Genesis 1: 26-27; 3: 8-9; 4: 26-5: 2
Romans 3: 22 from “for there”-23; 6: 19 from “For even”-22; 8: 29
I have a thought as to image and likeness which I would like to consider in the presence of the brethren. God brought in man. Much had gone before this in Genesis 1 verses 1 and 2, and thereafter the preparation of the earth for the present creation, for man. The animal creation came out of the earth by the power of the word of God, remarkable matter! The earth had been brought through to its vegetative state on day three, then it brought forth living souls on day five and day six. God does not bring man out of the ground as He had done with the animals. He considers this personage, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”, divine Persons taking counsel to bring in a being, a remarkable being, man. He came from God as having intelligence - he is able to name the animals, every one of them. He had a mind capable of receiving divine communications and God sets him over the creation. He gives him instructions and there he was in the image of God. He represented God, but he also had likeness which is a moral thought. God gave man that likeness when He created him, when He breathed into man the breath of life, so that man has a distinction from every other creature, man is “of God”, Luke 3: 38.
I read in Genesis 3; God came down in the cool of the day into the garden. He was walking there and He expected Adam and Eve to walk with Him. I believe God had in mind to commune with man.
Coming to chapter 5 we have, “In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him”. Thus, after the fall, the scripture stresses the fact that man was made in the likeness of God; image is not mentioned. What man was morally in the likeness of God had been destroyed by the fall, and man now had a fallen, an evil nature, derived from the fall, and the poison of Satan was in his bloodstream. God does not give man up. He has in mind to secure man in His likeness. How did man come to it, that he no longer represented God’s likeness? I think there is an indication in Seth naming his son Enosh, ’Man as weak, mortal’, (see chap 4: 26 and note). What was in the likeness of God had gone, and He recognises what fallen man is, and that therefore God has to work again. There were many thousands of human beings in the world who only caused God grief as shown in chapter 6. God, however, secures the faith line as described in chapter 5 where eventually there is a man, Enoch, who walks with God, and that man is a heavenly man. He finds his place in heaven; so that God has secured in this short space of time an answer in moral likeness in working in these persons, this line of weak, mortal man. That is the line it was - “he died”, “he died”, “he died”, weak, mortal man, but there was something for God in faithfulness there. And then you get another man, Noah. He walked longer with God than Enoch. Enoch walked with God after his son was born. He walked for three hundred years. How pleasing it was to God, and God communed with him. That is what God desired even in the garden; God came down to commune with man and to have man walk with Him, and lead him into the secrets of His mind. Noah walked with God all his lifetime so that God had something to treasure.
Now, how do we come into it? That is what brings me to Romans 3. I thought there was an indication here in line with Seth naming his son Enosh, weak mortal man, with the fact that we are convicted, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”. I am a sinner, and come short of the glory of God. There is nothing in me that corresponds to the likeness of God and if there is to be true image there has to be likeness. This is presented to men in responsibility, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”. That is the bottom line, you might say, but it is the beginning of hope and recovery because it leads to man being justified; God able to justify. Thus, coming to the matter that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” is an answer in a man or a woman to the fact that the fall has taken place and there is no longer what God desired in man in likeness. But God has in mind to secure that likeness and this is the beginning of it. So it says, “for the shewing forth of his righteousness in the present time, so that he should be just, and justify him that is of the faith of Jesus”, v 26. That is the beginning. God justifies. It is what proceeds in the soul. I cannot go into the details in these chapters in Romans - “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5: 5), but then how do we take account of the features of likeness? That is why I read in chapter 6 because, before we come to Christ, before we acknowledge that all men have sinned and come short of the glory of God, “ye have yielded your members in bondage to uncleanness and to lawlessness unto lawlessness”. After coming to Christ “so now yield your members in bondage to righteousness unto holiness”. That is likeness, yielding your members in bondage to righteousness unto holiness. That is likeness coming to light in us as believers, the work of God in the soul by the presence of the Holy Spirit. And then, “having got your freedom from sin, and having become bondmen to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life”. That is the prospect: “your fruit unto holiness” is fruit that God can delight in that is to His taste, and is secured in man through the gospel. Chapter 8 says that He “has condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law should be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to flesh but according to Spirit. For they that are according to flesh mind the things of the flesh; and they that are according to Spirit, the things of the Spirit”, v 3-5. There is a differentiation. There is power to differentiate in your soul, so we are now fulfilling righteousness, fulfilled responsibility. That is a completed matter in the power of the Holy Spirit. What a triumph for God, considering that man had so soon fallen, likeness was destroyed, and then God continues with man in flesh and blood condition and makes of him what is greater than what was in innocence, man that He can glorify. That is why I touched on chapter 8, “Because whom he has foreknown, he has also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son”. The work of God in the believer is suited to a body of glory. “Conformed to the image of his Son” in its fullest thought involves being like Christ actually, Christ as a Man. There is a blessed Man in a body of glory, and “conformed to the image of his Son” involves that you and I anticipate that in finality we will be like Him.
There Christ, the centre of the throng,
Shall in His glory shine
(Hymn 178).
“So that he should be the firstborn among many brethren”. He is the Firstborn. He has His own distinctiveness, but He has many brethren that are like Him. What a triumph for God from a disaster, where likeness was destroyed, and image did not continue fully to represent God! Here image is secured again, representation of God in men. God has Man in righteousness in Christ, and man in righteousness in the saints; persons who know good and evil, and able to judge good and evil by the power of the Holy Spirit.
May the Lord just help us in these things. I trust we have the Holy Spirit. What a triumph for God! I trust we have had a little help as to God’s great triumph in regard to likeness and image. For His Name’s sake.
Edinburgh
10th May 2011