Genesis 1:26-28
[26] Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ [27] So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. [28] God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’
On March 14, 1887, a situation took place that is so incredibly rare that it became the subject of modern day movies and TV series. A Mr AJ Brown, a simple man who made his living through making stationary, woke up in Norristown, Pennsylvania, with a start and asked the question, ‘Who am I?’
The incredible thing is that AJ Brown wasn’t actually AJ Brown. His real name was Ansel Bourne, from Coventry, Rhode Island, where he worked as a carpenter and served as a pastor. For several months, he had suffered from what psychologists call a ‘dissociative fugue’: his personality had completely split and he had no recollection of who he really was.
While such cases are utterly fascinating and remind us of how little we know of how our own brain works, I believe that nowadays more and more people are suffering from a severe identity crisis: they have no real idea of who they are.
The huge problem with someone who is unsure of their identity, or even with someone who is sure, but mistaken, is the decisions they will take and the people they will hurt in the process.
Haven’t we seen exactly that? Children, families, grown adults hurt and mutilated and chemically altered because they are convinced they are something they are not?
This is why it is critically important that we know who we are.
While we remain unsure, we put ourselves at the whim and whimsy of any scoundrel who wants to manipulate us for their own selfish ends, whatever and whoever they are.
So what I am setting out to do now is to post a number of blogs about something of critical importance for this current generation: who every Christian is in Christ, or who we can be if we decide to follow Christ.
Examine these truths carefully. They may change your life.
This first truth is something foundational, but that makes an incredible difference to how we see ourselves: You are Created.
There are famous artworks all over the world that truly deserve to be seen: the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David, DaVinci’s Last Supper. All really well known. All pretty much priceless.
But I am sure no-one would say they came into being at random, by someone throwing paint at a canvas or chucking pieces of marble into the air.
However, if you stare at a stunning sunset or a breath-taking alpine view or a beautiful river, somehow we are told to believe that these are the products of completely random forces.
Or far worse, when we meet a fellow human being – a living, breathing, opinionated human being, we are told to believe that they are nothing but a fluke of nature.
It is ironic that such an explanation requires more faith than the existence of an intelligent, creative God who breathed life into our lungs.
The Bible teaches right from the beginning that we are not at all the product of chance or a fluke in the universe or even slaves to our genetic predispositions.
No, right from the very beginning it states that we are God’s creation. We are His works of art.
So, tell me: would you rather be a random splash of paint, or an intentionally created work of Divine art?
I would hope there is no competition.
In these verses we see three wonderful truths that stem from our identity as created beings – as expression of God’s genius and infinite creativity. The first is Our Origins.
I would hope those origins are very clear.
We see this glorious text later on in the Word of God:
Psalms 139:13-18 NIVUK
[13] For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. [14] I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. [15] My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. [16] Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. [17] How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! [18] Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand – when I awake, I am still with you.
What David wrote about himself is true of you too: you are not a mistake.
You are not an accident.
You are not a fluke.
You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
You are an expression of your Creator’s love and care and sense of humour and infinite creativity.
You deserve respect.
You deserve care.
You deserve dignity.
Because you are alive. And you are a work of art.
And nothing less than that.
As it says elsewhere in the Bible about Jesus:
Revelation 4:11 NIVUK
[11] ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.’ https://bible.com/bible/113/rev.4.11.NIVUK
So let me tell you right from the off: you are important. You are valuable.
Because you have been hand-crafted by God.
There’s a very important detail on Genesis. God repeatedly calls His creation ‘good’ (Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25). But what does God say after He creates man and woman?
Genesis 1:31 NIVUK
[31] God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. https://bible.com/bible/113/gen.1.31.NIVUK
So human beings elevate God’s creation from ‘good’ to ‘very good’.
Or, as David put it:
Psalms 8:3-5 NIVUK
[3] When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, [4] what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human
beings that you care for them? [5] You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour.
This, friend, is who you are
.
