Genesis 1:26 (NIV)
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, in Our likeness, and
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.”
Animals in the air and in the
water were created on the fifth day.
Animals on the ground were created on the sixth day. Before the sixth day was completed, God then
created man. When you think about the
complexity of the human body---the brain, eyes, ears, skin, bone, muscle, heart,
lungs, excretory system, immunologic system, etc.—all the Bible says is that
God created man. How did He do
that?
Well, we don’t know. The greatness of God is infinitely greater
than the brightest of human minds can comprehend. The Bible chooses not to describe how God
created man, perhaps because the human writer, Moses, could not possibly
understand or explain how the body, soul, and spirit were created. However, the Bible does emphasize that man
was created in the image and likeness of God.
Genesis 1:26 also makes it clear that man was created by more than one
person----“….let Us make man in Our image, in Our
likeness……”
Who is “Us” and “Our”? Who was with God when He created man? Well, John 1:1, 14 affirms that Jesus was
with God in the beginning. Jesus is God
according to John 8:58. What about the
Holy Spirit? Yes, He was there too. Note what Genesis 1:2 says: “The
earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep, and
the Spirit of God (Spirit in the Hebrew is “ruach” that means “air in
motion” or “breath”) was hovering over the face of the waters. So the use of the plural person pronouns
indicates that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were together during the
creation of man.
Indeed, the Bible writes that
God “said” and creation happened. When
God spoke, His breath in the form of the Holy Spirit came out and the spoken
word became created things. In Genesis
2:6-7, the Bible talks about God breathing into the nostrils of man and man
then being a living being. The breath of
God produced human life. It is also the
case when people are reborn as Christian people. Becoming a Christian involves the breath of
God. Jesus breathed on His disciples in
John 20:22 and said “Receive the Holy Spirit”.
Indeed the Holy Spirit is also called the breath of God. The breath of God also inspired the writing
of Holy Scripture (II Timothy 3:16).
You and I
are created in the image and the likeness of God. All humans are, yet how many humans believe
this because of the way we treat one another?
Why cannot we humans treat everyone as sacred creations of God? There might be a
differentiation between image and likeness, but I cannot determine. Both are used in other verses, but this is
the only verse where both are used in the same verse. A human tendency is to interpret image or
likeness in a physical sense, that God has a human form. No, God is Spirit (John 4:24) and invisible
(Colossians 1:15). To be created in the
image and likeness of God is to have the same spiritual nature as God. Having the same spiritual nature as God means
that man’s spirit lives on after man dies physically.
Because God created man in
His image, He put in man a nature to have a personal relationship with his
Creator. St. Augustine said that “Our
heart is restless until it rests in You”.
Original sin separated man from God that can only be re-established
through faith in Jesus Christ, who was God in the flesh who came to earth to
save us by dying on the cross for all of our sins. That’s why when you do confess your sins and
give your life to Christ, you experience peace because your spirit is united
with God’s Spirit and God’s Spirit dwells in you (Romans 5:1, 8:16-17).
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