Genesis, Message 4: God Creating Man in His Own Image for His Expression

My Great Delight in God's Word

Crystallization-Study of Genesis, Message 4

God Creating Man in His Own Image for His Expression

Genesis 1 is so precious. It beautifully portrays the experience of Christ as our life. Near the end of the chapter, we see God's creation of various kinds of animals, which illustrates different levels of life to us, with human as the highest form of life. In this article, we are going to focus on verses 26 and 27 that describe the creation of man.

God's purpose of creating man

²⁶ Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
²⁷ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26-27 NKJV)

These 2 verses clearly indicate God's purpose in creating man. He created man to express Him and exercise the dominion over His creation for Him. The duties of mankind are twofold: being a priest who expresses God, and being a king who has dominion over the creation.
Parenthetically, God did not create us to be a good man. He created us to be Godlike man. Inwardly, He created us in His image, so that we can express Him in His attributes, including love, light, righteousness and holiness. Outwardly, He created us according to His likeness, so that we look like Him. Therefore, to be more precise, He actually created us to be a God-man. It is hard to believe, but it is what the holy Scripture teaches us. Being a good man is not one of the desires of His heart. God wants us to be a God-man.
Purposes of God's creation of man in His image and according to His likeness are also twofold: to receive Him as life, and to express Him in all His attributes, including live, light, righteousness and holiness. To enable man to accomplish these purposes, He provided the tree of life in the midst of the garden of Eden (Genesis 2:9), typifying Christ as the source of life, so that man could have His life within him and become the visible expression of the invisible God.
One of the most commonly asked questions about life is, What am I created for? Westminster catechism answers the question about man's chief end like this: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. This statement comes from different parts of the bible and is absolutely true. And God has already provided us what we need to reach this twofold chief end. When we have Him as our life, we are able to express Him and enjoy Him forever.

Man's fall and God's solution

Sadly, because of the disobedience of the first couple, man has fallen short of the glory of God. Man has lost both His image and His dominion. More importantly, he has lost his life, since his connection with God, the only source of life, was cut by sin. Man has lost his capability to accomplish God's purpose for Him.
What God can do to solve the problem of mankind? What He could do was righteously annihilate the mankind, and create a new one. That would be so easy, because it was just like formatting a computer infected with ineradicable viruses. But He could not do like that. He could not destroy His beloved children.
This is what God did. Out of His perfect love, the Son of God came into this fallen world, becoming the only perfect God-man who ever lived in the history of mankind since God's creation. God did not create a new man, but instead He Himself became the last Adam, who gave up Himself and died on the cross to put an end to the race of Adam, which is doomed to eternal death. Moreover, He resurrected again and became the second Man, to start a new race which consists of God's many sons whose destiny is eternity with Him. God became God-man so that men could become God-men again. He became God man-ised, so that men would become man God-ised.
All we need to do to be included in the race of the second Man is believe into the Lord Jesus Christ, by receiving Him and being united with Him as one, both in His death and His resurrection. This is the means whereby we can have Him as our life again.

⁵ For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,
⁶ knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. (Romans 6:5-6 NKJV)

When we have Him as our life, we are predestined to go through the process of transformation, which ultimately leads to the conformation to the image of His Son. This process gradually enables us to express Him again, and will be fully accomplished at our transfiguration when Christ returns. We will then be man completely God-ised. At that time, not only will we perfectly express Him, but we will also exercise His authority over the creation, and we will reign with Him forever.
May I sum up this message with a quotation from one of the books written by brother Witness Lee, A Deeper Study of the Divine Dispensing: "He is God 'man-ized,' and we are man 'God-ized.' In the end, the two become one, both being God-men. This is the divine revelation of the Bible."

Further reading

• The Holy Word for Morning Revival: Crystallization-Study of Genesis, week 4.

Thirayost Nimmanon (Tony)