We have spent a lot of time now thinking about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. But what about ourselves? Where do we fit into all this?
Our Place in God's Creation
Genesis 1:1-25 We learn a lot about God's creation in the first chapter of Genesis: the creation
of night and day, of the world, of the plants and animals, and of mankind.
Notice how God loads creation with potential. The land brings forth vegetation... The waters bring forth living creatures... Let the earth bring forth living
creatures. The things God makes, he
gives them the ability to make more things. Creation is moving – it is going somewhere.
Also notice that each time God creates, He calls it good. Not perfect. Good. Certainly God could have made creation perfect. Why didn't He? Think about it. God didn't create the universe so that he could sit back and admire it. God made the world to change, to go somewhere.
Genesis 1:26 God decides to make mankind and place us right in the middle creation, this creation that is loaded with potential to go somewhere. Why? To live in God’s creation and rule over all the other living things there. To start with something good, and with His guidance, make it even better. If we follow His rules and do His will, we can guide all that potential in His creation to make the world even better.
Genesis 1:27 God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; Uh-ho, must important if it's written twice! We’ll need to investigate that in depth shortly.
Genesis 1:31 What does God think of creation now? “Very good”. He blesses mankind by declaring that our presence has moved creation from "good" to "very good"! But still not perfect, still room for improvement.
Genesis 2:15 The Lord God put man in the garden to work it and take care of it. Creation is going somewhere, and God wants humans to “work it” and “take care of it”, to do something with it for God.
Genesis 2:19-20 God brings the animals to Adam so that he can name them. The message here is HUGE – God certainly could have named them and just told Adam what they were called. But God treats Adam as a partner. He gave Adam the animals, so Adam should have the honor of naming them.
What can we learn from this? God created humans to be partners with Him, to manage His creation and do something with it! He wants us to take creation somewhere – as if he made us and gave us this creation to see what we would do with it!
So imagine that: we were meant to be partners with God! We were meant to have a relationship with Him, working with Him to manage His creation. And He created us with the intelligence and creativity necessary to do that.
In a few weeks we will have a session about sin and forgiveness where we will look at what went wrong – starting with Genesis chapter 3, when we left this partnership and struck out on our own, and how God has been calling us back ever since.
Created in the Image of God
Let’s get back to that part we skipped in Genesis 1:27. God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him.
What does that mean, that we are created in the image of God? He looks like us? But we all look different? Okay, maybe it means he’s shaped generally like us. Okay. Do we have any examples of that? Artwork – lots of you drew God that first week in the form of a person. Great artists and sculptors have done the same for years. Do we have any evidence that God is in the shape of a person? Yes we do: Jesus Christ!
There is another way to consider being created in the image of God. What does it mean to say that you look like someone? You resemble their features, or, another word, “characteristics”. So examine that word, “characteristics.” It is more than just the visual, isn’t it? It is also the kinds of things you do. Remember back in Session One we went through the Bible and listed lots of God’s characteristics. We would recognize a great number of those characteristics as gifts or abilities that people have.
| Qualities of God | Qualities of Human Beings |
|---|---|
| Creator of all | We are creative: art, music, literature, inventions |
| God cares that we are not alone | We desire and have capacity for friendship |
| God chooses to be in covenant with us | We have free will, to choose His way or our own |
| God knows the sufferings of people and saves them | We have empathy and a desire to help others |
| God knows us intimately | We form deep and meaningful relationships with each other |
| God searches for the lost and rejoices at finding | We know both deep longing and great joy |
| God is spirit | We have a soul, a spirit that is beyond our physical body |
| God is love | We have the capacity to both love and be loved |
Being created in the Image of God means we share many of the characteristics of God. When He created mankind, he gave us what is called “the spark of the divine”. Have you heard that phrase before? It means that, unlike every other living thing on earth, we have these special characteristics as part of our humanity, characteristics that come straight from and are shared with God.
Most of us do not have all of these gifts in abundance, and none of us have perfected how to use even one of them. But someone did, once. Jesus Christ was the perfection of God's qualities in human form. If you need to know how to use your gifts in the best way possible, your guide is Jesus Christ. We should study how Jesus used gifts such as compassion, leadership, wisdom, and love, in order to use our own gifts to serve God.
Psalm 8:3-8 This reiterates what we read in Genesis 1 and 2: God placing mankind in His creation to rule over it. But look at verse 5 again. God created humans “…a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned [us] with glory and honor.” Is that idea new to you? That we are just a little lower than the angles? That we have been crowned by God with glory and honor? Think about how no other living thing has these characteristics – none of them. We are special, we are created in the image of God and set between Him and His creation. The gifts that we receive, gifts that reflect the characteristics of the giver, are our tools to use for His purpose.
Steve Jacobs sjacobs01@earthlink.net
Assignment
The assignment from Session 4 is to consider three of the human qualities that you possess, from the list provided in the assignment sheet below, and write a paragraph about each one. Begin by praying the Holy Spirit prayer that you wrote during Session 3. Then, write your paragraph about ways you could use each human quailty, these gifts from God, in service to Him.
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