“So God Created Mankind In His Own Image…” Gen 1:27

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them,” Gen 1:27

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, on our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground'” (verse 26). No other creature in creation is made in the image and likeness of God. That has profound implications for all of us to contemplate.

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (verse 27). The whole meaning of our existence is rooted in this one sentence. We are made in God’s own image and likeness. This does not mean that we “look like God,” but that our nature as human beings is made in the image of God’s very own nature and being. Genesis 2 gives us a bit more detailed account of how we are made in God’s own “image and likeness.” There we see “the Lord God formed a man* from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).

There is a play on the words in Hebrew going on here. It is between the words adam, meaning human being, or man, and adama, meaning ground. God is depicted as a potter here, tenderly molding the human body out of the earth, but this is not enough. He also “breathes” life into the man’s nostrils. This is a perfect metaphor. In this action, God is “breathing” his own life into the man. He is breathing his own image and likeness into the man, giving the man his own nature. This image and likeness is in the woman too as Adam says of her, “This one is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23).

What is the nature of God? There would not be enough words or pages to be able to define all that question entails, but we can point to a few things that have been made clear to us in and through the actions of God throughout the Hebrew and the Christian testaments of the Bible. Let us look at one idea here. God is an absolutely free being. We, then, who are made in his image and likeness, are also absolutely free. He has freely given us this freedom and he will never take it away from us.

But because of The Fall, we have been guilty, too often, of distorting this freedom. Because of The Fall, we are also the only creatures in all of creation who can freely and absolutely choose to turn away from the One in whose image we are made. A squirrel cannot choose to be anything but “squirrely”. A tree can only be “treely”. That is their nature. They are not made in the image and likeness of God, therefore, they are not “free” to choose anything else. They possess no free will.

We alone among all of God’s creatures are free to defy and to tarnish our very own nature, that is, the image and likeness of God that we are made in. Adam and Eve used their freedom wrongly, and we are the inheritors of their fall from grace. But, even though we have rebelled against God, God has not abandoned us. His love for us has never diminished. Indeed, that love was made known to us in the flesh in his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, through his life, death and resurrection. And he makes his love present to us in his Holy Spirit through our baptisms and in our prayer lives.

Knowing and believing this, then, we are called to use that gift of freedom responsibly. If we humbly and freely open ourselves up to God, he generously gives us the graces we need to remain true to His image and likeness. Because we have been saved by the blood of Jesus, we are challenged every day to learn to see and to submit again and again to the perfect will of the One who made us. We are challenged to live more responsibly, by freely choosing, with the help of God, to develop the habits of humility and obedience to the infinitely loving will of God.

Lord, help us to grow in our understanding of what it means to be made in your image and likeness. Deepen in us the knowledge of what is really good and strengthen in us the will to honor your image and likeness more truly every day. Give us the ability to see and to treat others as people who are made in your image and likeness too. Help us to challenge and to encourage one another to live more intentionally out of the love, compassion, and forgiveness you have made us to be for one another. We pray these things in your name, Jesus. Amen!