Is that any less clear than Genesis 1:26-27 which says that God has made man in His image and likeness? And yet people with church of God backgrounds take exception to that. But they will not take exception with an equally clear statement in Genesis 2 and 3 - something a little bit askew here. So Satan used that ploy when he questioned God's clear statement about what they could eat and what they could not eat.
In Genesis 1:26 and 27, the first thing to do here is to look at this in its context. Here it is, the very first chapter in the Bible, and God is laying the foundation for what is going to follow. If the foundation is not laid correctly, then the whole rest of the building is crooked. What God is beginning to do here right in Genesis 1 is to establish our vision of what His purpose is and where we are headed with our lives, and being what we are, we need to have some insight into what He is. So He tells us right off the bat that we are made in His image and His likeness.
He contrasts us with the animals. Each one of them reproduces after their kind. And when they reproduce, they look like their parents. They look like each other. Do you see the very clear implication that God is reproducing Himself, and that His purpose is that we be exactly like Him when He does this reproducing? Even right now we are made in His image so that we will have the potential to be exactly like Him.
Virtually every explanation of these two verses begins with an assumption. When I say virtually every explanation, I am talking about many of the research materials that one would look into - commentaries, dictionaries of the Bible. The assumption is that God did not really mean what He clearly stated. Notice verse 27:
Verse 26 says the creation of man is about to occur. It is yet future. Verse 27 says that the creation is in the past tense. By the time the statement in verse 27 is done, man is already in His image. It is not something future. He is already in God's image. It is past tense. It is not an image and likeness in progress as in the creation of a character image, but within the context the image was already accomplished. A physical image and likeness of what God is has been made.
Who knows better? The God who authored the Book or the people that He used to write these things down, or people who are looking at it after the fact and have never seen God or heard His voice - people who are using a combination of Bible verses, metaphysics, philosophy, science, and assumption.
What is the assumption based on? It is usually on men's definition of the word spirit. They combine that with John 4:24 which says that God is Spirit. I will give you a typical sentence that is used in explanations of Genesis 1:26-27. I am going to quote this from Adam Clark and I chose him because it is so succinctly stated. So in Adam Clark's Commentary, Volume 1, Page 38, he states:
That is a direct contradiction based upon an assumption. It is based upon disbelief. Now this is typical. Certainly God does not have a material body, but that does not address the issue. The issue is whether He has a spiritual body which served as a model for mankind, and if He has a body - it has parts.
This is important because men within the church of God, church of God associations, are now telling members that God did not have form in mind at all in relation to this verse, but rather only character image. This is important to us in relation to understanding the nature of God and getting a correct perspective of our vision of the goal and purpose of life itself. They are [associating Him with] being not much more than the Catholic beatific vision or with man becoming part of a vague, material blob without his independence within a constructive and developing family of creators.
We have got to relate this to Genesis 1:26-27. Does God have a body? Paul says - Paul believed - there are spiritual bodies.
Image. There is no place in all of scripture that says that … . . .
Is that any less clear than Genesis 1:26-27 which says that God has made man in His image and likeness? And yet people with church of God backgrounds take exception to that. But they will not take exception with an equally clear statement in Genesis 2 and 3 - something a little bit askew here. So Satan used that ploy when he questioned God's clear statement about what they could eat and what they could not eat.
This is especially true in light of the very first reference in the Bible in Genesis 1:26. Let us turn back there.
In Genesis 1:26 and 27, the first thing to do here is to look at this in its context. Here it is, the very first chapter in the Bible, and God is laying the foundation for what is going to follow. If the foundation is not laid correctly, then the whole rest of the building is crooked. What God is beginning to do here right in Genesis 1 is to establish our vision of what His purpose is and where we are headed with our lives, and being what we are, we need to have some insight into what He is. So He tells us right off the bat that we are made in His image and His likeness.
He contrasts us with the animals. Each one of them reproduces after their kind. And when they reproduce, they look like their parents. They look like each other. Do you see the very clear implication that God is reproducing Himself, and that His purpose is that we be exactly like Him when He does this reproducing? Even right now we are made in His image so that we will have the potential to be exactly like Him.
