What does it mean that we are 'made in His image'? It means that we are made like God, both in physical appearance, mental capabilities, and spiritually. God is a triune God. There is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. There were all there in the beginning in the first three verses of Genesis 1.
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
This is God the Father; He had the plan, the design for the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
This is God the Holy Spirit; He hovers over the earth to bring forth the will of the Father.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
This is God the Son; He spoke the Father's plan for the Spirit to bring if forth.
God the Father wills. We see this all throughout the scriptures. Speaking about the God in the heavens in the Old Testament is speaking of God the Father, the one who sits on the throne, ruling all of creation. Jesus spoke numerous times that while on earth He could only do the will of His Father in heaven. (John 6:40, Matthew 7:21, John 5:19 & 30)
God the Son speaks. Any time we see God speaking, even through an angel of the Lord, it is God the Son. He is described as the Word in John 1:1, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jesus even said the reason He came was to testify to the Truth. (John 18:38)
God the Holy Spirit empowers. Again, we see the Holy Spirit at work through both the Old and New Testaments. As the Son spoke the will of the Father at creation, the Spirit made it happen. In the Old Testament we see the Spirit of the Lord coming upon men and empowering them to do the will of God the Father after God the Son spoke it to them. (Judges 3:10 & 6:34; 1 Samuel 16:13-14; Ezekiel 11:5) We see the Spirit come again in Matthew 3:16 in fulfillment of Isaiah 11 and in Acts 2 at Pentecost.
How are we mede in this image?
Each and every one of us, man, have our own will. The Lord gave us free will in the beginning and He showed us that when He gave us a choice with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We are the only creature that has the ability to go against the Lord's design. This is how we are made in the image of God. We can also plan and reason. We can make a future plan, no other creature on the earth can do that. They only live in the moment and remember experiences of the past. This is why horses spook, they can't reason, but they remember a past experience and their natural instinct to survive drives them.
The fact that we have the ability to make a plan to build something, or go somewhere, or accomplish something means nothing if we cannot communicate that to others. As Jesus, the son of God spoke the will of the Father, so we are made like the Son in the fact that we can speak our own will.
Having a will and having the ability to communicate it is nothing if we cannot make it happen. Therefore we are also made like the Holy Spirit in the fact that we can make our plan happen. We can empower our will to take place.
In this sense we are made in God's image. This is why the scriptures describe that we must renew our mind (Romans 12:2), confess that He is Lord (Romans 10:9), and carry out the act of baptism (Matthew 28:19). This fulfills our being made in the image of God. Now go, and do likewise.
Comments