Genesis 1:26-27 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea… I. THE CREATION ARCHIVE TWO FOLD (Genesis 1:26-31; if. 5-22). II. PANORAMA OF EMERGENT MAN. III. MAN, GOD'S IMAGE. 1. Jesus Christ the image of God. He becomes this in and by the fact of His Incarnation. In Ecce Homo is Ecce Deus. 2. Man the image of Jesus Christ. In the order of time, the Son of God made Himself like to man; in the order of purpose, the Son of God made man like to Himself. It was an august illustration of His own saying when incarnate: "The first shall be last, and the last first" (Matthew 20:16). Do you ask in what respect man was made in the image of Christ? Evidently, I answer, in substantially the same respects in which Christ became the image of God. Thus: in respect to a spiritual nature: When Jehovah God had formed the man of dust of the ground, He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The language, of course, is figurative. Nevertheless it must mean something. What, then, does this inbreathing by the Creator mean, if not the mysterious communication of Himself — the eternal Air or Spirit — into man? As Christ, surveyed man-wise, was born of the Spirit in Nazareth, so man, made in His image, after His likeness, was born of the Spirit in Eden. Again: a spiritual nature necessarily involves personality; and personality, at least finite, as necessarily involves what I have called secular attributes, e.g., attributes of sensation, cognition, passion, action, etc. All these belonged to Christ; and through these He declared and interpreted the Father, being in very truth the Word. of God, or Deity in articulation. And the Word has existed from the beginning, being the God-Said of the creative week. In man's potencies of whatever kind — moral, intellectual, emotional, aesthetic — whatever power or virtue or grace there may be — in all this we behold an image of the Lord from heaven. Once more: personality cannot, at least in this world, exist apart from embodiment, or some kind of incarnation, which shall be to it for sphere and vehicle and instrument. Some kind of body is needed which, by its avenues and organs, shall awaken, disclose, and perfect character. And as Christ's body vehicled and organed His Personality, and so enabled Him to manifest the fullness of the Godhead which dwelt in Him body-wise, so man's body was made in the image of Christ's, even that body which in His eternal foreknowledge was eternally His. This, then, was the image in which man was created, the image of Christ's human Personality, or Christ's spirit and soul and body. Man is the image of Christ and Christ is the image of God; that is to say: Man is the image of the image of God, or God's image as seen in secondary reflection. IV. MAN GOD'S INSPIRATION (Genesis 2:7). On his body side he sprang from dust: on his soul side he sprang up with the animals: on his spirit side he sprang from God. Thus, in his very beginning, in the original makeup of him, man was a religious being. Coming into existence as God's inbreathing, man was, in the very fact of being Divinely inbreathed, God's Son and image. Well, then, might man's first home be an Eden — type of heaven, and his first day God's seventh day — even the Creator's Sabbath. V. THE PRIMAL COMMISSION. 1. Man's authority over nature. It was man's original commission, humanity's primal charter. And history is the story of the execution of the commission, civilization the unfolding of the privileges of the charter. Wherever civilized man has gone, there he has been gaining dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and every living thing that moveth on the earth, ay, subduing earth itself. See, e.g., how he makes the fish feed him, and the sheep clothe him, and the horse draw him, and the ox plough for him, and the fowl of the air furnish him with quills to write his philosophies and his epics. Again: see man's supremacy over the face of Nature; see, e.g., how he dikes out the ocean, as in Holland; and opens up harbours, as at Port Said; and digs canals, as at Suez; and explodes submarine reefs, as in East River; and builds roads, as over St. Gothard; and spans rivers, as the St. Lawrence; and stretches railways, as from Atlantic to Pacific; see how he reclaims mountain slopes and heaths and jungles and deserts and pestilential swamps, bringing about interchanges of vegetable and animal life, and even mitigating climates, so that here, at least, man may be said to be the creator of circumstances rather than their creature. Again: see man's supremacy over the forces and resources of Nature; see how he subsidizes its mineral substances, turning its sands into lenses, its clay into endless blocks of brick, its granite into stalwart abutments, its iron into countless shapes for countless purposes, its gems into diadems; see how he subsidizes its vegetable products, making its grains feed him, its cottons clothe him, its forests house him, its coals warm him. See how he subsidizes the mechanical powers of nature, making its levers lift his loads, its wheels and axles weigh his anchors, its pulleys raise his weights, its inclined planes move his blocks, its wedges split his ledges, its screws propel his ships. See how he subsidizes the natural forces, making the air waft his crafts, the water run his mills, the heat move his engines, the electricity bear his messages, turning the very gravitation into a force of buoyancy. 2. But in whose name shall man administer the mighty domain? In his own name, or in another's? In another's most surely, even in the name of Him in whose image he is made. The Son of God alone is King, and man is but His viceroy; viceroy because His inspiration and image. Man holds the estate of earth in fief; his only right the right of usufruct. VI. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 1. Jesus Christ the archetypal Man. Jesus the form, mankind the figure. See Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:15; Revelation 3:14. 2. Man's incomparable dignity. His starting point is the Eternal, Infinite One. A genuine coin, stamped in effigy of Kaiser or President, is worth what it represents. Man, stamped in the effigy of the King of kings and Lord of lords, is worth, let me dare to say it, what he represents, even Deity. Little lower than the angels, little lower than Elohim, did Elohim make him (Psalm 8:5). All this explains why this earth, cosmically so tiny, morally is so vast. Jesus Christ came not to save the worthless. He came to save Divine imageship: that is to say, all Godlike potentialities. He came to save Divine imageship itself. 3. Imageship the die of race unity. May it ever be ours to recognize lovingly every human being, whether Caucasian or Mongolian, as a member of mankind, and so our kinsman! When all men do this, mankind will not only be the same as humanity; mankind will also have humanity. 4. We see the secret of man's coming triumph: it is imageship. Jesus Christ is the image of God; as such, He is the Lord of all. Mankind is Christ's image lost. The Church is Christ's image restored: as such, she, like her image, is lord of all. All things are hers; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come: all are hers; and she is Christ's, and Christ is God's (1 Corinthians 3:21-23). 5. Would you know how to be restored in the image of God? Then gaze on the character of Him who is the brightness from His Father's glory, and the express image of His Person. Enter into the fellowship of that character. Be everlastingly closeted with Him in the kinships and intimacies of a perfect friendship. Lovingly study every feature of that beaming Image (2 Corinthians 3:18). Thus gazing, and thus changed, it matters little what our earthly fate be, whether renown or obscurity, wealth or poverty, long life or early death. Enough that on the resurrection morn we shall perceive that as we had borne the image of the earthly, even of the first man Adam, so henceforth we shall bear the image of the heavenly, even of the Second Man, the Lord from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:47-49). (G. D. Boardman.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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