Virtually every explanation of these two verses begins with an assumption. When I say virtually every explanation, I am talking about many of the research materials that one would look into - commentaries, dictionaries of the Bible. The assumption is that God did not really mean what He clearly stated. Notice verse 27:
Verse 26 says the creation of man is about to occur. It is yet future. Verse 27 says that the creation is in the past tense. By the time the statement in verse 27 is done, man is already in His image. It is not something future. He is already in God's image. It is past tense. It is not an image and likeness in progress as in the creation of a character image, but within the context the image was already accomplished. A physical image and likeness of what God is has been made.
Who knows better? The God who authored the Book or the people that He used to write these things down, or people who are looking at it after the fact and have never seen God or heard His voice - people who are using a combination of Bible verses, metaphysics, philosophy, science, and assumption.
What is the assumption based on? It is usually on men's definition of the word spirit. They combine that with John 4:24 which says that God is Spirit. I will give you a typical sentence that is used in explanations of Genesis 1:26-27. I am going to quote this from Adam Clark and I chose him because it is so succinctly stated. So in Adam Clark's Commentary, Volume 1, Page 38, he states:
That is a direct contradiction based upon an assumption. It is based upon disbelief. Now this is typical. Certainly God does not have a material body, but that does not address the issue. The issue is whether He has a spiritual body which served as a model for mankind, and if He has a body - it has parts.
This is important because men within the church of God, church of God associations, are now telling members that God did not have form in mind at all in relation to this verse, but rather only character image. This is important to us in relation to understanding the nature of God and getting a correct perspective of our vision of the goal and purpose of life itself. They are [associating Him with] being not much more than the Catholic beatific vision or with man becoming part of a vague, material blob without his independence within a constructive and developing family of creators.
We have got to relate this to Genesis 1:26-27. Does God have a body? … . . .
I believe that this is God's specific purpose statement for the entire creation. That is, that everything that God did is focused in on this statement that He has made man in His image and I believe that it is from this point where we have the words image (which actually appears three different times there in those two verses), likeness, and dominion.
It is from this point, with this goal in mind, that the events that are recorded in the Bible - who was involved in them, why they happened, or why what did not happen - is reported. Though the term, God is reproducing himself never appears in the Bible, it becomes clear later on that indeed is what He is doing - God is reproducing after His kind, producing a family just like Him.
Now we have these terms image and likeness. In common everyday speech, we use terms like, Why, he is just in the spitting image of his father his mother. He looks just like his father or mother. These are common everyday terms. We may not use them everyday, but they are a part of our language and by them we mean that somebody is so much like another member of the family, that it is easily seen where the traits have come from.
Later on in the Bible, we see terms like brother, sister, father, mother, wife, sons, daughters, adoption, and family, but what is the image of God? Because we are physical, our first reaction is to always think or to look for something physical, meaning a form or a shape that will give us some idea, some concept, of what it is we are being made into, but there is none because that is not God's specific purpose.
If God gave us a form or a shape (for Himself) that is what we would concentrate on and we would be led away from the goal that He set. This is why such things as fashions or cosmetics are so important to us. We see what we consider to be beautiful, an ideal, and so we endeavor then to conform to it. But these are things are vain, even deceitful, to those things that have to do with God's purpose; they are purposeless as far as God's ordering of things.
There is God's purpose in much clearer language. We are being transformed from the image of man to the image of Jesus Christ. What sort of an image do we have of Him? We do not know what He looked like; we have no form or shape. Instead what God gave us was the image of a life lived. So we are being transformed into the image of that life that was lived and the means for accomplishing this is the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Spirit, or we might say as Peter said, by the imparting of the divine nature.
In God's wisdom, in order for His purpose to be accomplished, it was necessary for man to be given free moral agency. This is another term that nowhere appears in the Bible, yet that mankind is a free moral agent is obvious right from the very beginning of the Bible because man is given choices as to which way he will choose to go. Nothing else in creation, except angels, is free to make choices involving morals. Everything else operates according to the way it was designed. It is impossible for an animal to sin, because an animal cannot go out beyond, making a choice to do something that would be in disagreement with the laws according to which he was designed.
It has ever been this way because it is a necessary step in God's purpose if we are going to be in His image, because the image He is conforming us to is a nature, it is a character image, it is an attitude image, it is not one of mere form and shape. It is only through having the opportunity to freely give ourselves to a way of life, to the way that He lives, that we will be in His image. Nobody is as free as God, and if we are ever going to be free, it is because we consciously choose to submit to and to obey His truth.
