Download discussion questions: Genesis 1:24-31
The second of the four core commitments at Calvary Restoration Church is to connect with each other authentically. Following the question motif, we can ask, “What about us makes that goal possible?”
Who are we that we might be able to connect authentically?
Biblically, to understand something about who we are, we can start at the beginning, in Genesis 1. Our group looked at the passage taken from the last part of that chapter. Like many parts of Scripture, the beginning of the account of creation has more themes than can be covered in an hour discussion. There were comments about God’s methodology. Could He have included some form of evolutionary change in His creative work? Others raised questions about dominion over the earth and the damage being done to the environment. Male and female roles and responsibilities were mentioned. However, setting aside (reluctantly) these and other valuable and important topics, we focused on what we might learn about being human from the single phrase, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Genesis 1:26).
Image and Likeness
Language can be fascinating. Sometimes words with similar meaning are used simply for the sake of variety in writing, to make the style easier to read. At other times, fine nuances of words with similar meanings can be used intentionally to make a point or emphasize a distinction.
We spent some time considering the words “image” and “likeness” in English. In about fifty translations included on the BibleGateway web site, those two words are used in all except a few paraphrase versions, such as “like us” or “resemble us.”[1] Those two English words are the majority choice for translators trying to communicate what God had to say about the creation of human beings.
Suggestions for “image” included mirror and reflections as providing an image of a person. The Hebrew word (tselem, ְּצַלְמֵּ) can mean a statue.[2] The word is used in Psalms for a shadow (Psalm 39:6). An image provides an outline, a good overall representation of the original.
A “likeness” suggested more of a pattern to our group, perhaps more detail than a statue or a shadow. In fact, the original word (demut, דְמוּתֵ֑) is used in 2 Kings 16:10 when the evil king Ahaz wanted a copy of a pagan altar, “exact in all its details.” A likeness supplements an image by filling in the particulars and specifics to reveal the original more clearly.
Genesis 1:26 summarizes God’s intention in the creation of humans. What would it mean to be a representation of God and a revealer of God?
Image of the Trinitarian God
One of the other observations made early in our discussion was the use of plural pronouns, “Let Us make…in Our image…Our likeness.” Apart from an understanding of the Three-Personal nature of God (last week’s discussion), those plural pronouns might be taken as a literary device, or the “royal we” or even God consulting with angels. However, if Trinity is at the heart of reality as a defining characteristic of Almighty God, then those pronouns reveal theological significance. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit consulted together and in perfect eternal harmony created humans.
Our group also looked briefly at the entire first chapter of Genesis and noticed a significant pattern. In every case except one, God’s creative decree took the form of, “Let there be…” (v. 3, 6, 14) or “Let the waters” (v. 9, 20) or the earth (v. 11, 24), all third-person imperatives. The exception is in verse 26, “Let us make…” a first-person imperative. The contrast emphasizes God’s clear intentionality and focus on the creation of man and woman. The Triune God was intimately involved with the creation of every atom and sub-atomic particle in the universe. Yet the creation of humans in His image, to represent and reveal Him, was a special point of His creative act. Our group discussion suggested that making the image and likeness was a deliberate, directive, and personal work of the Triune God.
We talked about the difference between conceptions of the “image and likeness of God” from a general idea of God versus a Trinitarian understanding. The “image of God” in popular thought is personal (having a mind and a will and emotions). God and humans in His image are generally understood to have some moral dimension.
However, a Trinitarian understanding adds completely new dimensions and depth to the image and likeness of God. A Three-Personal God is relational, an eternal small group getting alone perfectly. The discussion from John 17 last week showed the Father and the Son are mutually giving to each other, sharing in reciprocal glory and enjoying each other. Only the Trinitarian perspective can make sense of the idea of “God is love.” Otherwise, there was no one for a unitarian God to love for eternity before Creation. The fact that the image and likeness involves the creation of male and female (v. 27) shows that we are to display the relationships of a “loving unity of more than one person.”[3]
Being created in the image and likeness of the Triune God means we are to represent and reveal what that God is like. In particular, we are to reveal the relational God by how we relate to others in selfless giving and in mutual love.
Connecting Authentically
What does “connecting authentically” mean between two persons who are created in the image and the likeness of the Trinitarian God?
In Jesus’ prayer in John 17, He mentioned glory several times. He mentioned the glory that He and the Father shared before creation (John 17:5) and the glory which the Father and the Son continued to reciprocate between them (v. 1, 4). However, late in His prayer, He makes what seems like an odd statement: “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them…” (vs. 22). Is Jesus here talking about the same eternal, infinite glory shared with the Father in verse 5? Is that the glory given to the disciples? And what does it mean that the Father gave the glory to Jesus? Didn’t they share mutual glory for eternity past? Those questions could lead into heretical directions – the disciples deified, or perhaps the denial of Jesus’ own eternal deity.
A better understanding might come from the question, “What might be the difference between the eternal glory of Jesus and the glory He had during His Incarnation?”
In the Incarnation, the Eternal Second Person of the Trinity took on the ability to display the character of God in human form. That is the glory that He took on and could give to His disciples. He showed them and He showed us what it means to represent and reveal God through our human lives. We connect authentically with others most fully when we see each other as the image and likeness of God in the way we relate to one another.
As one person in our group pointed out, we can connect with each other in a variety of ways – in serving one another, providing meals, helping materially. Perhaps the most common way in which we have the opportunity to connect is in our conversations. Think about the conversations you have had recently – with family members, friends, store clerks. What were they like?
- Interesting conversations?
- Stimulating conversations?
- Entertaining conversations?
- Boring conversations?
- Awkward conversations?
- Polite conversations?
Connecting authentically involves conversations that matter, conversations that intentionally (and authentically, not artificially) enable us to see and encourage the image and likeness of God in each other. As Larry Crabb has put it, when “the Spirit of Christ in me connects with Spirit of Christ in you.”
Those conversations that matter grow in the soil of recognizing the image and likeness in others and understanding that there are no ordinary people.
No Ordinary People
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.[4]
Think about the relationships in your life – “… all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.” Conversations that matter involve helping each other toward everlasting glory by representing and revealing God in a way that invites imitation.
Lewis continues, lest we think this attitude makes the Christian life dull and morose.
This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.[5]
Elsewhere, Lewis describes that joyful gravity as “a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.”[6] How often do our interactions settle for an acceptable mediocrity of flippant humor or sarcasm or trivial superficialities? Conversations that matter allow us to connect authentically with another image and likeness of Almighty God.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Genesis%201:26 retrieved 5/14/2018.
[2] W. E. Vine, Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996), 244.
[3] W. E. Vine, Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996), 244.
[4] C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: HarperOne, 1980), 45.
[5] C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: HarperOne, 1980), 45.
[6] C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Collier Books, 1976) 170.