Daily Quiet Time Reflections: Jan. 4, 2009

I started reading through the Bible again when the New Year started and as I read I write down any promises, commands and timeless principles I find, as well as any questions that come up in my mind about what I am reading. I also write down how my reading applies to my life and I write out my prayer each day.

I am reading in Genesis and a some questions for further study came to my mind concerning the following verses:

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.

Genesis 3:22 ¶ And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

Genesis 5:1 ¶ This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

Genesis 5:3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:

These are the questions and conclusions I came to about these verses:What does it mean when it says, God created man in His image? It can't mean physical image since God is not a man.

(Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
John 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.)

It has been said man was created in the moral image of God being pure and not knowing good and evil until he ate of the fruit--yet when man sinned then God said he became "like one of Us to know good and evil". If knowing good and evil is what constitutes the image of God, then how were Adam and Eve in the image of God before they knew good and evil? If man wasn't created knowing good and evil, but we know he was morally pure, perhaps this is the image of God...God is pure and He created man morally pure. God does know good and evil but yet He is pure and all his works are righteous.

(Daniel 9:14 "Therefore the LORD has kept the disaster in mind, and brought it upon us; for the LORD our God is righteous in all the works which He does, though we have not obeyed His voice.)

When man sinned, he acquired the knowledge of good and evil, but his morally pure nature, the image of God, was corrupted. When God said that man had become like Us knowing good and evil, that was all God was referring to in that statement...the knowledge of good and evil..only one aspect of God's nature. God knew that man would not be able to remain pure and know good and evil at the same time. So, the image of God in man was corrupted, only to be restored by Jesus Christ through His death, burial and resurrection when we believe on Him for salvation.

( Romans 5:9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
Romans 5:10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
Romans 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Ephesians 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
Colossians 3:9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;
Ephesians 4:22,24-25 10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:)

I see in these verses that the image of God is restored when we are given a new nature when we are saved. .However, we are not perfected in this life. We still have the sin nature to do battle with. Our pastor said, that when it comes to Christians, God is not in a building project, He is in a restoration project, restoring us back to His image and likeness. That takes time and won't be completed until the Day of Jesus Christ when He takes us home to heaven.

The verse that says "Adam...begat a son in his own likeness, after his image;" confused me because it comes just a couple verses down from where it says, "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;".It would be easy for one to conclude that these two verses taken together mean literally that God must be like man since Adam's son was in his own likeness and it says that Adam was in the likeness of God, then it must follow that God must be a man, but just a little higher in rank than the rest of us. However, as we saw above, God is not a man, man was made in the image of God in that he was created morally pure, so it follows, the son that Adam begat was in his likeness after his image in that he was morally corrupt.

A definition from the American Tract Society Dictionary was helpful to me:

IMAGE An exact and complete copy or counterpart of any thing. Christ is called "the image of God," 2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3, as being the same in nature and attributes. The image of God in which man was created, Gen. 1:27 was in his spiritual, intellectual, and moral nature, in righteousness and true holiness. The posterity of Adam were born in his fallen, sinful likeness, Gen. 5:3; and as we have borne the image of sinful Adam, so we should be molded into the moral image of the heavenly man Christ, 1 Cor 15:47-49; 2 Cor 3:18.

I hope my the process I went through to understand is helpful to you if you have ever questioned these things too.