Made In God's Image

​How did Hitler convince the generation that would become the Nazis to murder 6 million Jews? It's fairly simple really. He just convinced them through propaganda and control of the schools’ education programs teaching evolution, that Jews weren’t really humans – that they were really animals. In his book When a Nation Forgets God, Pastor Erwin Lutzer writes, 

​“Hitler believed that the Jews were subhuman – parasites that needed to be exterminated. In a 1923 speech in Munich, he said,

“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but not human. They cannot be human in the sense of being an image of God, the Eternal. The Jews are the image of the devil. Jewry means the racial tuberculosis of the nations.”

And, because they were deemed to be in the same category as animals, Hitler made sure they could be killed without reprisals. He would change the law to ensure that extinguishing the race was not a crime.”

It’s not murder if they’re not a human legally, right? Sound familiar... The same thing is happening in our country with unborn babies. However, just because something is legal, doesn’t make it moral or lessen the evil of it. There is an unseen law of God that prevails over any made-made laws allowing something evil to be considered legal. 
 
Like Hitler and the laws of our land, Satan loves to downplay how precious humanity is through the evolutionary lie that we’re just another beast that evolved from random matter and processes without a purpose. He loves the depressing, dark evolutionary lie that steals purpose, kills dignity, and destroys hope for so many today. In God’s Word, however, we find quite the opposite – and the answer to today’s cries of racism – because it reminds us that man is made in God’s image as the pinnacle of His creation!
 
After a great break in the creation narrative of chapter 1 of Genesis, there is a divine deliberation in the Godhead in Genesis 1:26, 

​“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

The ‘Us’ and ‘Our’ in this verse are plural forms of majesty found even back in Genesis 1:1 that allow for and point to a plurality in the Godhead this early on in the Bible already. It reveals the doctrine of the Trinity in seed form. There are similar dialogues to this one in Genesis 3:22, 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8, but the dialogue here is certainly new and surprising to the text. It tells us something big is happening that didn't happen with the rest of creation. Mankind's creation is special to the rest. The plural references to God remind us that God is a relational Being even within Himself. He is and always has been a God of relationships because He is three Persons in one, the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit.

The relationship essence of God is a great part of what it means to be made in God’s image. God is a relational being with a mind, emotion and will. So are we! We are not like the beast who primarily functions with other beasts through instinct, but are uniquely made and have been given authority over the beasts. We have a much more complex personality created with God’s communicable attributes – His nature and moral likenesses – able to express love, mercy and grace, and make decisions that are good and righteous. Unlike animals, we also have a spiritual nature that gives us the ability to have a relationship with God.

Of the differences between man and beast, Warren Wiersbe writes, ​

“No matter how intelligent some animals may appear to be, or how much they are taught, animals are not endowed with the “image of God” as are humans.”

Henry Morris also gives us a quote to remember:

“Plants possess a body, and animals a consciousness…but man was also to possess a third created entity, the image of God, an eternal spirit capable of communion and fellowship with his Creator.” ​

​When he painted the creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel, Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo depicted God as outstretched with hand extended to a lounging and lackadaisical Adam who receives God touch of life. But from Genesis 2:7 we find a more thorough account of this act of creation where God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and very personally, almost awkwardly, breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life. I'm not demeaning Michelangelo's work of art, but the creation account is quite the opposite in its personal touch of God. Genesis, in contrast to the Sistine Chapel, tells us God is very personal with man and that we were made by Him and for Him – awkwardly up close and personal.
 
If society really believed that mankind was made in the image of God, what problems would that solve? What are the consequences of believing what evolution teaches, that we were made in the image of lesser animals? You’re seeing it today. There is struggle for the dignity of man though there is nothing to base it on because without a belief in God, nothing is unconditionally wrong. As Christians who stand firmly and lovingly on the Word of Truth, we proclaim as the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence does, 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

​We stand firmly and lovingly on the truth that no matter who it is – every man is made in the image of God and for a relationship with Him. Being made in His image is the basis for the protection of all lives. Actually, the first form of human government, capital punishment, was established on the fact that man is made in God's image and if anyone shed's blood, by man his blood shall be shed (See Genesis 9:6-7). God is serious about the sanctity of every human life. 
 
Because of sin, our relationship with God has been fractured and the image of God in man has been marred, but not totally destroyed. And God Himself provided the remedy for man to have an up close and personal relationship with Him again by taking on flesh Himself through the virgin Mary in the person of Jesus Christ and by living a perfectly sinless life was able to offer Himself on the cross for our sins so that whoever believes in Him will have everlasting life with God, starting now through a born again relationship by His Spirit. Have you placed your faith in Christ?
 
Pastor Justin

​1 Erwin Lutzer, When a Nation Forgets God (Chicago: Moody Press, 2010).