In this issue, I will go into detail on bearing the image of God, and what it means. The image of God is a massive theological topic and we will discuss it from several angles. I think we can come to some major decisions about what it is and how to bear God’s image.

In Issue 3, we sped up through the first part of the creation account so we could look at the overall poetry of creation. I connected Genesis 1:2 where the earth was “formless and empty” with God’s process of speaking creation into existence first in the forming of days 1-3 and then the filling of days 4-6.

We must slow down again as we look at the image of God. There are many views on what it is. The context of Genesis 1:26-31 helps us to solidify its meaning and give some practical applications of bearing God’s image and living it out.

Who Is God Talking to?

Genesis 1:26: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fishes of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over all the creeping things crawling on the earth.

Before we can even get to our questions about the image of God, we must ask an interesting way question. God says, “Let us…” Who is us? Even more than that, humanity is made in the image and likeness of “us.” It’s a significant question to ask.

Another interesting quandary for studying the image of God is the fact that the next pronoun, “them” is plural after God talks about making “man” in His image. How can it be singular and then plural? Same question for God. But it stays plural, “us, our.” Moses must have had trouble with Hebrew!

I believe from the context that “ruling” over all the animals of the earth is also part of the image of God. But we will deal with that a little later. Of all that I read, no one even mentions the fact that “man” is singular first, and then “them” is plural when God refers to ruling over the creatures of the earth.

In that sense, I will have two venture out on my own for the grammar question. I don’t think it’s as big of a deal is on making it to be, which is probably why no one really concentrates on it. I’m just weird that way. I think the easiest way to understand it is that man God creates (singular) will not be the only man on the earth for long.

God creates humanity “male and female,” and so the reproductive nature of humanity means there will be many on the earth, leading to God’s use of the plural pronoun. Shortly one person what have trouble rolling over all the creatures of the earth if he were alone. That solves that grammatical issue in my mind. Also grammatically, “man” can be a cumulative Laurel even though it is singular.

Now for the much better question. Why does God say, “Let us make man in our image”? Because this has to deal with God, you can be sure everything I read had so many different ways of looking at it. I’m going to simplify that for our discussion.

As many as six different options for understanding God’s use of the plural pronouns exist. I will give the five most plausible ones.

1. Most Christians see the seeds of the Trinity referred to here, that God is speaking with him the Godhead between the Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
2. Some grammarians have suggested that because the word for God in Hebrew (Elohim) is plural that referring to himself in the plural is just good grammar.
3. God is speaking to Himself, sort of mulling over what He is about to do.
4. Others have suggested a plural of majesty or fullness so that when God speaks, He speaks in the royal plural or out of the fullness of His capacities.
5. Some scholars from a deep study of the culture of the Ancient Near East see a reference here to the divine council of angels and celestial beings.

We haven’t even gotten to the image of God and there’s already a lot to consider! The sixth suggestion is that this is a holdover from the polytheism of the Israelites, which I have summarily dismissed because it has no historical or biblical precedent.

I can eliminate the grammatical plural of Elohim and plural pronouns. It doesn’t happen this way anywhere else in Hebrew. Also, the idea that God was talking to Himself is just strange, so I will not pursue it.

As much as it is a “sacred cow” for many Christians, Moses and the Israelites would never have thought of the Trinity when Moses wrote Genesis. Where we see the further revelation from the New Testament about the Trinity, they would not have. So they would have been scratching their head if that were the reference.

I’m not discounting that the Trinity has always existed and that this could be a possible Christian interpretation. I’m only saying that historically it would not have been an option. At the same time, Moses and the Israelites fully accepted this writing, so something they were used too had to be the background.

We’ve discounted numbers 1-3 from the list. That leaves the last two options of a “plural of majesty, fullness” and the divine council. You may be wondering, “What council is he talking about?” Don’t worry. I will explain.

First, the idea of a “plural of majesty/fullness” has some merit. But one scholar has pointed out that “we” is a plural of majesty has not been used with any verbs in the Hebrew text. That leaves us with only one other option.

Something accepted by the Israelites was the heavenly court that God ruled over. Notice I said God rules over His divine council. The divine council, or heavenly court, shows up in Scripture in at least 1 Kings 22:19-22, Job 1:6-12 and 2:1-6, and Isaiah 6:1-8. Many have objected that man was made in God’s image, not the image of angels. This is true. But in other examples of the divine council, like Psalm 86, God does not ask the council what to do.

He declares to them what He will do, and then He does it on His own. God doesn’t need to consult or discuss anything He does (Isaiah 40:14). Isaiah 6:8 shows that the council’s decision is carried out by God. You could see God simply telling the divine council what He is about to do. God says in Job that the sons of God sang praise as He created (Job 38:7).

I know it is strange to us, but to the Israelites, it made sense that God would be speaking to others. If I could take it a step further, the scholars I have read and taken classes under to have a firm grasp of this concept remind us that “elohim” are celestial beings. Everyone in the divine council is an elohim. God is the ultimate Elohim.

