“Why did God create man in His image?”

March 2013 – Grace & Truth Magazine

QUESTION: Why did God create man in His image?

ANSWER: The quick and easy answer is: “Because He is God and wanted to do so.” But let’s look at the question a bit more thoroughly.

God is sovereign. He is the only being in all the universe who can do entirely as He pleases and be absolutely right all the time in so doing. He is accountable to no one and owes nobody an explanation for what He does. The Bible tells us that He is “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen” (1 Tim. 6:15-16 NKJV).

The Bible also tells us that “God is light” and that “God is love” (1 Jn. 1:5, 4:8,16). And while God is One, He is also a Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Dt. 6:4; Mt. 28:19). This revelation of Himself we accept by faith, realizing that it is beyond the power of our finite minds to fully understand.

Nowhere in God’s Word does He tell us explicitly why He made man in His image. Yet being love, He must have an object on which to lavish the love of His heart. In one sense we might say that God is self-contained; the Father repeatedly speaks of the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the One in whom He is well pleased. The Lord Jesus speaks of always doing the things that please the Father. We read too of the love of the Spirit.

God being One, yet Three in One, also delights to lavish the love of His heart on creatures who can respond to this love. Most of God’s creation is inanimate. God has programmed it to run in an appointed course and it cannot really appreciate or respond to God’s love. Angels and human beings are the great exceptions to this. Angels are spirits. We are not given any indication that they love. The elect angels are obedient ministering spirits, while the fallen angels have followed Satan in rebellion against God and are now malevolent [evil] demons.

Human beings, being made in the image of God, resemble Him in many ways and up to a certain point share His characteristics. We are tripartite beings, for each of us is one person consisting of spirit, soul and body. We are not robots, but each person has a will; we love and hate and have many other emotions; we can plan and can work step by step to accomplish what we have planned. While we have bodily functions that operate in large part according to how God has programmed them, most of these are also subject in measure to our conscious control.

Greatest of all, while by our body we are in touch with our environment and by our soul we relate to ourselves and others, our spirit is able to commune with God. The Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16). We worship by the spirit. Our reasoning power, too, and our understanding are linked to our spirit.

Ultimately it is clear that God made man in His image so that He would have an object outside of Himself to love and for whom to care. Each of us is an object of His love and we have been made in such a way that we can respond to that love ? or refuse to do so.

Having been made in the image of God, man was put at the head of God’s creation here upon earth. He was to have dominion over every living creature on earth. God delighted in man whom He had made; He wanted mankind to multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. In time He would send His Son into the world as a true Man. “When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory” (Gal. 4:4-5; Jn. 1:14).

God made us so that He could show us His love. Ephesians 1:1-14 shows us that this was part of His plan before the foundation of the world. God’s nature of love just had to express itself, and making man in His image was the way in which He did so. May we respond to His love by loving Him and worshiping Him for His great love and for the gift of salvation He has given us through the Son of His love, Jesus our Savior and Lord!

Answered by Eugene P. Vedder Jr.