Genesis 1:26 “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…”

It’s hard to imagine the depth of this sentence in scripture and its implications to everyday life. Often times I try to wrap my mind around this. What exactly does it mean to be “made in God’s image”? I began to understand that the scripture is saying that we are not like God in the sense that God is flesh and bone but in His characteristics. That each person has intrinsic worth. That each person is created in love. I think this is why when Jesus was asked what the most important command was, He went straight to love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. The second commandment was then to love your neighbor. Jesus knew that in these first two commandment stood the rest of the Law. Do these and everything else follows. It was John the Apostle in 1 John 4:8 who said “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” I recently heard a lecture that spoke about this and explained it this way:

We are made from love
We are made for love
We are made to love

We are made from love: In Genesis 1:26, God said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” It’s interesting that God is speaking this using the plural “us” and “our”. God didn’t need to create us since He already loved perfectly within the Trinity and love existed before creation. If we are made in God’s image than it is also true that we are made as a result of His love for Christ through the Holy Spirit. Jesus knew this well as He states in John 17 how His Father loved Him before the creation of the world. We are made as an expression of His love.

We are made for love: Not long after God created man, He made the woman from man. God knew that the deepest desire of our heart was a relationship in which we could experience love. This comes in the form our relationships here on earth but is fulfilled ultimately from God. I think this is really why we struggle in so many areas of our lives. We live each day asking for someone, somewhere to love us and often try to find that love in other things. Knowing that we were created from love helps us to know that we are created for love. God loves us because He created us as an expression of His love. We can live each day knowing that we are loved by Him.

We are made to love: We try this on our own but fail. How do we love without God? We can’t. Our love falls so short of what true love means. We can only truly love God and others with God’s help.

I can honestly say that understanding these makes me appreciate Christ so much more. It’s through Christ’s sacrifice that we are invited back into the relationship of love with God and to become the people we were created to be. It’s through Christ’s blood that we recognize that God gave His only son to die on the cross as the ultimate expression of love so we can live knowing that we are loved. It’s through Christ’s atonement that we can be filled with the Holy Spirit to truly love God and others as only He can. To be created in His image is not only to love like Him but to be invited to become a part of the eternal relationship that existed before the world. The only true relationship with true love.