Notice also that we are slowing down to look at these verses because Genesis 1 slows down for this creation in the image of God. For the first time, “made” instead of “created” is used in the text. Why? Because God has already created everything out of nothing. We learn from Genesis 2 that God makes man out of the dust of the earth.

I must get back to the other issue in Genesis 1:26. Both the image of God and His likeness are mentioned. They are very close to one another. You might miss them if you weren’t reading carefully. The text says, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.”

The two Hebrew words here are words for image and likeness. “image” appears 15 times in 13 verses (Genesis 1:26, 27; 5:3; 9:6; Numbers 33:52; 1 Samuel 6:5, 11; 2 Kings 11:18; Ezekiel 7:20; 16:17; 23:14; Amos 5:26; 2 Chronicles 23:17). “Image” usually refers to an idol.

“Likeness” appears 25 times in 22 verses (Genesis 1:26; 5:1,3; 2 Kings 16:10; Isaiah 13:4; 40:18; Ezekiel 1:5, 10, 13, 16, 22, 26, 28; 8:2; 10:1, 10, 21, 22; 23:15; Psalm 58:5; Daniel 10:16; 2 Chronicles 4:3).

A majority of these references come from Ezekiel. Especially in the first chapter, he tries to describe what he sees of God on His throne above the wheeled creatures. Part of his insistence on seeing the “likeness” of God may be because humans cannot look on the face of God and live.

“Image” and “likeness” appear in Genesis together in Genesis 1:26 and 5:3. “Image” is only used four times in Genesis while “likeness” is only used three times. All this analysis is important to help us understand them being used together and what difference there is between them. Genesis 5 is helpful because it refers once again to Genesis 1, that God made man in His likeness.

But then it really helps us when we see that Adam fathered a son in “his likeness, after his image, and named him Seth” (Genesis 5:1, 3). Seth was in his father’s likeness. They were like each other, the same kind or type. But they were not twins or a carbon copy of one another. They were similar but different. Seth was in his father’s image in that he probably resembled him in facial features and physicality. That is usually how it works between father and son.

But the differences are clear. They are not the same person. They look similar but are not completely alike. The same goes for us as we bear the image of God. The image of God is not a look-alike. We are not God. We are like Him in some ways, but not Him.

An image could be a statue or model. It does not have to be an idol, although people believed that the idol represented its deity and had similar attributes. “Likeness” is more of a figurative term can mean to have the same form or function. These meanings will help us as we talk about the image of God.

Options for the Image of God

Genesis 1:27: So God created man in his image / and in the image of God He created him / male and female He created them.

All right, now we can get into the image of God question. What is it? How do we as humans bear the image of God? Genesis 1:27 is poetic. I have marked the three lines with a “/” for a separator.

Already poetic, Genesis 1 is clearly poetic here as it talks about the making of humanity, the first line says God created man in His image. The second line reverses line one by saying “in the image of God He created him.” The third line replaces “in His image” with” male and female” and the singular “him” with the plural “them.”

Here are some options for the image of God presented to us by Christian thinkers and scholars over the years:

1. The image of God is something that makes humans like God in faculties like consciousness, reasoning, imagination, and similar characteristics animals do not seem to have.
2. The image of God is the spiritual part of humanity that allows them to connect with God on that same spiritual level. Animals don’t seem to have this.
3. The image of God in humanity is the ability to represent Him on the earth, to do on the earth what God does in His creation.
4. The image of God is the same ability for community between male and female as the Trinity has between the three Persons.

I have heard people say also that a human’s composition as body/soul/spirit is like the three Persons of the Trinity. I think two of these are well-represented in the text of Genesis 1:26-31.

For instance, we have just seen the poetic similarities and equivalences between the image of God and being created as male and female, and uniting together as one. Just as husband and wife come together as one, though there are two persons, so also there are three Persons but one God.

Let’s look at the possibility that what we do here on earth and what God blessed and commanded us with is another possibility for what it means to be made in the image of God and bear the image of God.

Dominion and Subdue

Genesis 1:28: Then God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Earlier God declared that humans would “rule over” or “have dominion over” all the animals of the earth and the earth (Genesis 1:26). This word means to have leadership over something and to control it. In this way, the image of God is reflected in us when we rule the earth as God rules all His creation.

As His representatives on earth and being in His place of them and leadership over the earth and all the creatures in the earth, we resemble God and are like His vice-regents. we see the same word for dominion in this verse, but there is a new word for “subdue.”

This verb has a negative connotation throughout the Old Testament. However, because humanity was at odds with the earth, we could misunderstand this word to refer to a stewardship of the earth, to use its resources because God gave the earth to us.

As the word is used elsewhere in the Old Testament, it’s very possible to miss use the earth, to abuse its resources, and to ruin it.

