2024-07-31 _The Creation of Man (Genesis 1:24-27)

 As we have discussed, the Creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:3 does not describe creatio ex nihilo. There is already some semblance of a created universe in Genesis 1:1. Time exists, though it is probably very different than the time that we measure. There is an earth, even if this earth is without form and void. There is “the deep” over which “the darkness” lays as a kind of featureless face. There are primordial “waters” over which the Spirit of God hovers protectively like when a hen hovers over eggs not yet fully formed. The Creation story here is about how God reveals Himself in creation by bringing order and beauty to what initially is disordered. The Creation story is about who God is:

He is protective of what is disordered which is to say, protective of whatever may be fragile, confused, and lost. Before Creation

There is no darkness in Him and so He separates light from darkness. The First Day

He is as powerful as He is simple and pure, much like the firmament that separates the heavens from the earth being air or atmosphere. The Second Day

He is not bound by the order He has imposed on nature, and His miracles will remind us that His is the Providential Hand that can push through the limits of nature to find what is lost and to restore what is broken. The Third Day

He will protect us as much as we need Him to protect us. The Fourth Day

He is hopeful and inserts His hopefulness into the fibers of creation. The Fifth Day

Notice that the created world reveals God because God inserts Himself into His creation in a manner proper to creation. Thus, God in Himself does not “speak,” per se; but He inserts His will into creation by “speaking” because in a created world characterized by materiality in space/time, one’s will is knowable (and hearers are able to conform to a will that comes to be known) for the reason it has been “expressed” in “words given breath.” From this, we learn that God is love, for God is sacrificing some of his divinity by lowering Himself to the modality of revelation proper to the created world. This reminds us of the Kenotic Hymn in that kenosis is the Greek word for emptying in Philippians 2:5-8.

Philippians 2:5-8: Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God [meaning: did not try to hold onto His equality with God]: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found [to be] a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Anne Frank: “The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.”

The created order at first is good, because it is what it ought to be, which is to say, it reveals God in a manner understandable to created beings. It is no longer totally good, because sin has entered into the created order. To some degree, the created order can be defined by an absence of what is good. For example, at present, the created order includes the reality of death. Now, God is life. There is no death in God, just as there is no darkness in Him. Thus, death by definition is the absence of a good, namely, the goodness that is life. The created order today also includes physical bodies and/or material resources used for purposes not in conformity with God’s will. This is what we call a perversion of the created order, and it is also in every instance that it occurs an absence of what is good. Still, notwithstanding how sin permeates and debases so much of the created order at present, by God’s grace there is in the created order still enough of what is good that we can come to know God in nature, albeit imperfectly, and in a manner that causes us to want more of God than this perverted nature can reveal to us. This is why creation groans for the coming of salvation, for the hope that God inserted into His creation is, within the perversion of creation, a kind of unsatiable longing. St. Paul’s metaphor for this is a woman in labor who is longing to give birth.

Romans 8:22: For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

What is revealed about God is that He loves, He inserts His lovingness into creation, and so when creation is perverted, and there is as a result a degree of insufficiency in terms of our capacity to feel loved and to love in return, we long for Him. Indeed, the fact that we long for Him reveals that God loves us and has inserted into us His desire to love. The problem is we long for God, but because of sin, we cannot discern properly who God is and how we are to love Him. We confuse longing with lust, and God with ourselves. The result is an unsatiable pathos, the sense that life is intrinsically and hopelessly tragic, and, because of that, man’s susceptibility to the devil’s chief lie, namely, that there is no basis to hope for what is better.

Genesis 1:24-25: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Remember that creation is divided into two three-part sections: The First Day corresponds to the Fourth Day, the Second to the Fifth, and the Third to the Sixth. We remember that the Third Day is characterized by a sudden overflowing of life in the air and in the sea. What had been sterile air and sea is now abundant with plant and animal life. Moreover, as God is not bound by His own created order, He establishes fruit bearing trees without having the trees evolve naturally from lower floral forms. He does the same with the giant whales, large and highly sophisticated creatures that appear simultaneously with simpler sea life form. What comes across in that Third Day is God’s exuberance – God seems to be having fun with the sudden (and startling) creation of the great whales, for example.

Now, on the Sixth Day, as God had overfilled the air and the sea with life, He does the same with the land. He is closer to setting the stage for man, since man will be a land creature for the most part, and the lesser land creatures will be the ones that man will first domesticate and hunt. Of course, humans will eat fowl and fish as well, but the suggestion is that man’s first source of food (and the foundation of man’s civilization later) will be the domesticated or hunted land animals.

