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Monday, December 28, 2009

How is Man Made in God's Image? (Gen. 1:26)

As to the actual form or shape of God’s body, "at no time has anyone beheld God" (1 John 4:12) because "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24). So it would seem unreasonable to liken man’s body to God’s body.

Note that the Scriptures do not say that God created man in the image of a wild beast or of a domestic animal or of a fish. Man was made "in God’s image"; he was a "son of God." (Lu 3:38)

Man is "in God’s image" in that he was created with moral qualities like those of God, such as love and justice. (Compare Col. 3:10) He also has powers and wisdom above those of animals, so that he can appreciate the things that God enjoys and appreciates, such as beauty and the arts, speaking, reasoning, and similar processes of the mind and heart of which the animals are not capable. Man is also capable of spirituality...the knowing and having communication with God. (1 Cor. 2:11-16; Heb 12:9) It was these reasons that man was qualified to be God’s representative and to have in subjection the forms of creature life in the skies, on the earth, and in the sea.

When God said "Let us make man in our image" at Gen. 1:26, Jehovah God was speaking to His Son Jesus, His Master Worker, the first-born of all creation (and, possibly, to the rest of the angels also), who were also made in God's image. (Pr 8:30, 31; also compare John 1:1-3; Col 1:15-17) Also see Did Jesus have a pre-human existence?

For more, see
In the Image of God or Beast?