We learn from these verses that our Creator fashioned a clay model, a physical prototype of the God Being, giving him incredible abilities and talents far exceeding any other creature in the entire physical realm. These natural abilities and talents also served as prototypes of the spiritual gifts God Almighty would eventually implant in His called-out ones, given at the time of their baptism and the laying on of hands, an ordination providing the will and power to keep His holy law, developing godly character, to ultimately mirror the spiritual stature of Jesus Christ (the second Adam), made possible by the earnest payment or down payment on their future glorified spirit body at the time of the resurrection (II Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13-14).
This earnest payment contains the genotype (DNA & RNA) of the Tree of Life - or the fruits of God's Holy Spirit, which will mature to a fully developed phenotype, entity, or organism emerging at the conclusion of our lengthy sanctification process, producing mouthwatering succulent fruit, that is, love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control - which the apostle Paul reminds us against such is no law. That is because the bearing of this fruit is the purest form of keeping God's precious holy and spiritual law, emanating from our inner core - God's law permanently and forever inscribed upon our hearts (Hebrews 8:10; 10:16; and Jeremiah 31:31-33).
Returning to Genesis 1:27, we learn that both male and female (roles assigned by Almighty God from birth - not chosen by whim or preference) constitute incomplete, partial aspects of the composite God Being. We need to understand that God Almighty has never been nor is certainly not, as many strident militant feminists declare, a despotic, heavy-handed male chauvinist, but He has lovingly and compassionately designed the marriage covenant (when correctly understood and faithfully followed) to teach the husband and wife (identified as one flesh) (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8; Ephesians 5:31) to learn about the godly traits each partner lacks, an extremely important powerful insight that has completely eluded an increasing number of politicians of both major American parties, as well as an increasing number of mainstream Christian denominations who have blatantly and willfully discarded God's instructions on marriage and family, preferring to embrace infanticide, sodomy, genital mutilation, and other perversions as the norm, allegedly protected by Christian tolerance and compassion.
From the very beginning (you can turn now if you would to Genesis 1 with me) God made it clear that He wanted man and woman to join together, to come together. For what? To form a family.
The physical family unit is an example of that pattern and it is a huge part, a vital part of God's plan on three different levels.
First, marriage and the love between husband and wife gives us a glimpse of Jesus Christ's passionate love and devotion to His bride, the church.
Second, brotherhood or sisterhood gives us the opportunity to learn God's agape love to bond together in God's love through encouragement, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and loving kindness. We just heard all about this from Richard.)
Third, parenthood provides us an incredible life lesson, a life lesson of God's parental love, His loving kindness, His tenderness, and patience towards us, His children.
Now our physical and spiritual family relationships here on earth are indeed a gift from God. They teach us how to become just like Him. It does not matter if you are single or married, we are all part of God's future Family, learning how to love and grow in oneness with the spiritual Family of God through the upcoming marriage with Jesus Christ. You can jot down Revelation 19:7. So God the Father is indeed creating a family and in the end, after the 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ with His firstfruits, we see New Jerusalem brought down to a renewed earth and Jesus Christ presents all the many billions of saved children of God to the Father of all. That is when all who are willing to submit will be together in unity.
So knowing the ultimate purpose of our family relationships here on earth, this should really help us appreciate them more. That family unit is critical. It is vital to us becoming like God. Is it any wonder why we see Satan attacking the physical family so ferociously? Is it any wonder why we see Satan attacking the spiritual Family, the Body of Christ? God's pattern of physical and spiritual family units in the church are all critical to our growth. So in our remaining time today we are going to explore some key attributes that we can learn from the family construct, attributes of becoming Godlike and might I say, childlike.
Now, if we were going to expand that, or amplify it in the English, it would read somewhat like this: The God, as to His nature, is love. What it means, then, is God is a loving God. Most of the gods in the ancient world, in Greek mythology, were wrathful, vengeful, angry, picky things who had the same foibles, the same weaknesses, as human beings. They were not 'loving' gods. But the God is a loving God. So it is not to be understood that loving is one of God's activities; but rather that every activity of God is 'loving'. Therefore, if He creates, He creates in love. If He rules, He rules in love. If He judges, He judges in love. All that He does is an expression of His nature.
Now, let us think about this in reference to man. We are still talking about how God is the source of this love, and man, by nature, does not have it. Man was made in the image and the likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-28). But, God is described as being spirit. God is Spirit (John 4:24). And we find here that God is love. Now contrast that to man. Man is flesh. You see, the image begins to change. We are not quite in the image of God, are we?
