Created In God’s Image

Posted on June 17, 2007

 

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Genesis 1:26-2:3

Some say a picture is worth a thousand words. That may be true, but a picture is also never as good as the original. When driving through the mountains, you can only capture so much in a picture. But that’s the kind of word the Bible uses to describe our creation in the “image” or picture of God.

TRUTH: God created man, and He did so in His own image and likeness, thereby giving us the ability to relate to Him intellectually, emotionally, and decisively.

WHAT GENESIS 1 DECLARES ABOUT GOD’S CREATION OF MAN…

I.          God created man.

            Two choices of beliefs…

            A.         Creature-centered (secular, evolutionary humanism)

All non-biblical belief systems can be summarized as being creature-centered. That includes not only the atheistic view of the world, but other religious systems such as pantheism and agnosticism.

            B.         Creator-centered (biblical creationism)

The Bible simply declares that on the sixth day (a literal period of twenty-four hours), God created man in His own image. Man, upon creation, was not an unintelligent life-form. He didn’t have his beginning as a microscopic particle of amino acid, falling to the ocean as a result of a mysterious lightning storm, germinating with existing protein into a single-celled organism, only to evolve over billions of years into an upright-walking, talking, reasoning mammal.

Problems with evolution…

1.         Evolution contradicts the law of entropy, which states that things break down over time. When energy is transferred from one form to the next, some energy is always lost into other forms (never created or destroyed, simply lost to the process itself).

2.         There is no physical evidence of evolution, at least not evidence that disproves creation as a possibility. Of the billions of fossils we have at our disposal, none show any true transitional forms of any creatures.

3.         The complexity of the human body. Evolution declares that useless parts are deleted through the process of change over time. But most of our complex parts had to begin as useless parts in the interim. How did evolution know? The answer is found in an intelligent designer behind all things!

2.         God created man in His own image.

            Three facets of the image of God…

            A.         Emotions.

People have the ability to feel, which is something given to us to reflect upon our Creator, who feels anger, joy, sadness, and all other emotions.

            B.         Intellect.

Everything in existence is made up of just 118 different elements, found on a periodic table. All knowledge is summed up in just 26 letters (in English, fewer in other languages). All numbers are based on ten simple digits (0-9). Yet add to these things man’s intelligence and they become something amazing.

            C.         Will.

God has not only designed mankind to think and to feel, but to make decisions based on the emotions and intellect. When a person is saved, all three are affected. Intellectually, a person comes to believe the gospel, which produces an emotional response called “conviction” that leads to a volitional decision, an act of the will to receive Jesus Christ personally.

3.         God created man to lead the earth.

The man and woman were commanded to have “dominion” over all things. We will elaborate more on this in the next chapter of Genesis, but the major point here is that man was given responsibility and accountability. Adam and Eve were created to be leaders over God’s creation, the crowning glory of His creation. It was after the creation of humanity alone that God looked at what He had made and pronounced it “very good!”

The truth is, though we were made in the image of God, mankind fell into sin and marred that image and failed to oversee the earth according to God’s plan. So we are in need of a Savior, and we are definitely accountable for our response to Jesus!