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and love God and our partner in marriage. We
are meant to reproduce further copies of God’s
image.
God has provided us with exceptional abilities
found nowhere else in the universe, to remind us
of our Creator. This concept is clearly expressed
in Psalm 8:5: “You made him a little lower than
the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory
and honour.” We were created for the purpose of
being the image of God – similar to Him!
2 Each and every person is a unique image of
God: God did not merely create humankind in
general, but He carefully made each individual
with his/her distinctive external and internal
characteristics. All of us can be distinguished by
date of birth, size, weight, skin-, eye- and hair
colour, plus very many other details. I am so
unique that I cannot cross a border with somebody
else’s passport. My cares and joys, my ideas,
thoughts and feelings are so unique that nobody
else in the whole world is like me. The German
historian Leopold Ranke (1795 – 1886) asserted:
“Every person is a separate thought of God.”
3 Who is our Creator? The New Testament provides
further insights to creation by describing
the person of the Creator: “In the beginning was
the Word (Greek: the Logos), and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. He was with
God in the beginning. Through him all things
were made; without him nothing was made that
has been made” (John 1:1-3).
Who or what is this Word? At this point it is not
yet clear. But we are given to understand that
absolutely nothing in the entire universe is
excluded from this act of creation, not the earth,
nor the tiniest blade of grass, nor man. This secret
is partially decoded in verse 10. We are told that it
was a person who once resided on this our earth:
“He was in the world, and ... the world was made
through him.” But who is “He”? The full revelation
is given in verse 14: “The Word became flesh and
made his dwelling among us. We have seen his
glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came
from the Father, full of grace and truth.” It follows
that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is our
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Creator. “His Son, whom he appointed heir of all
things, and through whom he made the universe”
(Hebr 1:2). In Colossians 1:16-17 Jesus’ creative
activities are taken a step further, including the as
yet for us invisible world:
“By him (Jesus) all things were created: things in
heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all
things were created by him and for him. He is
before all things, and in him all things hold
together.”
The question of our origin has now been answered
completely and finally: Jesus Christ is our Creator!
For many readers this may come as a surprise,
but it is the unequivocal teaching of the
New Testament. Consequently, any idea about
man’s origin that does not mention nor acknowledge
this Creator, is intrinsically false.
After man’s sin, which will be discussed more
fully in later chapters, he became separated from
his Creator. At the same time many characteristics
of God’s image were lost. Only Christ still
represents the complete image of God, as asserted
in the following three quotations from the
New Testament:
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
over all creation” (Col 1:15). “Christ ... is the
image of God” (2 Cor 4:4). “The Son is the radiance
of God’s glory and the exact representation
of his being” (Hebr 1:3).
In spite of the heavy losses sustained through
man’s fall into sin, an appreciable fraction of the
original image, derived from God, has survived
the separation. All God’s attributes are complete
and present in the highest degree in Him; we
were also intended to have His attributes, albeit
at a level which is a “little lower” (Ps 8:5). This is
summarised in the following ten aspects:
Like God, we can speak
God is a speaking God: “And God said” appears
ten times in the creation account. We read in