God Made Us In His Image. Series

God made us in His image.

Understanding whom God made us to be

Imagine that you are the only person left in the city after a bad nuclear disaster. After the heat dissipates, you slowly venture out of your hiding place only to find everything that was familiar to you is gone. The family, you sometimes were close to, are no longer alive. The friends and enemies, you had, are no longer alive. One thing that we know for sure is that after the joy of being alive subsides, you will definitely be lonely. For Adam, loneliness was quite different because he had never known the company of another human being.

It was both an honor and a favor that man was made last of all the creatures. Man was made the same day that the animals were made. His body was made of the same earth as theirs. While he is in the body, he inhabits the same earth with them. Nevertheless, man was to be a creature totally different from all that had been made. God said, “Let us make man.”

Man was created to glorify the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The soul of man resembles the image of God. Man was made upright, Ecclesiastes 7:29 states “Behold, this only have I found: that God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.” Man can understand the divine things of God. Man has the capacity to increase his knowledge and understanding. He has free will that can and sometimes does run contradictory to the will of God. Man has affection. He has appetites and passions. Man can think and reason. Our first parents were happy in having the image of God upon them. However, sin soon defaced this image.

God made us to be in control over the things that He has made for us.

The next thing that God did, after He decided how man was to look, was to assign man a job. God said,’ … and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that crept upon the earth.’ Hebrews 2:5-8 states, “For not unto angels did God subject the world to come, whereof we speak. But one hath somewhere testified, saying, ‘ what is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visits him?’ Thou made him a little lower than God. Thou crowned him with glory and honor and did set him over the works of thy hands. Thou did put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that God subjected all things unto him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we see not yet all things subjected to him.”

God gave human beings tremendous authority. He put us in charge of everything on earth. Every child of God needs to understand this marvelous truth. Man is too godlike in his origin, too glorious in his destiny, to waste himself in a life of sin. If we were animals, we might live as they live on the low plain of animal intellect. If we were no more than a machine, our fate would be of no concern. However, we are the children of God. We are made in the image of God, with a glorious destiny made possible to us. We are crowned with glory and honor!

When God created Adam, He gave him complete authority and rule over everything. Adam was the one that named the animals. He was the one to tend the garden. He was made after everything else and specifically crafted for the job. God said ‘Let us make man in our image.’ God was capable to create everything. Therefore, he made his image capable to take care of it.

Not only was Adam given control of all the animals and plants, he was given control over Lucifer. Lucifer had been dismissed from the celestial paradise to roam the earth along with a third of the angels. God did not forget that Lucifer was here. God equipped man to be able to resist Lucifer. God equipped Adam with the knowledge of the right thing and wrong thing to do and the ability to be able to choose to do it. This is what we call free will. God enables us with the knowledge of the Scriptures and free will to be able to do what the Scriptures instruct.

Then, Jesus picks up us poor ruined cast-a-ways of Lucifer. He saves us, sanctifies us, and then is “not ashamed to call us brethren.” We are sentient beings, capable of joy or suffering. We are capable of endless development, either in God’s likeness or in the opposite. Nevertheless, none of us can ever speculate what an eternity of development will make us become. However, we do know that when we accept the suffering and sacrifices of our lord and savior Jesus, we again regain the authority over all things that Adam forfeited to Lucifer through his sin.