Gen. 1.26-27 The Triune God's Purpose in Creating Man

[Scriptur]

God’s Purpose in Creating Man

Why did God create man? What purpose did He have in doing so? This He has already told us in Genesis 1.26-27. These two verses are exceedingly important. The creation of man was truly a special creation, hence it required a council of the Godhead. When God created light, He gave the word and it was done. In creating the air, He again merely pronounced the word and it was done. He created all the living creatures by mere acts of creating. But in the creation of man, it was totally different. Before that creation there was a council among the Godhead: “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 birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” (v.26). This was a plan decided in that Divine council: “Let us . . .” This brief phrase reveals the fact of consultation in the Godhead. In other words, here was the blueprint for the creation of man. Then, verse 27 gives us God’s construction work: “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” This is followed by verse 28: “And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish 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 creepeth upon the earth” (mg.).

Here we see that God wants to have a man, a man who has dominion over this earth. This will satisfy His heart.

The man whom God created had not only the Divine likeness but also the Divine image. Likeness bespeaks what is external; image, what is internal. God wants man to be like Him in nature as well as in appearance. God wants man to have the same senses, the same actions, the same manner of life and the same holiness. He wants man to be like Him so that when people touch one another they may touch the character of God. Such, then, was the substance and implication of this decision made in the Divine council.

Here is another amazing thing. Verse 26 reads: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” But verse 27 tells us that “God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” In verse 26 the word “us” signifies plurality whereas in verse 27 the word “his” indicates singular number. Grammatically speaking, if the phrase “let us make man in our image” in verse 26 reveals a consultation among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the Godhead, then verse 27 should have similarly read the following: “And God created man in their image . . . ; male and female created they them.” What is the explanation for this apparent discrepancy? It is because of the fact that in the Godhead there is but One who has image, and that One is the Son. For this reason, at the consultation of the Godhead the Divine utterance came forth: “Let us make man in our image” (for They are one), but in describing the actual construction of man the Scriptures declared: “in his image.” This shows us that Adam was created in the image of the Lord Jesus. It is not a case of first Adam and then the Lord Jesus. Rather is it a case of first the Lord Jesus and then Adam. When God created Adam He created him in the image of the Lord Jesus. And hence we read: “in his image” and not “in their image.”

The purpose of God is to obtain a people who are like the Son. “For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8.29). This is God’s purpose. He wants many sons, and these many sons are to be like His only Son. That only Son of His has an image, He also has a likeness. And these many sons are therefore to be conformed to the image of His only begotten Son. With the result that His Son is no longer the only begotten but has become the Firstborn among many brethren. God’s purpose is to obtain such a people. From all this we should recognize the preciousness of man. Each time when we mention man, we should rejoice. How highly God regards man! He himself even came to be a man! And when He obtains men like this One Man, His plan is realized.

[Scriptur]

The plan of God is to be carried out by man. He wishes to use man as the solution to His own demand. What, then, did God want man to do after creating him? It was that man should have dominion. In creating man, God had not foreordained man to fall. The fall of man came after the creation of man—it happening in the time of Genesis 3. And it was due to man’s own doing, since God had not foreordained man to sin. Even redemption was not God’s foreordination. This does not mean that redemption is not important; it simply means that redemption was not foreordained. For had it been foreordained, then man could not help but have sinned. In the Divine council, what God did foreordain was for man to have dominion. This is what Genesis 1.26 reveals to us. There in His Scriptures God disclosed His own mind to us. He told us the secret of that Divine council: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” This, then, is the purpose of God for man: that he has dominion.

[Scriptur]

Why Does Earth Need Replenishing?

Perhaps some will ask: Why did God conceive this purpose in His mind? It was because before God proposed to create man, an angel of light had rebelled and had turned himself into the devil. Satan had committed sin and had fallen. From having been a brilliant created star he became God’s adversary (see Is. 14.12). God therefore decided to take away from Satan the authority to rule and give it to man. Consequently, He created man so that man and not Satan might rule. Therein do we see the greatness of God’s grace in creating man.

God not only desired man to have dominion but also wanted him to rule over a special territory. This too is shown in Genesis 1.26: “let them [the created man, both male and female] have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth.” All the earth was to be the sphere of man’s rule: not just over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, but over all the earth. The boundary, therefore, within which God gives man to rule is the entire earth. Hence, there is a special relationship between man and earth, and God made special note of it. Yet God took note of this relationship between man and the earth at the time of the creation of man as well as during the consultation within the council of the Godhead: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (vv.27-28b). As to God’s intention for man to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens . . . ,” these are secondary matters: for to have dominion over these creatures is but work that is supplementary to the central design of God for man. No, what God lays emphasis upon is for man to “replenish the earth, and subdue it.” But in God so stating it this way, He has revealed to us that there is a primary problem on the earth.

In that connection, let us review some other relevant Scriptures. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Gen 1.1-2b). When at the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, there was no problem whatsoever. Later, however, a plight arose: “the earth was waste and void.” The word “was” here is the same word in Hebrew as the word “became” found in Genesis 19.26, where we read that Lot’s wife “looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.” Lot’s wife was not born as a pillar of salt; she became one later on. Likewise, the earth when created was not waste and void, but became so later on. God had created the heavens and the earth, “and the earth [became] waste and void.” And thus a problem arose that was not in the heavens but on the earth.

[Scriptur]

Earth is the Site of the Problem and Heaven is Earth in Rev. 12.7-10.

Consequently, the earth is the site of the problem. What God contends for is the earth. In the prayer which our Lord Jesus taught us to pray, it reads in part: “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth” (Matt. 6.9b-10). According to the grammatical construction in the original Greek, this phrase “as in heaven, so on earth” is actually a part of all three petitions and not merely applicable to the last petition. In other words, the most accurate rendering of the original should be: “Hallowed be thy name, as in heaven, so on earth. Thy kingdom come, as in heaven, so on earth. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” So that from this prayer we can readily discern that there is no problem in heaven but that a great problem exists on earth. Let us recall that after the fall of man, God had said to the serpent: “upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (Gen. 3.14b). This was to signify that thereafter the earth was to be the serpent’s boundary and that he was to crawl upon it. Hence the sphere of Satan’s work was no longer to be in heaven but on the earth. Accordingly, if ever the kingdom of God was to come, Satan must be driven out from the earth; if ever the will of God was to be done, it must be done on the earth; and if ever the name of God was to be hallowed, it must be hallowed on the earth. Hence, all the problem is centered on the earth.

Among many important words to be found in Genesis, there are especially two that are full of meaning. One is “subdue” (1.28); the other is “keep” or “guard” (2.15). From a consideration of these two words we may see that God appointed man both to subdue and to guard the earth. For God’s original idea concerning the earth was that He had “created it not a waste, [but] formed it to be inhabited” (Is. 45.18b). God gave the earth to man to dwell upon and to guard it against the intrusion of Satan. Since after Satan’s fall God had limited him to the earth, and since further Satan is intent upon doing the work of destruction here, God has chosen man to recover the earth from Satan’s hand.

Another thing to be noticed here is that, more accurately speaking, such recovery extends not only to the earth but also to the heaven that is related to the earth. In the Scriptures there is a distinction made between “heavens” and “heaven.” The “heavens” is where the throne of God is, the sphere in which His authority is respected. “Heaven, on the other hand, refers at times in the Bible to the heaven which is akin to the earth. This heaven, too, like the earth, needs to be recovered (see Rev. 12.7-10).