Image and Likeness

Each According to its Kind

The main focal point in chapter one is the dry land together with what lives on it, and it is the reason that everything else has been created and put in its proper position in relation to the land. The plants and fruit trees were created on the third day to be food for man, and now on the sixth day the inhabitants of the land are put into place. First God creates all the living creatures, the cattle, the beasts, and all that creeps on the ground. Each of these is created according to its kind; here the word is used five times. It was used five times when talking about the plants, trees, fish and birds, and now it is used five more times for the creatures of the land. It is used ten times altogether. There are many patterns and repetitions in this section of Genesis 1-2:3; the only other phrase repeated ten times is “And God said.” “Each according to its kind” is a significant phrase, and its real meaning becomes clear in a verse or two when we expect it and it is not there. “According to its kind” is replaced with “image and likeness.”

A Personal Matter: the Creation of Man

We have come to the final work done on the second half of the last day of the work God did when He created. The second half of the very important day six says: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….” First of all, up until now, every time that it stated, “And God said,” God said for this to be or that to happen; He speaks using the third person in His acting. Here, however, God uses the first person, “Let us make.” Everything else that has been created up until now was made because God said it should happen, and it was. With man, we are led to expect the same wording of how everything else was made, but we are pleasantly slapped awake with a different way of God working. The wording, “let us make,” makes the creation of man something special to God; the creation of man is a personal matter for God.

Man Created to be Bride of God

The other much harder and more fruitful slap across the face is that with man there is no more mention of being made “each according to its kind.” We expect it, but it is not there because man is being created on a completely different sphere and for a completely different purpose. All the living beings created before man where created according to their own likeness and kind for the purpose of reproduction. So here, man is not made according to his own kind; how, then, is he to bear fruit and multiply and fulfill the blessing? Man is to be fruitful, but we were not made to be fruitful just according to our own kind since we were created in the image of God. We are made according to the kind of God, and united to Him we bear good fruit (see John 15).

Since man is made in the image of God, as He said: according to “our image and after our likeness,” He is made according to God’s kind. Putting two and two together, God created man as the highpoint of His creation and a home for Himself. He Himself will be the source of man’s fruitfulness; God will make man fruitful because God made man to be His spouse. Our husband is God so from Him will come our fruit (see Hosea 14:8: "I am like an evergreen cypress, from me comes your fruit").

Image and likeness means a similitude to God, but it means so much more. It means that, from the beginning, God made us to be His. He made us to be so closely united to Him, that we are married to Him. Saint Paul talks of marriage as the great mystery related to Christ (the bridegroom) and His Church (the bride) (see Ephesians 5:32: "This [marriage] is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church"). We are God's home, His temple, His bride. United to Him, we bear fruit every month.

This has set the stage for Genesis two. Simply put, Genesis two zeros in on how man is a home for God. Chapter one was how earth was made for man; the next chapter is how man is made for God. I will tell you soon what the tree of life is and what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is.
Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.