Creator, Father, King #28

God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

WHAT DO YOU SEE when you look in the mirror? Well, if you look in the mirror at 6 a.m., you will probably see droopy eyes, frizzy hair, and creases on your face from your pillowcase.

Attractive!

A mirror, of course, shows an image of yourself. It’s a reflection of who you are.

Similarly, humans reflect their Creator. It’s not in the way we look. As we’ve already discussed in the January 4 and 5 devotions, God is spirit (i.e., an immaterial, invisible living being) and we are human (i.e., living beings with physical bodies). Rather, we reflect God in other aspects of how we were made.

As today’s verse says, God created us “in his own image.” To be created in God’s image is a glorious truth that gives every human being great purpose. This leads to several important questions:

• What does it mean to be created in God’s image?
• Why did God do that?
• How should this affect the way I live?

We’ll tackle the first question today and the other two over the next two days.

What’s It Mean?

To be created in God’s image means we are uniquely created. The Lord made nothing else in his image—not monkeys, whales, eagles, elephants, daffodils, sycamores, icebergs, planets, or anything else in the universe. Only humans. This is a distinct honor.

To be created in God’s image means that we share some of his characteristics but not all of them. Like God, we are moral beings, we can reason and problem-solve, we can communicate in spoken language, we can be creative, and we can experience loving relationships. The greatest relationship we can enjoy is when we become a child of our heavenly Father through faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. Nothing else in creation has this privilege.

While we are not an uncreated eternal spirit like God, the Lord did put an immaterial spirit inside us. Our spirit will exist forever, either with him or apart from him, depending on whether we submit to his rule in our life.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of what it means to be made in God’s image. As sinful humans, we neither share all of God’s characteristics, nor do we possess any of them perfectly. But what a privilege to share his image at all!

(Even with crazy bed head.)

Now What?

Place a sticky note on your bathroom mirror that says, “Made in God’s image.”

Did You Know?

When Jesus returns to earth, Christians will bear his glorified image (1 Corinthians 15:49; 1 John 3:2).