In day three we saw the distinct twofold energy of the Creator: not only the waters gathered into seas, and the dry land appearing, and this seen to be good; but the earth caused by his word to put forth grass, herb seeding seed after its kind, and tree yielding fruit, with its seed in itself after its kind, upon the earth, and this seen to be good. On the sixth day there is also a double action, and the second still more strikingly distinguished, as human life is brought into being, the highest of earthly natures (not as before vegetable life, the lowest of organized creatures) here below. The spheres had been fitted in divine wisdom and in the unfolding ways of God for the living beings that were to clothe and fill them with beauty, food, and fruit, to be followed duly by higher beings to profit by all that His provident goodness had prepared, all endowed with powers of constant reproduction whether vegetable or animal. In a general way God had in the vast ages of which geology takes cognizance so wrought in creative energy, but without man as the center of systems which successively appeared and fell. The days we have seen have special reference to man who on the sixth follows and crowns the highest animals set under his rule.
“ And God said, Let Us make men in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over fish of the sea, and over bird of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God created Man in His image, in God's image created He him; male and female created He them” (ver. 26, 27.).
Not only is man introduced with marked separateness from the previous creation of animals, even from those of the earth made on the same day, each “after its kind,” and all seen as “good,” but for the first time God enters into counsel with Himself for this great and absolutely new work. It is no longer “Let there be,” or “Let the earth (or “the waters") bring forth,” though man's body is in its due place expressly said to have been formed of the dust of the ground. Here the language rises into appropriate grandeur and solemnity, “Let Us make men.” Not a word about kinds of men, for there was but one; whatever people may have subsequently dreamed in their pride or in the selfish advantage they desired to take of their degraded follows. Not a little was suffered afterward in view of their hard-heartedness; but from the beginning it had not been so. We shall hear yet more when we come to a fresh revelation, not of man's creation as its head simply, but of the moral relations in which he is shown to have been set; but here there is ample evidence of the dignity conferred on the race. “Let Us make men in Our image, after Our likeness.” Nothing is more opposed to the Bible than the anthropomorphism of Greek and Roman mythology, which degraded their deities to fallen mules and females with like passions and lusts, and gave the sanction of religion to the basest immorality. And what philosophers of Greece or Rome ever ventured to claim so noble a prototype? Here Moses was inspired to give it as the holy declaration of the Creator. How far from the brute at length evolving man, a theory suggested by Satan to brutalize the race! It is the simple yet wondrous truth: not God brought down to the human level, but men alone created after a divine pattern.
A frequent question is raised as to the force of the terms and their precise shade of difference; for those are not to be heard who hide their ignorance under the assumption that both mean the same thing. The usage throughout the O. and N. Testaments seems to indicate, that “image” represents, and “likeness” resembles. Thus the “image” of the world-power in Nebuchadnezzar's dream represented the succession of Gentile empires from first to last: likeness could not be the point. So it is “image” in the plain of Dura, (Dan. 3), the proportions of which exclude a human figure, or time resemblance of any living creature. Whatever it might not be like, it definitely represented what the monarch commanded to be an object of worship. Again, in the N. T. the denarius our Lord asked for had on its face the image and superscription of Cæsar. It might have been a faulty likeness, but was an indisputable image of the Roman imperator. It expressed his authority and represented his claim over the Jew because of their departure from God, ill as they liked to own either.
So men (ver. 26) are said to have been made in God's image, after His likeness, as the former is emphatically repeated in ver. 27: not, in His likeness, after His image. In God's image is the truth insisted on, though here also man is declared to be made after or according to His likeness. To man only was it given to represent God here below. Angels are never called to such a place. They excel in might. They fulfill God's word, they hearken unto the voice of His word. Yet no angel rules in His name, nor does he represent Him, as a center of a system subjected to him, and looking up to him. But man was made to represent God in the midst of a lower creation dependent on him; though in order to he created in God's image, he was also made “after His likeness,” without evil and upright. But even when through sin the likeness existed no more, he abode His image; however inadequate to represent God aright, he was still responsible to represent Him. Hence in Gen. 5:1-21This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 2Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. (Genesis 5:1‑2), we read that God made man in His likeness; male and female created He them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam in the day of their creation. But it is significantly added in ver. 3, that Adam begat in his likeness. Seth resembled his father, now fallen, as well as represented him. Again, when after the deluge animals were given for the food of man, blood was interdicted and the most jealous care of human life insisted on, for in the image of God made He man. To kill him was rebellion against God's image, though a man was now anything but like God.