Blessing and Command

Here in Genesis 1:28, we see God’s blessing and His command to “subdue” the earth and “rule over” everything that dwells on the earth. God’s blessing involves husband and wife being fruitful and multiplying. There’s no indication there would be any trouble bearing children. That comes later in Genesis 3

As part of God’s blessing, the fruitfulness of the couple should result in “filling the earth.” God will bless humanity as long as it does this. The more fruitful, the more the earth must be subdued and its resources be used for humanity.

Remember that the earth when it is properly stewarded should continue to produce the plants, trees, needs to reproduce, and fruit and other sustenance that would be able to sustain humanity. It is our misuse of the earth’s resources and the animals in it (later in Genesis 9) that causes us to have a shortage of supply.

The other problem we will see as we continue through Genesis is that people did not obey God’s command to “fill the earth.” We will see this especially in Genesis 11 at the Tower of Babel. But we will get there. God’s blessing is always over humanity as long as it does what He commanded, to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.

Stewardship of the Earth

Genesis 1:29-30: And God said, “Behold, I have given to you every plant producing seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree which is on the face of the earth with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and everything that creeps upon the earth which has the breath of life in it, every green plant for food,” and it was so.

God gave us the earth’s resources for our benefit. It appears from God referring only to the plants and trees that humanity was originally vegetarian. It is not until Noah that God permits eating meat as well. It appears that all the animals in this time were vegetarian. Genesis 1:29-30 says both humans and animals will eat vegetation for food.

A person could easily abuse the earth instead of stewarding it, misusing God’s image. Because “have dominion, rule over, and subdue” are negative terms elsewhere, we could get the same impression of their use here.

But that is not the case. If we bear God’s image by being like Him in the way He treats creation, He is our example. God does not abuse what He has created. He uses it as He wishes, for creation was made by God for God.

It does Him no good to abuse what He has created. Why would he create it then? Instead, God loves His creation and made it all “good, and very good.” He put all His time and creativity into His creation so He could benefit from it and it can benefit from Him.

In the same way, as we bear the image of God, we treat the earth and its resources the same way God treats His creation. We nourish and care for it. We respect it and keep it flourishing. Good stewardship of the earth does not mean we go to the extreme of not using it. It doesn’t mean we become extreme environmentalists.

It also means we don’t abuse its resources. We don’t do whatever we want with the earth, the animals, or its resources. There’s a healthy balance to good stewardship of the earth. We must not abuse it, but we cannot worship it as if it is God (Romans 1:19-20).

God entrusted the earth to us with its vast amount of resources to bless us. If you want to know where the Bible says we should not mistreat the earth, whether we abuse it or treat it like a god, this is one of the places you see that good stewardship. We must remember earth is our home until Jesus returns. If we abuse it, we are trashing our own house.

So, What Is the Image of God?

I believe it’s a faithful reading of Genesis 1:26-31 to bear the image of God when we steward all God gives us as blessings on the earth. We are like God as we steward the earth as He stewards His creation. He leads us by His example.

We can see the union of man and woman together in holy matrimony and relationship as another way we bear the image of God. We have the same intimate relationship as to become one as the three Persons of the Trinity existing together as one God.

Do any of the other possibilities exist? I think we can entertain philosophical and other possibilities for bearing the image of God. There seem to be certain attributes and properties of humans that animals don’t share but God has. In this third way, we can bear the image of God as we become more and more like Him.

From Good to Very Good

Genesis 1:31: So God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very goosd. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.

I would like to point out one more literary device. It shows we are God’s special creation. We have observed how God created the universe. If you were reading carefully, you noticed a progression throughout the days of creation.

After certain days, it’s as if God stepped back, looked at what He had created, and said that it was good. Let’s look at that progression because says something incredible about the creation of humanity on the sixth day.

• Genesis 1:4 – Dave 1 – Light “Good”
• Genesis 1:11 – Day 3 – Earth and Seas “Good”
• Genesis 1:12 – Day 3 – Plants and Trees with Their Seed “Good”
• Genesis 1:18 – Day 4 – Sun, Moon, and Stars “Good”
• Genesis 1:21 – Day 5 – Fish and Birds Fill the Waters and Sky “Good”
• Genesis 1:25 – Day 6 – Land Animals and Creeping Things “Good”
• Genesis 1:31 – Dave 6 – Creation and Blessing of Man “Very Good”

There is a progression from “good” to “very good” (Literally “good, good”). Not only does God say it’s very good after He creates humanity. This subtle literary device throughout the whole poetic chapter on creation shows how the creation of humanity is the pinnacle of God’s creative work.

We’ll take a short break to witness a chiastic structure that shows God’s day of rest as the powerful finish to creation. But the rest of Genesis 2 focuses even closer on God’s creation of man and woman. We are special to God. We are different than anything else He created.

You are special to God. He took His time as He created you. We will be discussing that in a couple of issues from now, but don’t forget all these clues that show how much God loves and cares for you.

The Saga Continues…

Wow! Either you feel the blood draining from your head or a head rush after that discussion. We’ve looked at the image of God and what it might mean based on the context. We will continue to trek through the creation account as we begin Genesis 2. God rests on the seventh day. What’s that all about?