Knowing The Word in Genesis 1:24-27, The Sixth Day of Creation

24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock [domesticated animals] and creeping things [small animals/rodents/reptiles] and beasts [wild animals] of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” [The climax of creation is reached with the narrative slowing down to emphasize the significance of man, including a description that sets man apart from the rest of creation. Why does God use the plural “us” instead of the singular “I?” One explanation is that he is addressing the heavenly court, i.e., the angles. Some say it is the “royal we.” Others that God is speaking to and encouraging himself and the Spirit. Christians see it as foreshadowing the Trinity, but the original author of Genesis would not have understood it this way.]

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

[In what does “image” and “likeness” consist? There are five main solutions that have been proposed over time as shared by Gordon Wenham:

1. Image and likeness are distinct. According to traditional Christian exegesis since Irenaeus in 180 A.D., image refers to the natural qualities in man (reason, personality) that resemble God, while the likeness refers to supernatural graces, e.g., ethical, that make the redeemed godlike.

2. Image refers to the mental and spiritual faculties man shares with God such as man’s reason, personality, free-will, self-consciousness, and intelligence. The Bible, however, does not make this obvious.

3. Image consists of a physical resemblance. Man looks like God. Genesis 5:3 says that Adam fathered Seth “after his image.”

4. The image makes man God’s representative on earth.

5. The image is a capacity to relate to God. Man’s divine image means that God can enter into personal relationships with him, speak to him, and make covenants with him. The “image of God” is not part of the human constitution so much as it is a description of the process of creation which made man different.

I’d like to propose a sixth point. If man is made in the divine image, just as the tabernacle was made “in the divine pattern,” then perhaps man is a copy of something that has the divine image but is not necessarily a copy of God. Exodus 25:9 and 40 state that the earthly tabernacle was modeled on the heavenly. Since we Christians believe that Jesus has always existed and was not created, and since he too was in heaven, perhaps to be created in the divine image means that we are patterned after him and his likeness. After all, our goal is to grow into the full stature of Christ. How could we do that if we are not like him in some meaningful way?]