the resemblances allow mankind to represent God in ruling, and to establish worthy relationships with God, with one another, and with the rest of creation. Here, image clearly refers to our humanity, which we inherit from Adam.
III. Adam and Eve
The Bible portrays the human race as coming from one pair of human ancestors who were created in God’s image unlike all the animals, and that this image of God is passed on to all humans. So, just as we are all created in the image of God, our children and grandchildren are created in our image. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Again in Genesis 5:1-3, “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man, when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image.” In other words, the magnificent image of God goes on from generation to generation.
But we know the church is not only generational, but it is also missional. Then Paul makes the sweeping statement in Acts 17:26, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.” In other words, Adam, who was created in God’s image, is the father of all human beings in all ethnic groups. Therefore every tribe and tongue and nation is dignified above the animals in this absolutely unique and glorious way: humans are crated in the image of God.
With all the beautiful, God-designed ethnic and cultural diversity in the world, that truth is paramount. That truth is decisive in setting priorities for how we respect and relate to each other, and how we approach presenting the gospel to the outside world.
Adam was the perfect man, but He was not God and therefore, by definition, not perfect. Though He walked and talked with God in perfect fellowship, he chose to sin against God. Why because He was not God. We inherit from Adam both the image of God and the imperfections of man. Therefore, as we will begin to see next week, we are both made in the image of God and inherently sinful.
Just as we are created in the image of God so that we might glorify Him and enjoy Him forever, God delights in us as the crowing glory of His creation when we do glorify Him and find our deepest joy in our relationship with Him. Therefore, we should be living all of life for His greatest glory and our greatest joy and teaching our children, the image of our image, to follow us as we follow Christ for their greatest glory and God’s greatest joy.
Take These Stones Home
I. The Creation of Man
Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Talk with your children about why God chose to create us. Ask them to draw a picture of God creating them and talk to them about their purpose in life.
What do they think God has created them to do?
How can they bring joy to God?
II. Image of God (Imageo Dei)
A. Image; a shadow or picture that is like the original.
Take to the picture your children draw of God creating them and use it to discuss the fact that they are an image of God, just like the picture is an image of themselves. Ask them what differnces they see between the picture and themselves and explain how there are differances between God and His image in us.
B. Likeness; a similitude, or being of similar character.
Talk about how we are like God because we can make choices, understand things, and are affected by our feelings. Share with them stories about when you had to make a hard choice, when you understood something new for the first time or when you expereinced strong emotions. Talk about we can be a better image of God by making good decisions.
C. Dignity of our likeness
Share with your children how humans are the culmination of God's creation because we are most like Him. Talk with them about how every human is made in the image of God and ask them how they can treat other people with dignity and respect because they are image beareres.
D. Essential Nature of our Likeness
Talk with students about how we have both a physical and spiritual aspects to our nature. Discuss how we have to take care of both our physical part and our spiritual part. You can use ideas like diet and exercise in the physical to talk about Bible reading and praying in the spiritual.
III. Adam and Eve
Acts 17:26, “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.”
Talk to children about how we are all descendants of Adam and Eve and that we get our human nature from Adam. This is a good time to talk to your children and grandchildren about their genealogy. Show them pictures of their ancestors and talk with them as much as you can about their heritage. You may be surprised at how interested they are!
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