Not only that, but the Bible describes us as being carnal. In this case, I am using it in the sense of being fleshly or physical. We are self-centered, and we are deceitful. What this means in practical fact is that man cannot be what he is meant to be - in the image of God - until he loves as God loves. Until his nature is the same as God's, we will never really be in the image of God. This is the essential thing that must be changed in man. Of course, you understand that, because of receiving of the Spirit of God, we are now partakers of the divine nature, which Peter states there in one of his epistles.
So, if man is to achieve what he is meant to be, then we must love, but we must love with the love of God.
Brethren, please note that God formed everything out of the ground, including man, who was formed from the dust of the earth. But nowhere, as far as I know, can we find evidence that any other living thing was made in the same manner as mankind. God created all the animals and all the birds. But it never said that He did not create them as female, create them as male. Mankind was created and then the woman was drawn out of the man.
Genesis 1:27 tells us, So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. Then in verses 21 to 23 we read, And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
They had their genesis in unity and then were divided as parts of a unified whole that could only be productive when working together. Brethren, please let that sink into your heads. Is there any indication anywhere that God had created any living thing - animal, plant, angels - as a unified whole and then divided into two parts? Was any animal or plant divided into two? Or were they all created individually in balance from the ground? Male and female, created individually and then united merely to reproduce. I cannot tell you this for certain, but there seems to be no indication that God created anything else in the same way He created man as part of the process of ultimately bringing all of mankind, finally perfected, in unity, into the perfect unity of the Family of God.
Please pay attention to the way that this is stated. God did not do anything without purpose, and He says that the earth brought forth the living creature. Now we will find in verse 26, the creation of man, where it says:
I think that part of the purpose of showing the creation in the way that God did is to show that there is something that we and the animals have in common. We could have gone on and read further, but all of us have come out of the earth. Man was created out of the earth. It very distinctly said that about the animals, Let the earth bring forth . . . its kind.
We share with them a mortality. We are earthy in that respect. They too, are earthy. However, the way that this is worded also shows that there is a difference between us and the other living creatures, and that difference was made very clear in that man was created after the God-kind. We are created in the image of God. And, in addition to that, there is no sexual orientation made in respect to animals. We, of course, know that there is a sexual orientation, but God made sure that was emphasized, male and female created He them. This will have a more importance later.
So we see three things that God establishes as being different between us and the animals: mankind is in His image, mankind is in male and female, and mankind has dominion.
Of course, this is God's general purpose statement.
Brethren, this is God's very clear intention for all mankind, not just for us, but for all men.
But as He calls each in his own order, we must keep in mind our very special part in this as a group, and each of us individually, if we stay the course in humility because He is preparing us to be something that is almost beyond our ability to fully comprehend and appreciate as we come together this week for this very purposeful training and rejoicing.
Brethren, we are in training to be ready for Christ's return, to be His wife, His helpmate in a way that no other group of those that have been created or are being created in God's image and likeness. This is something that should evoke incredible rejoicing and the great desire this week to use this holy time as God intended it together.
Right from the beginning of the Book as recorded in Genesis 1:26, God proclaims the avowed purpose for all mankind by declaring, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Genesis 1:26, KJV).
However, as we know, it is vital to recognize that the physical creation we see in the next verse, Genesis 1:27, is merely the beginning of this incredible process.
It is only at the end of the Book that we get a glimpse of the result of all God's careful work to create mankind fully in the very image of God, with the very same character as the Father and the Son.
But we are going to start here in Genesis 1:26, on the sixth day of God's rebuilding of the earth and what had been terribly demolished by Satan.
I think most of us clearly recognize that what we see in Genesis 1:27 was merely the beginning of man's creation in His image as physical beings, only to be finished as full-fledged members of God's Family for the glory of the Father, through the perfect work of Jesus Christ.
We understand, in verse 26, that mankind (man and woman) are created in the image of God.
Which proves that man, at the beginning - the opening phrase of verse 27 - includes male and female. It is mankind. Both man and woman are made in the image of God. He created them.
God is working out a specific purpose for all of mankind to create us in His very image (Genesis 1:26). It began with the physical creation (Genesis 1:27-28) and will be accomplished fully when men are finally born into the very Family of God (Revelation 21:6-7).
