The Honor God Bestowed Upon Humanity

Genesis 1:27 is one of the most significant verses in all of Scripture because it answers the question: Who is man?

After God declared His intention in verse 26, verse 27 records the fulfillment of that purpose. “So God created...” What God purposed, God accomplished.

But Moses does something striking. He says created three times in the one verse, and right in the middle of it he repeats the image. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.

Created three times, image twice. And Moses does not stop and tell me why he wrote it that way, so when I slow down over the repetition, that is my reading. I believe that is what it is there for.

The emphasis is not on how man was made, and the emphasis is on who man is.

The Word Behind the Honor

The word here is tselem, and it means an image, a representation. That much is the word itself.

Now I am going to bring in something that is not in the verse. In the ancient world, images could represent rulers and their authority. That is historical background and not Scripture, and Genesis does not stop and tell me to read verse 27 through that background. But when I hold it beside verse 26, where God says let them have dominion in the same breath as let us make man in our image, that is how I read it. God set His own image in the earth, and man is His representative, made to show forth the One who reigns.

That is the honor, man was made to stand in the earth for God.

In verse 26 God also said likeness, demuth, and that word carries resemblance. And in verse 27 Moses says image twice and does not say likeness once. He does not stop and tell me why he left it out, so I will not tell you what he wanted. What I will say is that the word he kept is the word I have been building on, and it is the representing, and I notice it.

Worth Before Work

Before God gives man dominion, He gives him His image.

Genesis says after his kind of the grass and the trees, and of the fish and the fowl and the beast. It does not say it of the light, or the firmament, or the sun and moon and stars. But of nothing in that whole chapter does it say what it says of man. Man alone was created in the image of God, and this is the highest honor bestowed upon any part of creation.

And here is how the chapter reads to me, and I will say that it is how it reads to me. Man comes at the end of the six days, and the language changes when God gets to him. It slows down. Everything before him comes through God speaking, and when God gets to man the speech changes. It is, let us make man in our image. To me that is a climax and a Creator showing His heart before He hands out the work, and I hold it as my reading of the way Moses wrote it.

David Stood and Wondered

Centuries later, David stood beneath the heavens and was still overwhelmed by this truth. Read what he was looking at.

And then he asked this.

David’s question is not one of doubt. It is one of wonder.

He marvels that the God who created the vast universe would give such attention, honor, and responsibility to mankind.

And Psalm 8 does not stop at the wonder. Read what David says God did next.

To have dominion over the works of thy hands. That is Genesis 1:26 in a psalm, and David goes on to name the beasts and the fowl and the fish. The wonder of creation had not faded, and David saw the heavens and then looked at humanity, and he stood amazed at the value God had placed upon man.

The First Thing God Wanted Known

Genesis 1:27 teaches us that man’s greatest distinction is not his strength, intelligence, or achievement. It is that God created humanity in His own image.

What I see in it is mine and not the verse’s. Identity comes before assignment.

What I can point to is the order on the page. Verse 27 says he was made in the image. Verse 28 gives him the work. The image is written down before the assignment is, and Genesis does not stop and tell me God meant anything by that order. I am the one telling you it means something.

And that is the honor God bestowed upon mankind from the very beginning.

The Image We Carry, and the Image We Meet

And this honor is not ours to hold alone, for the same image God set on us, He set on every person we meet.

And read James carefully, because he is not saying it cannot be done. He is saying we do it. Therewith bless we God, and therewith curse we men. Then he says what he thinks of it, my brethren, these things ought not so to be. So it can be done, and it is being done, and it ought not to be, for the honor God placed on us, He placed on them. So the image humbles us as much as it lifts us, we carry it, and so does everyone we meet.