THE CREATION OF MAN who was created in God’s IMAGE Gen. 1:26-27 2:7
Gen 1 centers upon Gods work of creating the whole universe. Gen 2 focuses on the place man has in the earth. In Gen 1:1 the order is heavens and the earth but in Gen 2:4 the order is the earth and the heavens. In the 1st chapter the activity embraces the entire world, in the 2nd chapter the activity centers on Gods making the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden. Did you know the title for the Almighty, Jehovah God, occurs twenty times in Genesis chapters two and three, but in all the rest of Moses writings it is found in a single place?
That man is a special creation of God is underlined in four unique ways.
1. THE Creation of man WAS unique in that it was DIVINE act, only God could do this.
And God said, Let us make man (Gen.1:26). The word create has been used carefully in this chapter, just in verses 1 and also verse 21, but now in the creation of human beings the word appears three times in one verse (v.27). In all the earlier acts of creation before this God simply gave the command. And God said, Let there be and there was. But when it came to the creation of man God and said, Let us make man. It was not that he gave a command to the earth, Let the earth bring forth man as it had been with everything else He had created. Gods approach to man’s creation was with great consideration. Something amazing is going to be made. God was thoughtful with what he was about to create when comparing a human being to all the other creatures in heaven and earth which he had made. Man from his origin was to be the same as with the other creatures. There was the uniqueness of God speaking when he said, Let us make man.
2. The Creation of MAN WAS unique IN image for he was created different from all else god created.
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” Gen. 1:26. This phrase is unequaled in the rest of God’s creative acts. Everything else God formed was made after their kind. “And God said let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind. And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.” On 5 occasions we read the phrase according to their kinds; it means in accordance with Gods design for these creatures, and then we come to the creation of man. What a change! What a major differentiation from all the other forms of life, man not made according to his kind. God has different plans for the man he is to make, but it is not some likeness God has considered, the pattern is God himself! Man’s identity consists of Gods own image; it is that which belongs to God basically. This creature is going to be made like ME! God determines. Man is made in the very image of mighty God. What a gift! What dignity! When David the psalmist thinks of that he is constrained to cry, “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” Psa. 8:4&5. Now what does it mean that man is made in the image of God? Is the man in the street today made in the image of God? We see in many that the image has been disfigured and ruined. Man lost his original righteousness through the fall of Adam. What do we see in man that we can say he is different and special?
1st, knowledge. We know that man has a mind and a conscience. A great deal has been lost. He has messed up his intellect. We have all found to be mistaken as to matters of fact, origin, purpose, destiny. We have become mislead in our reasoning, but we are still a rational being. We are able to investigate and deliberate and follow what the law is. We may become an expert scientist, a brilliant reporter, worthy of credit in our field.
We know the basics of the moral law. WE knows the wrongfulness such things as lying, robbing, swearing and being greedy. A man in the Bible named Felix was not blank when Paul reasoned with him of righteousness, self-control and judgment to come. Felix trembled because his conscience told him Paul was right. His tragedy was how do I stop doing what was wrong and do what was right. This world was made by an omnipotent and glorious God. We understand that truth from the things around us which have the handiwork of God all over us. We know the being, the power, the goodness and the wrath of God. That is part of our human nature. We try to suppress and distort this knowledge. The unbelief of men and women who have long sat under a biblical ministry is not due to their ignorance of the Christian message but to their disobedience. So the fact that we are made in the image of God means that we have knowledge.
2nd, WE possess a freedom. God freely created all things. Of course, in our natural state we suffer from the bondage of our will. Our will tells us to reject Christ, ignore the Bible, and never think about our eternal soul. We dismiss any thoughts of prayer, never question what lies beyond death, and never to seek to know God for himself. We are born as a slave to Sin. The Bible says that the whole world is a prisoner of sin. We understand we freely submit to sin. We choose to do so. We make our own decision to have nothing to do with God. We are free moral agents acting under no external force. Man was converted from being Muslim because God is love. The Muslims of his country tried to kill him when he came to Christ. We are not forced to say no to Jesus Christ. There is no absolute necessity to reject the gospel. This is our own free choice. If you ignore this then you reduce your sense of responsibility. In Gen 3 we are presented with man in the most perfect of environments and yet he falls into sin. Our guilt and shame cannot be placed onto other factors, such as “The devil made me do it” or the pressures of my companions or your own personality or that is my personality. Your guilt is yours! How will You answer to God? You have a freedom to say “YES.”
3rd, the image of God in man means that man has a sense of beauty. We can create and appreciate form and sound and can respond to it. That is how temptation came to Eve, when she saw that the tree was pleasing to the eye. God can overrule the ugliness of our appearance as he does the errors of our doctrine but that justifies neither. Other gods are worshipped today but salvation is only in Christ. There is no salvation in the Arts Center. There is no birth from above at the University. There is no divine conversion in writing, sculpting, painting, composing and playing. They are not man’s chief end. We are not to live for those things. Culture is not our religion. How many are utterly blinded by their appreciation of beauty of form? We know that attractiveness and style can serve to obscure the evil of the content. It encourages a godless message to be received because the package in which it was offered was attractive. Much contemporary literature and television is basically degrading. “The heavens declare the glory of God.”
4th, the image of God in man comes in a relationship.
