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— Made in God’s Image: A Bible Study Series—
What exactly does being made in God’s image mean?
What are some of the practical implications?
Our secular culture continues its assault on what it means to be human, and it is doing so in the name of autonomy and rights. Sadly, the autonomy and rights the culture is promoting are counterfeit. Some promoting these ideas are blind or misguided, but others are intentionally pushing a nefarious agenda. In this cultural moment, the church desperately needs to speak the truth in love about what it means to be human — a subject about which the Bible speaks authentically and truthfully. Remember that in John 8:32, Jesus said, “[Y]ou shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
This Bible study series explores this important theme; it examines the meaning and implications of the biblical truth that God made, and makes, human beings in His own mage.
Ten parts are planned, but this number may be adjusted along the way. Each part will offer readers and users an introductory article and a Bible study guide. The material is designed for a group study but readily can be used by individuals wanting to explore the material on their own.
- God exists. || article || teaching plan ||
- God made people in His image, to fulfill specific divinely-ordained purposes. Often Genesis 1:28 (with its God-given assignments associated with God’s having created people in His image) has been called the “cultural commission. || article || teaching plan ||
- God’s making people in His image means, among other things, that He created people to reflect His character, yet to be free within the boundaries of the commands He would give them, all of which are consistent with His character.
- While acting in accord with the cultural commission showcases the reality of God’s image in human beings, it is not only those who take such actions, or those who are able to do so, whom God has made in His image. People do not acquire God’s image through their actions; each individual possesses it by virtue of having been created a human being by God.
- God gave people the tasks of maintaining and managing — having dominion over — the earth and its resources. Human beings do this through various spheres of authority instituted by God.
- Only when the people of a society respect God’s commands can a freedom-sustaining climate of order be maintained. Government’s job is to maintain that kind of order in society by upholding God’s standard of right and wrong (see 1 Tim. 2:1-4; Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 2:13-17).
- Maintaining order also means cooperating with reality and not defying it. It further means confronting those who have been duped into denying reality. Lovingly confronting them, but confronting them still.
- God’s creating people in His image means, as well, that He made them male and female so they could pave the way for humanity’s future survival by “being fruitful and multiplying.”
- God created marriage as the context for members of the human family to fulfill this command. Government has a duty to recognize and preserve marriage and the family, and absolutely no authority to manipulate them.
- Cooperating with God to fulfill His design and plan is fulfilling as is no other endeavor.
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26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. 31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
19 Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these sayings, that He departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them there.
3 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”
4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”
8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
Therefore, Jesus was explicit about the definition of marriage; it is a God-given institution. Although it involves imperfect people, God’s design is flawless. Government as a duty to recognize and preserve marriage (and other God-ordained realities, including inherent, God-given rights), but absolutely no authority to manipulate it.
Copyright 2024 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
Scripture passages also have been cited from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.