In fact, more. The Bible teaches that we are made in the image of God. The Hebrew word for ‘image’ here can also refer to an idol or a false god. In other words, perhaps a reason why the Israelites were banned from making images to represent God was because they should be that image.
Or, as a child bears the resemblance of their parents, or as minted coins often bear the likeness of a ruler, we bear the image of our Maker in us.
The question is not if that image is at all there. It is.
The question is: how clearly can it be seen?
But what comes next sets this exalted identity in context and shakes our modern cultural values to the core.
I’m going to become controversial now. So please, read this carefully. After our origins, we move on to Our Place.
The Bible teaches:
Genesis 1:27 NIVUK
[27] So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
So the Bible teaches right from the very beginning that there are only two genders. Any deviation from this – any at all – is unbiblical.
But there is more to it than that. The Bible goes on to explain how these genders were supposed to relate:
Genesis 2:18 NIVUK
[18] The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’
In other words, the woman was created after the man to help the man. However, the work she would help him with was not determined by the man, but by God.
We will explore what that is later.
But we then see this:
Genesis 2:21-24 NIVUK
[21] So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. [22] Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. [23] The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman”, for she was taken out of man.’ [24] That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. https://bible.com/bible/113/gen.2.21.NIVUK
A wise theologian once said that God did not make woman from man’s skull, to be over him, or from the sole of man’s foot, to be beneath him, but from his rib, to be beside him.
In other words – and this is important - men and women are designed to be different, but complementary.
And equal.
After the Fall, we see this:
Genesis 3:16 NIVUK
[16] To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’
So misogyny is not part of God’s plan. It is instead a result of sin and a curse on the world.
The battle of the sexes is not part of God’s plan. It is instead a result of sin and a curse on the world.
Shame and a lack of feeling of acceptance and trust has utterly poisoned the relationships between the two genders. Of that there is no doubt. But it wasn’t part of God’s original design (Genesis 2:25). It came after the Fall (Genesis 3:7). It is instead a result of sin and a curse on the world.
There are some important verses on the marriage relationship in the Bible in Ephesians 5:21-33 and 1 Peter 3:1-7, and on gender roles in worship in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16. Nowadays, these are needlessly controversial.
They may use terms that we struggle with. However, I believe that there is a reason for that.
Remember from Genesis 1 that God’s plan was for man and woman to be equal and to help each other to fulfil God's plan for them, but at the Fall, and as human culture developed, men and women developed negative, antagonistic attitudes towards each other, and the relationship, which God ordained and blessed, was damaged.
Perhaps these verses should be seen as restoring the balance: as reminding both men and women of their roles within marriage and restoring equality. Perhaps they should be seen, not as favouring one or the other, but of restoring the gender roles to what they were in Eden and resetting the balance.
But there is something else to be said about marriage.
In marriage, two people with differing characters and personalities and pasts and genders come together as one. They unite around the things they have in common. And it is that unity, that relationship described most eloquently as ‘one, but not the same’, that joining of two opposite and distinctive people, that is used as an illustration of Christ and the church in Ephesians 5:29-32.
That is why, for me, marriage can only ever be between a man and a woman. Any other so-called ‘marriage’ can definitely be a legally constituted partnership – I have no issue with that, and I can even understand why it would be necessary.
However, marriage is a noun that can only and should only be used to describe a relationship between a man and a woman.
But what if there’s something more we could glean from this?
After all, there are many people who don’t marry – who remain single. What can they understand from this?
What if marriage could also represent more?
What if this basic building block of community was also meant to represent the function of a community itself?
The famous passage in 1 Corinthians 12 is designed to show how a group of ‘one, but not the same’ people can join together to form a loving body – the Body of Christ, the church.
This teaches me something very powerful: a community is supposed to work a little like a marriage. We are supposed to respect, and, yes, love (although not necessarily romantically) each other, and work together essentially as equals, strengthening each others weaknesses.
