And God created Man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
The creation account moves through light, sea, sky and living creatures. Then it stops for something different. Here God makes a creature in His own image, male and female. Commentators ask two questions here. What does "image" mean? And how much of it survived the fall, when Adam sinned?
The one creature God took counsel over
Every earlier act of creation came by a word of command. The making of man reads differently. Writers point to the planning behind it.
God did not create man as He had done in every previous case, by a simple order from His lips. The creation of man was the subject of divine counsel. "Let us make man," etc. Notice here that man was to be, and was, made in the image and likeness of God. This is his first great difference from everything God had created before. The second is that he was to rule over all of it.
Image means representation
"Image" is not a word about resemblance in the first place. One writer follows the word through the Bible and points to the coin Jesus asked for.
How the Bible uses the word, in both the Old and New Testaments, seems to show that "image" represents, while "likeness" resembles… In the New Testament, the coin our Lord asked for had the image and inscription of Caesar on its face. It might have been a poor likeness, but it was an unmistakable image of the Roman emperor. It expressed his authority and represented his claim.
The second word, "likeness," adds something the first does not.
God made man, then, to represent Him to the lower creation that He put under him. But he was also made after the likeness of God; that is, he was really like God in certain important respects. Not in all respects of course, for God is infinitely holy and man was merely innocent. Still, man was God's "offspring" (Acts 17:28-29). He is a spirit being, though dressed in a body of flesh and blood. So he has intelligence and a moral sense, and these reflect what exists on an infinite scale in God Himself.
A divine pattern, not a human projection
Kelly sets the verse against the theory that man rose from the animals.
How far this is from the brute finally evolving into man, a theory suggested by Satan to brutalise the race! Here is the simple yet wonderful truth. No one brought God down to the human level; God created man, and man alone, after a divine pattern.
What survived the fall
Kelly notices that Scripture later changes the wording when it speaks of Adam's son.
Man is no longer in the likeness of God, but he is always in the image of God. For man, now as ever, fallen or not, is in the image of God; but the likeness of God was lost through sin. Seth therefore was born in Adam's own likeness, not in God's. He was like Adam fallen, not only his representative.
Commentators differ here. Others hold that both terms still stand.
The fall has not cost man either the image or the likeness of God (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9).
Why murder is a crime against God
Both sides agree on what God Himself says about murder. This verse is the reason He guards human life.
The murderer does more than meddle with man and injure him to the worst degree. By killing a man he also defaces God's image, and God sentences him to die. Murder seizes what belongs to God, and no man has that right.
Male and female, one "man"
The verse shifts from "him" to "them" without changing subject.
Verse 27 says that man is twofold… the few words here show us how closely Scripture ties male and female together. The word "man" covers both, and jointly they were to have the dominion.
Jesus later answered a question about marriage by pointing back to the beginning.
Christ brings out God's glory in these things, and He shows how it was at the beginning. God did not make one man and two women, but "male and female he created them." So from the very forming of man, God's mind was clear.
The image in its perfection
God made Adam in the image. Christ is the image. Writers weigh that difference in wording.
God created man in His own image and likeness. But no one could call Christ, "who is God over all, blessed forever," the likeness of God, since He is God. But He can be the image of God, for "image" is what represents another, and Christ did this for God perfectly.
One writer says what it takes for anyone else to hold the two words together.
To be true to the image, there must be moral likeness. For us that means a new creation. So Col. 3:10 says the new self "is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator."
Summary
- Counsel — God took counsel before making man. Everything else came by command.
- Image — The word means representation. Man stands in creation as God's appointed stand-in.
- Likeness — The word means resemblance. Man has a moral and mental capacity like God's, and is God's "offspring." Commentators differ on whether sin destroyed it.
- Life — The image remains. So killing a man defaces God's own representation, and God claims the murderer's life.
- Restoration — Adam was made in the image; Christ is the image. Real likeness is regained only in the new man, renewed after Him.