The N. T. fully sustains the same distinction far beyond Caesar's case already referred to. Thus the man in 1 Cor. 11 is distinctively called God's image and glory, as publicly representing Him; and Christ, the incarnate Son, is styled “image of the invisible God.” His not being called “likeness” only confirms the truth. If so entitled, it would deny His deity. He was God, instead of being only like God. Compare for the Christian now Col. 3:1010And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: (Colossians 3:10), as well as 2 Cor. 3:1818But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18); and for the glorious result Rom. 8:2929For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. (Romans 8:29), and 1 Cor. 15:4949And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. (1 Corinthians 15:49).
On the other hand we must not confound the state of Adam unfallen with the new man which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. This is descriptive of the new creation, not of the first Adam state where all was mere innocence, but the knowledge of good and evil along with the power by grace which abhors evil and cleaves to good that is implied in righteousness and holiness of the truth. This is not nature, but supernatural in believers, who become partakers of a divine nature. 2 Peter 1:44Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. (2 Peter 1:4).
Nevertheless, though Adam's state was far from that of which Christ is the risen head, he evidently was made to have a portion though a creature, above all the creation that surrounded him, “in God's image, after His likeness.” How utterly false in presence of the Bible are the speculations of evolution, an hypothesis logically at issue with those fixed laws of nature, which the same philosophers cry up to the exclusion of God. For how reconcile invariable law with change of species? The truth is that real science depends upon the uniformity of results, and consists of discovering and classifying them. This does not hinder variation through circumstances, failing which the original type returns. Again, as natural science is based on the reality and continuance of species, so it can give no account of origins. If honest, it admits there must be a cause, and an adequate one; but here, as science, it is and must he wholly ignorant. God's word alone reveals truth; and of all reveries, none viler than the ignorance, which refuses to learn and dares to defy divine revelation, by conceiving man a developed ape, fish, seaweed, or aught else. The truth is that primordial causes are beyond science, which, instead of honestly owning its ignorance, pretends to deny the creation which scripture clearly reveals. God alone could create; and He declares that He has done so, and in what order. Science would gladly learn if not skeptical; for its province lies in investigating effects, and cannot reach up to primordial causes, which it is of all moment to know: we can only know them from. God's testimony, which is simple if we were.
How worthy of God and cheering to man, turning from these freaks of spurious science, to weigh once more His words! “Let us make men in Our image after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over fish of the sea and over bird of the heavens [the work of day five] and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth [sixth day's work]. And God created Man in His image, in God's image created He him; male and female created He them.” How emphatically, it will be noticed, Moses says that God created the race. It was enough to say so once of the vast universe in ver. 1, when it was brought originally into being. Again it was said to mark the introduction of animated nature, or at least of the aquatic mammals, into the Adamic world in ver. 21. But here of man it is repeated again and again to enforce the attention of all who tremble at God's word. Not only was man an unprecedented creature, but he had a place in God's mind altogether peculiar, not merely in time on earth, but for all eternity. For the unfolding of this we must await other declarations of God's mind. What is said here points to his creature place as originally set on earth by God. Even for the details of this we need chapter 2 with its all-important supplement on the relations of Adam, where we have the key to the fact that the man was created “male and female,” as we are told here: a single pair, and even so, formed as none other ever was, that man might be differentiated from every creature in earth or heaven. For immense consequences turn on that fact, which God took care to make good, and only He in the nature of things could reveal.
What can science as such say on a matter so profoundly interesting, and morally so important? Is it logical to deny whatever it does not know? For science to confess ignorance is no doubt humiliating. But is it reverent to despise what God does know and has revealed? Alas science knows nothing of faith any more than of piety or reverence. Were it content to assert only what it knows, and confess its ignorance of all beyond its own limits, it would do less mischief and speak more becomingly. Hewers of wood and drawers of water have a place useful if not dignified. Boasting is not seemly, save only in the Lord for all who trust Him.