Day 680: God's likeness - Genesis 1 vs 26 - 28
26 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.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:26-28 From the English Standard Version.
What is something unusual that is said in vs 27 of both God and man?
God says 'let us' make man, which implies more than one; and He then says of man 'let them' have dominion, which also implies more than one. Is there already a hint of God being Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and of the oneness Jesus spoke of between husband and wife when He challenged the Pharisees who wanted to make divorce easy. He said to them: “Haven't you read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:5-6) We see this closeness between man and woman clearly in vs 27.
The Hebrew word for man is 'adam'. So it's both the generic term for mankind, but also the proper name 'Adam'. What is the unique difference that vs 26-27 show between man (Adam), and the other living creatures that were created on the same day?
Man, male and female, was created 'in God's image and after His likeness'. Note how that's stated twice in vs 27. God surely wanted us to know how important it is. In John4:24 Jesus said to His disciples “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” So being in His image is not to be taken in a physical way. Man's ability to think, speak, reason, create, love, and even to communicate with God, far exceeds all other creatures. All of those must reflect something of what it is to be made in God's image and likeness. It's also what gives all men and women tremendous dignity – even though that dignity has been so distorted by sin. What's the other unique thing that makes man so distinct from God's other creatures? (vs 28)
Like those other creatures man was told to 'multiply and fill the world'. But he was also given authority to subdue creation and to rule over them. Man isn't just an animal, or the offspring of animals, as evolutionists believe. A far better response would be the one King David made when he said: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet!” (Psalm 8:1, 3-6)
Apart from filling us with a sense of humility, wonder and praise, these verses in Genesis ought also to help us get past the barriers which have caused so much friction in the world. The Bible teaches that God “made from one man - every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.” (Acts 17:26) The apostle Paul reminded those who'd been baptized into Christ that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slaves nor free. There’s no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) Christians have the same Creator and the same Saviour. That ought to put us on common ground. We are called to “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. And, having put away falsehood, to speak the truth with our neighbour - for we are members one of another.” (Ephesians 4:24-25)