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.
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.
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.