The Image of God in Man

Maybe you're leading a Bible study tomorrow and you're stuck on a verse or maybe you're just beginning to dig deeper but don't know where to look. It's good to know that you can always ask Ligon here for more than 45 years, Christians have looked to look in your ministry's teaching Fellowship of RC's role clear and helpful answers to biblical and theological questions and now you can ask your questions online in real time confident that our team will work quickly to provide concise and trustworthy answers on topics like salvation, apologetics, and spiritual growth to ask Ligon here use the green icon in the lower right corner of linking your.org or you can tap the screen well trained team members can answer your questions 24 hours a day, Monday through Saturday. We invite you to explore this new resource@ask.linear.org and share it with your family, friends and church community.

When you have questions, just ask Ligon near coming up next on Renewing Your Mind. We are told that we are the product of the blind forces of chance is one philosopher said it we are grown up germs who have fortuitously emerged from the slime. We are cosmic accidents with no inherent purpose to our existence merely died among us believe and teach things like that.

It's no wonder experiencing a cultural crisis welcome to the Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind and we went this week.

Dr. RC Sproul takes us back to the beginning of Genesis in those very first pages of Scripture we see the answers to some of mankind's most basic questions. Who am why am I here the answers actually are quite simple. Thus, to glory.

Might consider that title for this survey introduction of the Scriptures demonstrate a little bit by the middle word to from dust to glory. We use that word quite frequently in our language we would say something is from a to Z. The Bible spoke of the region from Dan to be our shoebox.

For example, and normally when we use this word to work talking about a goal or a name or a purpose were describing some kind of motion that has a starting point here, and destiny over there and you recall, in our study of Genesis 1 that in the first sentence of the Old Testament, we have the affirmation that there is a beginning point in time and in space, but that that which begin this at a particular point in time and space is moving not just planets moving in their orbits, but history itself is moving its moving to some designated point and in the break concept of history were talking about history which is inaugurated by the creative act of God finds its goal and its consummation in the redemptive purpose of God.

I like to tell a story about one of my granddaughters who right now is about three years old, but as soon as she learned how to speak my son began to teach her the children's catechism with very simple questions. Darby, who made you when Darby was say God made me that all these questions and one that I like the most and I would ask Darby when she was two years old, Darby why did God make you and all things Darby would simply say for his war and I just thought I hope she never ever ever forgets that that is the question, is the why question why a world why people why history for is glory. Now when we use the word for in this case or the word who we are engaging our minds with a very important idea and that is the idea of purpose. Now when we read the Scriptures we were reading a book that is unfolding on every page. A divine purpose for your existence for my existence and for the existence of this entire universe.

Recently, I was on vacation with my wife and I'm not accustomed to being in such a relaxed mode where there's quote nothing to do because I really found it impossible to do nothing.

I don't know what nothing is. Other than that is not and so since it is not.

I cannot do it and so I would say to my wife every day. We want to do today. What shall we do, I was asking a question about purpose. How should we use this time. What should be our objective.

What should be our goal. Now when we get into the story of the creation of mankind at the end of chapter 1 of Genesis in verse 21 we have this record. Genesis 121 and 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. So God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them to see that here. Just as in the opening line of the Old Testament is a description of God's acting with a purpose within the Godhead there is a conversation within the Trinity.

There is an agreement within the Godhead there is a plan for action and it's not as though the father the son and the Holy Spirit were on vacation.

One set of the other when what are we going to do today, but there is this statement of purpose coming from God himself. When God says let's do something. Let us now make man in our own image.

Again, this is such a simple statement here in Genesis that we may be inclined to skip over it quickly and fail to mark its profound significance. If there is any crisis in human thought and philosophy at the end of the 20th century, particularly in the Western world. It is a crisis that focuses on this word purpose and the crisis of purpose is bound together with the eclipse of the idea of divine creation because it implied within the idea of the very first line of Scripture that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth is this idea that the world and all that it is in. It is not an accident, but rather, it has come to pass through and ordered intelligent decision of a supernatural being who has a purpose for everything that he does.

But if we adopt the worldview that is common in our land. Today we are instantly cut off from this whole idea of purpose is where we told we are told that we are the product of the blind forces of chance is one philosopher said it we are grown up germs who have fortuitously emerged from the slime. We are cosmic accidents with no inherent purpose to our existence.

That's why Albert Camus made the philosophical observation in the middle of the 20th century that there is only one serious question left for philosophers to consider and that is the question of suicide because suicide becomes an option when there is no answer to this question. Why the minute I believe that my life is without purpose, and that history is without purpose, and the universe itself is without purpose. If I'm thinking at all. I've got to ask the question that Camus raised him would set it this way to be or not to be that is the question. And when he went on to muse over his own predicament. Be not to be that's the question whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or by opposing end them. Was he asking so here I am thrown into my existence at this moment and what faces me as far as I can see are the slings and arrows of what fortune outrageous fortune.

That's a sophisticated Elizabethan way of considering human existence is bringing nothing but chance that your life is a fortuitous event and that's what the prevailing viewpoint in our culture is screaming to our children every single day you're a cosmic accident. You're a grown up germs you came from nothing. You're going to nothing but keep a stiff upper lip. When you face chance and fortune which is outrageous. But the question that is asked is a question of nobility question of virtue, whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of this outrageous fortune or by opposing end them to die. See options to die than what the sleep perchance to dream, there's the rub for in the dream of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause and there's the respect that makes calamity of so long life, saying, what if there is something beyond what I am accountable. What if there was a purpose to my existence. What if it is more than an outrageous fortune in which I find myself to that question reverberates in the literature in the film and every cultural medium is the question purpose: why am I the answer to that question is found here at the end of chapter 1, when God says last's make that the act of the origin of human existence is the result of an intelligent decision of an eternal omniscient being who knows what he's doing and that as Albert Einstein once remarked, doesn't play dice. What Einstein was saying this is the origin of the universe is not a crapshoot but it is the work of a propulsive deity. I can say that the issue that separates worldviews in our day-to-day comes down to this question. Is there a purpose for your existence person and if there is no God. I guarantee you there is no purpose and if there is no purpose.

