Thru the Bible-1

Thru the Bible-1 2022. 1. 16.

 

The Image of God

 

◎ Genesis 1:27

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

 

◎ Explanatory Notes

☞ Humanity came from the hands of the Creator “pure from every sinful blot.” (WSB)

☞ God was now producing a spirit, and a spirit, too, formed after the perfections of his own nature. God is the fountain whence this spirit issued, hence the stream must resemble the spring which produced it. God is holy, just, wise, good, and perfect; so must the soul be that sprang from him: there could be in it nothing impure, unjust, ignorant, evil, low, base, mean, or vile. (Adam Clarke)

☞ (1) He was upright (Ecclesiastes 7:29). He had an habitual conformity of all his natural powers to the whole will of God. His understanding saw divine things clearly, and there were no errors in his knowledge: his will complied readily and universally with the will of God; without reluctancy: his affections were all regular, and he had no inordinate appetites or passions: his thoughts were easily fixed to the best subjects, and there was no vanity or ungovernableness in them.

(2) In his place and authority. Let us make man in our image, and let him have dominion (Genesis 1:26). As he has the government of the inferior creatures, he is as it were God’s representative on earth.

(3) And chiefly in his purity and rectitude. God’s image upon man consists in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). The Lord renew it upon our souls by his sanctifying grace! (Wesley)

 

◎ Summary

God designed hereby to put an honour upon man, that he might find himself the more strongly obliged to bring honour to his Maker. (Wesley)

Wesley saw the image of God more relationally, not so much as something humans possess as the way they relate to God and live out that relation in the world. (Theodore Runyon)