There are three classes of land animals: Cattle refers to larger, domesticated quadrupeds. Creeping thing refers to smaller animals that move without feet, or without noticeable feet. This first calls to mind reptiles, insects, and worms, but the interpolation of remes (Hebrew word meaning creeping animals) and chayah (Hebrew word meaning living thing or animal, more broadly) suggests that creeping thing means more than just the reptiles, insects, and worms. The phrase refers to any animal than swarms or scurries about in nature. Beast of the earth refers to larger, freely roving, wild animals. Notice that the sequence of classes of land animals is listed from that class over which man exercises greatest dominion to that class over which man exercises least dominion. Therefore, on the Sixth Day, the order that God creates land animals is in reference to man, who has yet to be created, but is clearly already in the forefront of God’s mind.

Genesis 1:26: 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.

Let us make man: Earlier, we saw the Name of God as Elohim, which is in the plural form. In the Name of God, we observe a foretelling of the revelation that of the Trinity of God, which is to say, that God is One and also Three Persons. The plural Name of God is not again used until now. For as man alone among all the living things is created in God’s image, so we see an allusion to the Name of God in the context of the creation of man. Also, recall that plural usage refers to God’s royalty, and so the contextual connection with the creation of man is telling us that man will reign as a kind of king over all the other living things.

In our image: Man is the image of God, because man shares certain attributes with God not to be found at all (or in nearly as exalted a degree) in all the other living things. It is wrong to interpret this as an anthropomorphic view of God, for if that was true, then God would exist as an image of man. Instead, being that man is in the image of God, even though man exists in flesh, his deepest qualities are those which are not limited to materiality – his capacity to reason, to create, to imagine, to love, etc. And yet, contrary to what the Gnostics would say, this does not diminish his fleshiness. For God creates man in flesh and says that is good. In his fleshiness, man evokes God’s sacrificial love – God’s willingness to be encumbered for the possibility of a truly loving relationship with the other. It is in our flesh that we serve, for example, and service is a godly attribute.

Luke 22:27: For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? Is not he that sitteth at meat? But I am among you as he that serveth.

Because man’s creation is contextualized with the plural Name of God, which is to say, with God’s royal identity, so man is in the image of God also in the sense that man’s identity is to be in relation to God. This is true of all of creation, of course, since God has inserted His life into all things. Nevertheless, the suggestion is that man’s identity and God’s identity will be interconnected in a much more personal and intimate manner. We can find ourselves only in Him. Apart from Him, we can know ourselves only in part and in a manner that cannot be all that satisfying.

John 17:21: That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us….

After our likeness: Because man is made in the image of God, he retains certain attributes to God that are inalienable. No matter how far lost in sin, man remains in the image of God, for man continues to be able to reason, to create, to imagine, to love, etc. He retains these attributes in a faulty way, like a sailor tossed by a storm at sea (sin) retains his boat (image of God) but has to try to travel with a broken rudder and compass. Being in God’s likeness means having the character of God. Man can move closer to God’s character, or fall further away from God’s character, depending upon the extent of divine grace in his life (capacity to move closer to God) and also depending upon the extent of his sinfulness (moving away from God). Man can close off completely his likeness to God, which is what we say when a man has condemned himself to Hell (see Exodus 9:12: “And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh,” meaning that God allowed Pharaoh to harden his heart to such a degree that he was no longer susceptible to grace). Or, man can forever acquire more of God’s character – never becoming God, but moving forever deeper into God’s own heart (see Psalm 119:105: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path”).

Genesis 1:27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Pulpit Commentary: “There are two stages in man's creation, the general fact being stated in the first clause of this triumphal song, and the two particulars - first his relation to his Maker, and second his sexual distinction - in its other members. In the third clause Martin Luther sees an intimation that the woman also was created by God, and made a partaker of the Divine image, and of dominion over all.”

Implicit in man’s creation is the life ordered for him. Man is to rule over the rest of creation, as we shall see in the next verse, but he is to do so in the context of the familial love that is intended between men and women. The rule is meant to be softened by the conscience we acquire from our parents and, later, our spouses. Sexual complementarity is there from the very beginning, since man is created as male and female. This complementarity is true in a very obvious sense, of course, as in the coming together of male and female genitalia; but the clear implication is that from the beginning men and woman are to do God’s will in the world in a manner that reaffirms their underlying togetherness (created at the same time) and their complementary distinctiveness (created male and female). If relations between the sexes are out of sync with God’s will, then man cannot hope to exercise over the rest of creation a good dominion. What is revealed here about God is that God is in perfect sync with every attribute in Himself, and so man, being in God’s image, must be the same also (meaning in this context that male and female relations are loving and complementary as God had intended) for man to be truly at peace.