The 1st article of the Christian faith is that God is one. He is triune; there is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is mirrored in the life of man. It is not good for a person to be alone. Take community away from us and we become the most unhappy of creatures. All people are made in the image of God and are built for other people. The longing for communion shows itself in the fellowship of Christian believers who come together for mutual support and affection. In the world we find competition, jealousy, prejudice and hostility. A man, who finds Christ, finds at the same time the fellowship of those who are believers. The church is a healing community. The victims of a heartless society will find acceptance, and love in a church. To the Christian not only Christ is precious, the body of Christ is precious too. We are made for communion with God. This was the original relationship, one of peace and love. God has made us for himself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in him. “Come to me and I will give you rest”, says the Son of God.
3. The Creation of MAN WAS unique IN THE LORDSHIP WHICH MAN WAS INVESTED with. It says, “Let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” All the animals, and birds and fish and insects have been made. Man was made and given dominion over them. Man is the image of God. Since God is sovereign then mans likeness to God involves the exercise of a corresponding dominion. Man is king of all upon earth, but subject to the King above. In a multitude of ways God has made man different from all other animals and given him authority over them. Your hands are unique; the tip of each of our fingers is able to touch the tip of the thumb, and the thumb itself can move across the palm of the hand to point to each finger. Man alone has a hand like that. Man walks on two legs not four so the foot has a large surface of contact with the ground; the hip socket is in a different place in man. Man stands erect; his back bone is vertical not horizontal. Man has frontal vision to see the way he is going. Man has an enlarged brain, and a reduced jaw and weaker teeth, fewer in number. When God made man he made all these features together. They are the features needed for dominion over every other creature before we consider mans superior intelligence and powers of concentration.
4. The Creation of MAN WAS unique in that it WAS different IN how GOD shaped MAN.
It says, “The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” In Gen 1 we have a big sweeping scene; man’s place is set in the whole of creation. In Gen 2 we have a more detailed account of the making of both man and woman and there is a certain order; man was made first without Eve. There is no hint of that in Gen 1. So here in Gen 2 we are given details which are not present in the account of man’s creation in Gen 1. What is the uniqueness of the formation of man?
A. Man was made from the dust of the ground, that is, from earlier created stuff. Man was not made out of nothing but God took existing material and formed Adam from it. Man’s very constitution is the ground on which we stand. God later said famously to man, Dust you art. So, as a result, man has an affinity with the ground which is beneath his feet.
B. Man also has a likeness with other creatures, because we are told in verse 19 in this 2nd chapter that the LORD God also formed from the ground every beast of the field and every fowl of the heaven. They too were made from the ground. Man was made from the dust of the ground. There is that little distinction in the wording. So there are going to be similarities between man and the beasts of the field. God does not spread variety unnecessarily and so we will find such an interesting likeness as this that the heart of a sheep or the heart of a pig is virtually identical to our hearts, and that an animal’s heart valve can be transplanted to a human being and function in us. We would expect to find that some animals, like monkeys, have certain other likeness of various kinds to man. We were designed and made by the same Creator from the same ground.
C. What else was distinctive in the making of man was that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Now we are being told how different man is from the animals. There is an aspect of being truly human which you cannot attribute at all to any parallels with the animals. God held the man he had formed to himself and man was not alive until that moment; he was still lifeless dust of the earth until that in breathing occurred. He became a living creature then, when the breath of God entered him, and not before. God did not work on previously breathing stuff. Living came when God in breathed him. In fact he was not a man without the breath of God. God could not talk to him; man could not understand and obey and love God until first God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Adam then could stand and look around and examine all the other creatures God had made from the dust of the ground, but he couldn't find one equal in all the animals of the earth. There was no helper suitable to man. Adam was not alive and he was not a man until God did one work in the dust of the ground breathing into its nostrils the breath of life. Then he became both alive and a man. In one divine action this occurred.
By a divine exhalation alone you can account for the nature of man; you cannot explain the extraordinary incident of man by reference to other kinds of being like insects and reptiles and fish and birds and animals. You may find interesting similarity but nothing in them can tell us what man is without this distinctive divine creation. Man’s origin was due to a special act of God in his image and likeness. Man himself owes his unique knowledge and freedom and visual sense and community awareness to the fact that God made him in his image from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Before that he was not alive; before that he was not a man.
The gospel is the same for all. It begins by teaching that all humans have the same origin: we are offspring of Adam and Eve, created to image God and to rule creation on God’s behalf. Our spiritual element, our mental ability, our emotions, our capacity for relationships, our position as the crown of creation, even our bodies, all these are part of what it means to be human and to image God.
The gospel says that anyone who trusts in the crucified and risen Christ has a future in heaven. By the Holy Spirit, each believer is born again with a new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Believe this gospel, and you may be sure that the God who first created humanity in his image will perfect his image in you, that you may glorify God and enjoy him forever.
The Silversmith
Some time ago, a few ladies met in a certain city to study the scriptures. While reading the third chapter of Malachi, they came upon a remarkable expression in the third verse: "And He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver (Malachi 3:3)" One lady proposed to visit a silversmith, and report to them on what he said about the subject. She went accordingly, and without telling the object of her errand, begged the silversmith to tell her about the process of refining silver. As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says, "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver." (Malachi 3:3) She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. "Oh, yes madam," replied the silversmith; "I must sit with my eyes steadily fixed on the furnace, for if the time necessary for refining be exceeded in the slightest degree, the silver will be injured."
Before she left, the lady asked one final question, "When do you know the process is complete?" "Why, that is quite simple," replied the silversmith. "When I can see my own image in the silver, the refining process is finished."
