Or, Imago Dei Is More Like A Manifesto
Scripture: Genesis 1:26-31
Date: April 26, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
We are people who care about God’s Word. We care about His evaluation: what is right and wrong, good and bad. We care about His instruction: think like this, do this and not that. We live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. We believe His word equips us for every good work.
Yet I have found that many men, even Christian men who love the Word, are often selective about what parts of God’s Word they heed. I’m not referring to when men avoid certain verses or biblical stories in order to keep their sin covered, though that is a problem. At the moment I mean men who miss many of God’s words about the world.
Paul told Timothy, “For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4). Those who forbid marriage and require abstinence from certain foods are not more spiritual. Actually, “The Spirit expressly says” that men “will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful sprits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared” (1 Timothy 4:1-2). The non-spiritual will try to be unearthly. Those who reject creation are apostates who first reject God. False teaching leads to avoiding physical, earthly gifts.
We would know better if we had read Genesis better. One of the most important words in the first chapter of God’s Book is the word “good.” Good gleams. It’s why Paul says “everything created by God is good.” As soon as there was light God pronounced it good. By the end of the sixth day, “God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good.” Seven times “God saw that it was good.”
There are two ways Christians fail to live by God’s Word in this regard. First, some deny that creation is good. While it is true that sin hadn’t entered yet in chapter one, sin had been spoiling a lot by Paul’s time. Sin makes a lot of things miserable, but it doesn’t have the power to make good things bad. Second, some ignore that the good in creation is God’s. They usually accept that Sunday is God’s but the rest of the week is theirs. They see singing as God’s chosen way to worship, they do not think about burgers and fries as one of God’s chosen way to worship. But if we want to receive the whole counsel of God, then we must repent—change our minds—and consciously receive His Word about all the world.
We have been examining God’s Word about humanity, about the weight of glory that lifts mankind to play and plant in the dirt. It begins with God’s revealed intention to make man like Himself in verse 26. God purposes to lay His glory on man, the divine glory of relationship and responsibility. The glory will be for “them,” not for the loner. And the glory will be for “dominion,” not for the lazy.
God gives a more detailed account of Adam and Eve in chapter two, but verse 27 provides us with a poetic celebration over man. Man is created, so he is derivative. But mankind is derived from God’s own image, so he is dignified. Mankind is also distinguished between male and female, so they are different by design and for delight.
In verse 28 God’s first words to man were a great commission, a mandate that fits with our nature. Just as Christians do what they are (behave righteously because they have been declared righteous), so do humans (when they do human right).
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
God blesses and then commands, at least this time. His blessing leads to fruitfulness, He does not without blessing until we show fruitfulness.
This word fruitful is important. When we live as image-bearers, when we live with God’s blessing, when we obey God’s Word, we will be being fruitful. I had never really thought about the desire of a man’s life as being fruitfulness until reading Father Hunger. Getting married is a personal joy, an opportunity for Trinitarian-like intimacy, and it is also for sake of fruitfulness. There are seeds sown, saplings grown, and fruit. “The purpose of farming is not to work on your tan, or to keep your weight down” (Wilson), and the purpose of a family is not tax credits or cute Christmas card photos.
The fruit started in the first family, and it continues with fathers and mothers, then fruit in cities and nations and science labs and grocery stores and gas stations. We’re not useless blocks of wood. It’s why homosexuality, by definition, is a hatred of fruitfulness.
God’s life as a weight of glory on mankind is a connected, fruitful, productive life. It is also another reason why religion, Trinitarian in particular, cannot be kept out of the public square. Image bearing is not only for certain places (homes and prayer closets and church sanctuaries) or for certain times (personal devotions or Sunday services). Fruitfulness in kids and grandkids around our tables (think Psalm 127 and 128) is not something to be embarrassed about, nor to see as a necessary inconvenience. Blessed the man that fears Jehovah.
Man needed food if he was going to be doing all this dominion taking and culture-making. There are a couple pieces of really good news in these two verses.
And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. (verses 29-30)
The word Behold is an attention-getter. I get the sense that, now that man has been created, God can’t wait to show man all the things He’s made for him. That’s exactly what the previous days have been about: preparing a place for man. God starts by showcasing the lush and abundant provision of food. “I made all this for you!” Here is common grace.
God’s provision of food for newly created man stands in sharp contrast to Mesopotamian views which held that man was created to supply the gods with food. (Wenham)
The liberty and variety of choice man has is astounding. In chapter two we learn that God did place one restriction on their food, but otherwise they were free to eat from every plant yielding seed…and every tree with seed in its fruit . This also implies that the mandate to have dominion over living creatures did not include, at this point, killing them for food.
