Image of God in Man

Image of God in Man

By Daniel M. Bryant

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.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Then God said, “I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food. And it was so.
And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning - the sixth day.

(Genesis 1:26-31

Introduction

Every story has a beginning. So it is with the account of God's creation. But this is not simply a story for story's sake. This is reality. There is so much packed into the first three chapters of Genesis that it is impossible to do it justice in a brief writing such as this. Genesis 1-3 is like a diamond. It is so multi-faceted, that every time you look it, you see new and different perspectives that make it even more beautiful, not different in the sense that it changes, but your perception changes.

There is so much crucial information packed into these first three chapters that is necessary for us to understand God and ourselves. We can not take it lightly. We must dig into it with intensity of purpose. I hope that in my comments and observations I can spark an interest and a love for Genesis in you that will cause you to want to come back to it again and again.

There are a few basic things I want to touch on in this study of what we refer to as “The image of God in man.”
The fact that the scripture says repeatedly, that God saw what he had made, and “it was very good” is a safeguard against the false teaching that the material universe is inherently bad and evil. This teaching has manifest itself in various forms throughout the history of world religion, and the gist of the idea goes something like this: “Spirit is good and matter (the material world) is bad. In order to become holy, or remain holy or pure, a person has to live in such a manner as to abhor the material world and divorce himself from it as much as is humanly possible while he is still alive in his physical body.” This idea or belief is what is referred to as “gnosticism”:
“a group of ancient heresies, stressing escape from this (material) world through the acquisition of esoteric knowledge.” (Random House, 2011)

This is the heresy Paul is addressing in Colossians 2:16-23:
“Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: "Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”

The understanding that God made everything in the material universe good, and pronounced it good, serves as a safeguard against asceticism, ( the dedication of a person's life to the pursuit of extreme self denial or self mortification), and gnosticism. It also serves as a correction to the evolutionist’s perception of the world as being a harsh, evolving ecosystem that has to be tamed and controlled. This ideology has caused harm to millions of peoples and the earth itself over the course of time.

The creation of man is the climax of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth. Have you ever wondered why God chose to wait until after he had created everything else to create man? That is an intriguing question. Perhaps he could have started out by creating man first, and then allowing the man to watch him and engage him as the rest of His creation activity unfolded. I believe that, in order to answer that question, we have to first look at one fundamental truth: There are two basic approaches to life that confront everyone at some point. The first approach to life is the approach that controls the world’s system of things. When I refer to the world’s system of things, I am not referring to the order of nature, I am referring to man’s approach to life without a faith and obedience to God. This is what the Apostle John is referring to in the following passage of Scripture.

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 17.02.2011
ISBN: 978-3-7396-6840-6

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Widmung:
This book is dedicated to my wife, Peggy bryant