Our Scripture Of The Week Is:

Genesis 1:26-27 KJVS
[26] And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
[27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

The creation week now reaches its climax with the creation of human beings. This verse is breathtaking in its implications and puzzling in the questions it raises.

God decrees, "Let us make man in our image," using a Hebrew word—ē'nu—which is unmistakably plural.

Why does God speak of Himself as more than one person?

Scholars have offered a wide variety of ideas over the centuries. Three explanations are offered more often than any others.

First, God may be referring to Himself and the angels. This seems unlikely given the rest of Scripture's depiction of angels. These beings are presented as servants and messengers, not creators or rulers.

Second, this could be what scholars call a plural of self-exhortation or self-encouragement, meaning He is referring only to Himself. This would also be referred to as "the royal 'we,'" something we see used by human kings and rulers when making proclamations or decrees.

The third possibility is that God is speaking as a Trinity, of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. According to Scripture as a whole, the full Trinity was present at creation. Genesis 1:2 describes the Spirit of God hovering over the waters, and John 1:1–3 reveals that the Word, Christ, was active in the creation of all things.

Next, this verse raises the question of what it means to be made in God's image, or in His likeness. Without question, this statement does not mean that God created humans to resemble Him physically (John 4:24).

Rather, this seems to support the idea that God endowed humans with a certain kind of awareness, one which animals and birds and fish were not given. In other words, humans would possess the capacity for reason, morality, language, personality, and purpose.

In particular, the ability to use morality and spirituality are unique to human beings among God's creations on earth. Like God, we would possess the capacity to experience and understand love, truth, and beauty. Humans are made in God's image in another way: as a model, or a representative.

God is the Maker, and all of creation belongs to Him. He is Lord over it. However, in the moment of creation, God gives mankind the responsibility to rule over all other life He has made on the earth.

In that sense, humans would stand as God's image, God's representatives, on earth as we rule over and manage all the rest of His creation.

The blueprint for Genesis chapter 1 is God speaking His intent, then creating. In the previous verse, God decreed what should be made and why.

Now in this verse, He makes the first of all human beings. The verse is written with a poetic structure of three lines. God creates man in his own image. In the image of God man is created. God creates both male and female.

One meaning of being created in the image of God is mankind's unique capacity for moral and rational awareness. God made humans to be inherently different from animals. He built into us some of His own qualities; we share with Him the experience of personality, truth, beauty, meaning, will, and reason. These attributes allow us to relate to God in ways other created beings cannot.

Another meaning is that humans were meant to stand as the image of God's authority on the earth as we rule over and subdue the rest of His creation. That we are made by God, in the image of God, is what gives all men and women deep value. That point is echoed throughout the Bible.

James, for instance, points out that we ought not curse human beings because they (we) are made in God's likeness (James 3:9).

Those who bear God's image should not be treated disrespectfully or discarded easily. It is not surprising, or illogical, to see that cultures which reject the idea of man's creation in the image of God are cultures which terrorize and abuse other human beings.

It was not God’s original intention for man to die, but man is now put on probation. You see, man has a free will, and privilege always creates responsibility. This man who is given a free will must be given a test to determine whether he will obey God or not.

“For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

Remember that man is a trinity, and he would have to die in a threefold way. Adam did not die physically until over nine hundred years after this, but God said, “In the day you eat, you shall die.”
Death means separation, and Adam was separated from God spiritually the very day he ate, you may be sure of that.

God provides. That's who He is; that's built into His nature and identity. We as His people are provided for even when we don't clearly see how our needs will be met. We are provided for even when our God declares some seemingly good things off-limits to us.

The fact that mankind disobeys the one, single, simple command we are given summarizes the Bible's view of sin and salvation.

From the very beginning, God wanted a relationship based on His provision, our trust, and demonstrating that trust through obedience.

God's proposition to the first man is fundamentally identical to what He will say to Moses' first readers many years later:

Obey, and I will give life and blessing. Disobey, and you will lose both (Deuteronomy 30:15–20).