I have no doubt that this was the best vegetarian eating ever. Miracle Grow has never produced fruit like was on those trees. I’m positive I’ve never been presented with a salad that could compare with the greens in the garden. The first fruits needed no added high fructose corn syrup to make them sweet and the vegetables needed no melted cheese sauce to make them palatable. Vegetables and fruit, corn and tomatoes; so much and so many to impress the idea of the infinite Giver on finite receivers.
Vegetation was also food for the animals. A different Hebrew word is used in verse 30 translated every green plant . Initially I thought this was an odd place to mention the animals’ diet. Wouldn’t it have been easy enough to explain what animals would eat when the animals were created, or maybe when Adam was naming the animals? Why talk about it here?
One simple explanation is that God created men with a curiosity to know about things and how things work. But I wonder if this wasn’t also a veiled comfort. This was before sin and death and so before killing. Men had no reason to, or experience of, fear. But some of those beasts and pterodactyls were big. Maybe this was a way for God to communicate to man that they would be okay, without raising their suspicions. Men don’t eat animals…yet (verse 29); animals don’t eat men…yet (verse 30). It also reminds men that we do not have to feed all the animals ourselves.
Men are specifically allowed to eat meat after the flood in Genesis 9:3. Genesis 1:29 doesn’t forbid the eating of meat, which may have begun after the fall, sacrificing animals certainly did, but formally authorized in chapter nine. Image-bearing by butchers and barbecues came later. The early footage from National Geographic showed many beautiful images, but no violent stories. Shark week was impressive but not bloody.
And it was so . What God wanted is exactly what happened.
After adding man as the last piece of the creation puzzle, God observes His work.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (verse 31)
Verse 31 includes most of the same story elements we’ve seen at the end of days one through five. But now God considers everything that He had made . Of course, that implies that He was done. And when He looked, behold, it was very good . The idea is, “Have you seen this? Take a look at this!”
God pronounced other things good (verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), but now that man is on the stage, in His place as steward and subduer of the earth, everything is very good. All of the planets were in alignment, so to speak. Too bad it didn’t last that long.
Hear the word of the Lord: creation is very good.
And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day .
God chose to reveal Himself most in men. While every intricate part of the universe shows God’s handiwork, men and women are the only parts of creation that bear His image. There is nothing like a man. What is man? He is the imago Dei, the image of God.
There will be more to talk about once sin enters the world through Adam. Before the fall, we were made in God’s image. After the fall, Christians are transformed into the image of God’s Son. Before the fall, we were commissioned to take dominion over the earth. After the fall, we are commissioned to make disciples of all nations. But there are human responsibilities that existed before sin. Christians should be better equipped to fulfill them.
This passage FRAMES OUR BELIEFS about:
What a privileged position and serious responsibility He’s given us. Our primary work is to worship in our work by bearing His image.
[N]ot only the church, but also the world belongs to God and in both has to be investigated the masterpiece of the supreme Architect and Artificer. A Calvinist who seeks God, does not for a moment think of limiting himself to theology and contemplation, leaving the other sciences, as of a lower character, in the hands of unbelievers; but on the contrary, looking upon it as his task to know God in all his works, he is conscious of having been called to fathom with all the energy of his intellect, things terrestrial as well as things celestial. (Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 125)
When everything is very good, sin hasn’t entered yet. The cultural mandate has not turned into a culture war, which it did as early as Genesis 3. Now the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman oppose each other. But what should the seed of the woman, God’s chosen people through Abram and ultimately through Christ, do?
I asked a different version of this question before: What are we redeemed unto? Christ restores us to the image of God. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). God is refitting us for the weight of divine glory as relationships are reconciled and deepened, and as responsibilities recognize His calling and receive His food and work His world.
Home is not where you escape from the world, home is where you shape the world by sharpening your arrows (Psalm 127:4). Employment pursues a paycheck by working to reflect God and by believing that God makes it so we reap what we sow. Medicine is for more than mending mammals but serving eternal souls. Law is for more than high speed car chases of evolving protoplasm but for moral creatures. Imago Dei is the wind that blows the sails of a million honorable occupations. The imago Dei is a manifesto for fruitfulness.
A culture war is when we build something for God not just when we freak out that those who reject God want to make a way of life without reference to God. We’re not ostriches, burying our heads in the sand until we can escape. We have work to do together.