#3 In His Image – OT Survey

Like the tabernacle in the wilderness, our world is patterned after a Heavenly blueprint (Exodus 25:40). It provides man with an architectural pattern for his own creative work, his society, his morality and every other sphere of life.

This must be true because Man was created in God’s image. But what does that mean? What does it mean to be created in God’s Image? It means that our activity in this world will be a reflection, a copy of God’s activity in the world. It means that just as God has dominion, we will have dominion.

In Genesis 1 and 2, God reveals His dominion in at least four ways: Four ways that also create the pattern for our own lives as those made in His image.

To begin, God looks upon His creation and determines His course of action. He investigates, He observes. Second, He divides and multiplies. Third, He transforms what He has made, and fourth, He labels His work.

God Investigates and Observes

First, just as God has dominion over the whole world (His three-storey house), so man is given dominion of a three-storey world of sky, land and sea, as depicted in the commission to take dominion over birds, beasts and fish (Genesis 1:26).

In the opening verses of Genesis 1, God looks upon and lights up the unformed world and determines His course. And so, like Solomon (1 Kings 4:33), if we are wise we begin to tackle any task with discernment and investigation. For this purpose, God has given Man His word as a lamp unto His feet.

Man has the same task. For example, the task of naming the animals means discerning their nature and character. Likewise, man is to investigate and discern those things which are good for food, and those things which are not.

God Divides and Multiplies

Next, God takes the unformed matter and starts to divide and multiply it. he divides light from dark, day from night, land from sea, earth from sky and so forth.

He distributes and multiplies trees, flowers, animals, fruit, stars and fish. And He makes Man.

Man has the same task. He sows and multiplies. He plants cherries, churches and children, and fills the earth with the work of His hands under God’s gracious provision and strength.

God Transforms what He has Made

Finally, God declares it is not good for man to be alone and decides to create a suitable partner.

God wrestles Adam back into the dirt, touches his side, separates out a bone and transforms it into something beautiful. A woman.

Man expresses his dominion over the creation by doing the same thing. He takes a bride and she is transformed into a wife and mother. Together they bring forth sons and daughters.

He cuts down a tree and makes a chair. She picks a banana and turns it into a cake. They observe, divide and separate, and they transform and re-create the world around him.

God Labels His Work

In Genesis 2:18 we read,

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

What’s interesting here is that God had already made up His mind that there was no suitable helper and that He would need to make one. But instead of simply going ahead and doing it, he invites Adam to join in the investigation.

God brings the animals before Adam so that he can name them. That is, discern, observe—rather than determine—their nature and character. Having correctly identified the animal world and noticing that none were suitable as a partner, God wrestles Adam back into the dirt and creates a woman out of his own body.

When Adam meets her, he does what He did when he named the animals. He names this new creation according to its kind,

This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. (Genesis 2:23)

It’s important to notice here that, just like the animals that he named, Adam does not determine who and what the woman was. He observed it. He correctly identified it.

God already knew what all the animals were—for He made them. God also knew what a woman was. And so what Adam does here demonstrates his ability, as someone made in God’s image, to correctly identify and label the world according to the truth.

Adam, un-fallen and in his right mind, draws the same conclusion as God.

Jesus Takes Dominion

This labelling of the world according to the truth is the fourth expression of man’s dominion under God and so it’s no surprise that we see it in Jesus when He comes into the world as the second Adam, in order to remedy the failure of the first.

Jesus comes into the world and starts re-labelling everything—an act of recreation, transformation and redemption.

What the Pharisees call holiness, Jesus correctly re-labels hypocrisy. What the Jews call cleanliness Jesus correctly labels, “filthy rags”, and what passes in Israel as “God’s law”, Jesus correctly re-labels as “The traditions of men”.

Keep and Guard

Because God is a  builder and we are His junior architects, we will describe or label this world, and then seek to live in it, according to the categories that actually are or else we will make up our own.

We will, in short, have a theology of architecture. We will have a statement of belief about what is true and real and beautiful—about the shape and structure of the world—and we will then go about the task of labelling and building our lives accordingly.

This architecture will reflect who we are and what we love. This is the redeemed man’s humble work and it is beautiful work.

You were made for something and you were made in a particular way for a particular purpose. And when Man lives in harmony with that pattern, Man has peace with God and neighbour.

So often the reason we suffer is that we have stopped living according to who and what we are as God’s image. We are like the man who attempts to wax his eyebrows with a sandblaster. We suffer because that’s not what sandblasters are for.

Likewise, our minds, our lips, our hands and our feet were made for a specific purpose. When we ignore that purpose, which is to say, when we ignore that reality, we come to grief. When we fail to guard and keep what God has entrusted to us, we come to grief.

Man’s role is to maintain his relationship with God and guard against intrusion in the same way as we are to guard and keep the marriage bed. Holy and undefiled (Hebrews 13:4).

To this end, Jesus comes into the world as the Captain of a New Creation. He lays His life down in the dirt and arises, bringing with Him a new woman. A bride fit for fellowship with God.

As junior architects, redeemed man is to go into all the world and reflect that transformation.

We sometimes get caught up with the idea that this work of transformation has to be grand to be glorious. But for most of us, God has called us to a humble and quiet life where dominion is not wrought through the sword or through the shouting.

For most of us, transformation comes through humble diligent labour. Through breadmaking and love. Through simple transformations, handled with joy and a contrite heart.

As those made, and now remade, in His image, we are to create godly cultures and communities into which we invite others, intercede for others and feast with others in reverence and fear before the Lord.