Now let’s go back to Genesis chapter 1 with that in mind. The trinity we could say then has been planning this. There has been consultation and communion within the godhead. It took place long before day six, it took place before there was any long before. It took place before there was any time. It took place before there was any creation. There was a plan before it was ever carried out. And God is now saying everything else is impersonal else, everything else burns, everything else perishes, nothing that I’ve created lasts. The whole universe will be uncreated. As Peter tells us in 2 Peter, it will melt…the elements will melt like fervent heat. I actually believe there will be a “run the tape backwards” kind of thing and creation will become uncreation and there will be atomic dissolution as the whole universe goes out of existence. It all burns. Only one component in the physical universe lasts forever and that is man, for only man in the end mattered to God ultimately. Everything else was only created to provide a world for man which would cause man to praise and thank and glorify God and put God’s wonderful power on display and God’s wisdom on display and God’s intelligence on display. Certainly the complexity and the variety of the universe does that so that man would glorify God and honor God. But it all burns…it all burns. Only man is made in the image of God. It was only man that concerned the trinity ultimately. It was only man that was the product of intra-trinitarian communion.
Yes man was a living creature like animals, that simply means that he moves and he is conscious. Yes man was given the breath of life, chapter 2 verse 7, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. But that was true of animals. In Genesis chapter 7 and verse 22 it says, “Of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life.” All animals have that. They’re all alive and the breath of life, or being a living creature is a Genesis designation of that created life which has consciousness, that is it’s not plants, it has consciousness and it moves. And certainly that is true of man, but at that point the similarity ends. And the trinity has planned a creature who is unlike any other part of creation, cannot evolve into this.
Now there are four features here discussed about man…four features. The first feature is obvious. Man is made in the image of God. It says it repeatedly. “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.” Image and likeness are synonyms. There is no distinction in the Hebrew language between those two terms as to meaning. They are just repeated for emphasis which is very typical of the use of the Hebrew language. In our image, according to our likeness, the same thing. Verse 27, “In His own image, in the image of God He created him,” repeated again, four different times we have been created in the image of God.
Now what does it mean? Well whatever it means is really important because whatever it means, it’s different, it’s what identifies the difference between us and every other created thing, even the highest of created beings, conscious animals. The answer to this is critical and the answer again tells us that man cannot evolve, that is impossible. You can’t evolve into the image of God. That is not something that shows up in genetics. That’s not something you find in a chromosome. That’s not something that appears in DNA.
What is the image of God? The root of the Hebrew word for image, tselem, appears to mean to carve or to cut off. In other words, man was sort of a chip of God, in a sense. He was sort of shaped and formed like God. He was created in an exalted fashion. You could even say he was carved, he was whittled, as it were, he was shaped like God. That means that we are created on a heavenly pattern, folks. That means we are created on a divine pattern. Let me take it a step further, that means we are created on an eternal pattern which is not true of anything else that was created, nothing else in the time-space universe.
We do share biological features with the rest of the creatures. We are all designed by God to live together in a common environment. We have to share biological features because we say we share the biological environment. We have a certain biological reciprocity with plants, don’t we? We create carbon dioxide and they create…what?…oxygen, which we need. We have a reciprocity with the plants because we eat them. We have a reciprocity with the animals. We have a reciprocity with the water. We have a reciprocity with the sun and the moon and all the other features of our world. And so we must fit in to the biological environment and therefore we are made out of the same stuff physically. But we are not highly evolved apes. We are transcendent in our significance because we have been literally cut off and carved as in the image of God.
Now this must describe some aspects of human nature which are not shared by animals…such as self-consciousness. Animals are conscious, they’re not self-conscious. That is they’re conscious, they react to their environment, but they don’t know they do…such as reason, the ability to think abstractly, which animals cannot do, and that has been proven repeatedly. Such as appreciation for beauty, and aesthetics. Such as feeling emotion, such as being morally sensitive and morally aware and morally conscious. And here it is above all everything else…above everything else, get this one, above all the image of God indicates the ability to personally relate to someone else, especially to God Himself. Being able to know Him, being able to love Him, being able to obey Him, being able to worship Him.
Let me say it to you. The core of the image of God can be summed up by the word personal. We are persons…we are persons. We live and move on the basis of relationships…relationships. We understand fellowship. We understand love. We understand communion. We understand conversation. We understand sharing thoughts and sharing attitudes and sharing ideas and sharing experiences with others. And that is why when God created man He immediately said it is not good for man to be alone. Why? Because the image of God is personhood and personhood can only function in relationship. The image of God, folks, is the capacity for personal relationships. And most importantly for a personal relationship with God. And isn’t it then important to understand that when God said let us make man in our image, He introduces to us at that point the concept that He is a God of relationship and then creates us in that image so that we are creatures of relationship. That’s the issue. The image of God is the capacity for personal relationship. God Himself has never existed as a single, lonely, solitary isolated individual. He has always existed in a family. He is the Father, second member is the Son, third member is the Spirit. As the great St. Athanasius used to say in the fourth century, “The Father has never been without His Son.”
The amazing mystery of the origin of personhood, of the origin of personality is that the one God exists as three persons in one being, or substance, or essence or reality. And the one substance, the one essence, the one being of God involves personhood. And when God made us in His image, He made us as persons and that is He made us for relationship.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