There is no God but if there is a God. Marie purpose and if there is a purpose. There must be a God. Even Aristotle understood that, or I should say especially Aristotle understood that. Let us create man in our own image. So the Scripture goes on to tell us the origin of humanity in the language that is used here in Genesis is a little bit difficult for us to comprehend because we are told that we are created in the image and likeness of God, wow.

After all the earlier stages of creation where God makes the trees and makes the rivers and lakes. The sunshine and divides the days in and fills the water was fish in the air with birds and makes all different, creeping things, and always animal and easy steps back and look at what he is made he pronounces his benediction said that's good, but he hasn't reached the pinnacle of his work at until he says after I have all these creatures in all of these denizens in all of these things teaming and filling the universe that I have made. I look and I see nothing that bears my nothing that has my likeness. Scott said let's make one work of creation whose purpose is to be my image to be my likeness. I'm going to create a creature. I can't obviously create another God, even God can create another God because a second God would by definition be a creature. It would be fine.

I dependent arrive contingent, and all the rest is one of the things that God can't possibly do. We can't clone himself so I can just duplicate myself.

I'm going to create special work with the special capacity to be like me to bear my image to mirror and to reflect my glory, to display my character to the rest of creation. I'm going to take this work of creation and give to it dominion over everything else so that all other things.

All other creatures in this world will be subordinate to this one who is my image bear and so God creates us in his image and in his likeness.

That does not mean that we are exactly as God is. But there is some point of analogy some analogy of being some way in which we as human creatures are like God and the philosophers and theologians have speculated for centuries about precisely what it is that is comprised in this idea of the image of God, and generally what is assumed is the well at least part of what it means to be in the image of God is that God is an intelligent being.

He is omniscient. He thinks he is aware he's conscious and what of Star Wars and in that old movie that that is that the line it over and over again. May the force be with you small comfort to have a force be with you. What does that mean an electric shock, gravity, Tidal Wave of volcanic eruption. Those are all manifestations of force. We can conceive of force without intelligence to be in the image of God means to be able to participate in this incredible phenomenon that we call thinking reflecting the siding learning. Knowing recently. We can't think like God things in the sense that we have omniscience that we were infinite in our perspective. No, not at all, but we have a point of similarity, a point of likeness and not only that, but has his creation in his image. We are also made as moral creatures were going to be studying next the story of the fall in the Old Testament the green tragedy. If you will, of human history.

But the one thing that is required for I fall into moral corruption is that there must be a moral nature to start with. When the rain falls from the heavens and the drops of water hit the earth.

We don't speak of this is sin. We don't think of this as a moral fall or as a matter of corruption and object falls to the ground is just obeying the laws of nature of gravity at that point, but when were talking about creation and redemption. The grand problem that is being resolved in the scope of biblical history is the problem of moral fall, but for there to be a problem of a moral fall.

First, there must be a moral creature. And so when God makes us, he not only makes us as intelligent beings as thinking beings as rational being, but he gives to us a will gives us a motion so that we can make decisions and engage in actions that are of a moral kind. There's nothing moral or immoral about the rolling of a stone or the blowing of the wind because the wind has no consciousness. The wind is merely a force in a word, what is lacking is personality but when God creates and creates creatures in his own image makes them persons. You are a person and you understand though you may not be able to articulate philosophically what personality involves and what it is precisely you know what it means when you hear the word you know that you are a person in all of what is engaged in that dynamic concept of personality but the personality that God initiates and ordains in creation is not one-dimensional.

It's not you in a sexual is not androgynous creates these people mail and female so that even with in the human sphere of creation, God creates a setting for a relationship that is magnificent between a male and female, and he empowers and endows these persons with a unique capacity to mirror and to reflect the very glory of God. I think that we often miss the point of this story of creation, because we are told in Genesis that the whole process of creation takes place in seven day's and something different and unique happens on each day of creation and the consummate day for the Jew is never the six day it is always the seventh so that the ultimate day is the seventh day the ultimate day is the six day and what day are we made not on the seventh but on sixth because the seventh day is hallowed, it's made sacred, and I think in that very act in that very work of creation. God is saying something to those creatures that he makes on the six day he's telling us something about our purpose. You as a person made in the image of God has been made for that purchasing been made for that which is a to reflect his and when we realize that we no longer have to wonder who you are and why were here the crisis of identity that so many are facing today is resolved. We are created by God in his image, to glorify him. C taught this series in the 90s. He couldn't see the depth of the crisis we face today but he didn't need to.

These are timeless truths for changing times doctors ProSeries dust glory is a sweeping study tour of the themes and events of the entire Bible is a valuable starting point to help you understand what the Bible says that Darcy believe this is one of the most important teaching tools that later ministries has produced. There are 57 messages in the series and will send you the special edition eight DVD set when you give a donation of any amount to look at here you can find us online@renewingyourmind.org or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343.

Our desire is to build up God's people in the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. We do that by providing the church with teaching resources like this series were grateful for the privilege of serving the church and were grateful for your gifts to this ministry. Thank you will, after God had created all that he had made. He said, behold, it was very good but it wasn't long before one simple act like doing everything. Please join us Wednesday for Renewing Your Mind