Man in the Image of God

The Father has a desire to the work of His hands, and I rejoice to be one small part of the work of His hands.  In that long ago beginning Adam, the type and prophecy of man in God’s image, was brought forth from the hands of God on the sixth day of the Lord’s creative process. Why was the creation of man saved for last?   Because it was the culmination of all that preceded it.  Into that man God breathed the breath of life.  God breathed!  Although all living things have a “breath of life,” man was the only being who received his breath of life directly from God.  Man’s “breath of life” is not the air of earth’s atmosphere. The breath of God is the Spirit of God – for breath and spirit are the same word in Hebrew.  God breathed – God infused into man His very own life. This set man apart from the animal kingdom, for man was endowed with divine life and was fashioned in the image and likeness of God. There is great purpose here!  Let me ask – was the creation of mankind an incidental event, or was it the event around which all else revolves?   I believe we are perfectly safe and on God’s ground to say that the creation of man is the event around which all else revolves.  Man was made in the image of God and given dominion over all things and commissioned to subdue and subject all things. That dominion is to the extent over all the works of the Creator’s hands and that includes, according to Psalm 8:3, the heavens, the moon and the stars.  Can we not see by this that our earth, yea, our galaxy, is the launching pad for God’s creative, redemptive, reconstructive program on behalf of the whole creation?   Let us UNDERSTAND!  In man, and in man alone, was blended the reality of both the Creator and the creation!   God is invisible – spirit.  Creation is visible – material.  Adam was formed of the dust of the ground – earth; and God breathed into him the breath of life – spirit.  Man in his spirit was from God and heaven, while in his body he was from earth.  Ever since man has been, he has been made to live for the one purpose of giving revelation and manifestation to God, and to be ruler for God. The invisible God desired to be known by His visible creation – but then existence was on two different planes.  So God put His spirit and His image into Adam, that in the visible could be seen and known the invisible.   Adam is thus the connecting link between the upper and lower worlds – between Creator and creation. Man was created for the specific purpose of becoming the bridge between the celestial heights of the spiritual realm and the lowest depths of the physical world, that God might be known, experienced, fellowshipped.  Man is thus the channel through which the Creator’s grace and glory and blessing and power flow from the high realm of the spirit to the corporeal world.

- J. Preston Eby