For the past few weeks, Theology 101 has focused its attention on some aspects of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. This week, we move from the divine to the human by giving thought to truths given in the Bible concerning us as human beings. We begin with God’s creation declaration in Genesis 1:26: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”
The very next verse reports that God acted on His intention: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (v. 27).
Two things must be noted. First, this reference was not about just the male portion of humanity. “Man” is often used in the Bible in the generic sense of a human being. It’s not calling attention to gender, but rather distinguishing humans from animals or angels. Second, the Bible’s basic premise is not that humans gradually evolved from other life forms, but that humans were the direct creation of God.
Later, the psalmist would raise the question, “What is man that You are mindful of him?” (Ps. 8:4). The same question was posed in Psalm 144:3, “Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that You are mindful of him?”
Job also pondered the same question, saying, “What is man, that You should exalt him, that You should set Your heart on him” (Job 7:17)?
‘Simple yet profound’
The simple, yet profound, answer to this repeated question is that we are the only created beings that bear the image and likeness of God. The intent of these words is to stress that some correspondence exists between God and human beings that uniquely reflects God in ways that beasts of the field, birds of the air and fish of the sea do not.
We humans only reflect God but do not possess His divine attributes and perfections. We might think of this likeness as a one-way street. That is, we cannot analyze a human being in order to reason out what God is like. That would amount to making God after our image and likeness. Rather the correspondence only moves from God to us. We know what God is like from what He has chosen to reveal about Himself and then seek to understand what this tells us about ourselves.
In His incarnation, Christ became the supreme representation of God. Scripture attests that Christ is the very image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). Thus, Jesus could say with absolute accuracy, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
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