That is also the basic building block of a marriage.
What I take from this passage is that it is not good for anyone – man or woman – to be alone. We are designed for community. We are designed to be together.
Independence is an idiotic notion. As the Christian folk rock band Eden Burning once wrote ‘My independence and my pride – my self-created great divide’. No Christian can
or should desire to be independent. Instead, our desire should be to be inter-dependent.
The whole concept of being ‘self-made’ is, quite frankly, illogical and absurd. Did you give birth to yourself? Did you raise yourself? Did you teach yourself at school or university? Did you have no friends or family or no-one to help or encourage you?
Then you cannot be self-made! No-one is!
Neither should you aspire to be a ‘lone wolf’. Such people are dangerous, wicked and continue in their depravity unchecked.
No, your place is in a loving, supporting community. That is where you belong.
That is what you were made for.
Apart from our origins and our place, lastly, we see Our Purpose:
Genesis 1:26 NIVUK
[26] Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ https://bible.com/bible/113/gen.1.26.NIVUK
Genesis 1:28 NIVUK
[28] God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’
Genesis 2:15 NIVUK
[15] The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
This is where I am sure I will meet with some firm opposition from some of my brothers and sisters in certain industrialised parts of the West, but this is the Word of God.
And the Word of God states that our role in the natural world God created is to tame it, yes, but not to break it; to manage it, but not destroy it; to rule it, but with benevolence, not contempt.
We have an obligation to look after our world so that we leave it in a better place than we found it. But we have to face the bitter truth: we have done exactly the opposite.
It is true to say that the world has not made this easy for us. As God said to Adam:
Genesis 3:17-19 NIVUK
[17] To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,” ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. [18] It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. [19] By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’
And again, in the curses of the Law:
Deuteronomy 28:22-24
[22] The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. [23] The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. [24] The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.
But then, if we are forced to endure the unrelenting harshness of an unforgiving environment, we have to ask ourselves: who made it like this? God is an easy target, but the Bible teaches that human beings bear a large part of the responsibility, something our scientists readily agree with.
Biblical teaching, therefore, is that human beings bear some responsibility for the mess the world is in and our role in life is to help reverse the damage and resolve the issues.
That encompasses both traditional Christian mission and evangelism, but also environmental protection and action.
I read this morning of a runaway goods train in India that travelled for 40 miles, reaching speeds of up to 62 miles per hour, all without a driver, before it was eventually brought to a halt by the spacing of wooden blocks on the line to slow it down.
It seems like the crew of the long distance goods train was changed, but when the departing crew left the train, no-one put the handbrake on, so the train simply trundled downhill on its own, gathering speed as it went.
Thankfully, a major accident was avoided.
However, there is no doubt modern culture is something of a runaway train. Since the handbrake of Christian morality and decency has been lifted, our society has careered out of control, spinning ever faster towards its oblivion, while yelling that anyone who thinks the handbrake should be put back in place is ‘intolerant’.
Maybe that could be why the safest, most developed, most technologically advanced countries often have much higher rates of suicide, self-harm and mental illness.
Could it be that they are a train that is simply further down the track?
So how do we stop this breakneck decline?
We reset our lives. We remember who we are: that we are created by God, that we are His artwork. We remember our place in society – not as a loner or a faceless cog in a corporate wheel, but as someone who plays their part in a loving, supportive community. And we remember our purpose: to leave the place and its people a little better than we found it.
When we remember these things, then the image of God in us is clearer and shines brighter to a world that needs to see Him.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, forgive me for losing my way and forgetting who I am, why I am here and what I should do. Help me to repent of my self-absorption and to play the part You have designed for me. Amen.
Questions
1. How does the fact that we are all God’s handiwork, His artwork, His deliberate design change the way you see yourself and other people?
2. How can you play a greater part in your community and make the world a better place?
3. How important do you think it is to share this truth with others? How will you do that?
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