God created man in His image and according to His likeness so that He would work Himself in Christ into us and make us the same as Him to be His corporate expression on the earth. Hallelujah!
Throughout the Bible we see that God’s intention is with man, His thought is focused on man, and His heart’s desire is set upon man. Man is not merely a creature – man is very important, and God’s intention and desire is related to man.
The Bible doesn’t tell us why, but God loves man, God became man, and He wants to make man God in life and nature but not in the Godhead so that He can gain a corporate expression in humanity on earth.
Man is not an afterthought; man is not a poor and vile creature; man is not merely for this earth – man is for God, and man was made in God’s image and according to His likeness to receive the life of God and express God.
The Bible reveals to us that God has a plan, an economy, and in His economy He wants to work Himself into man so that man would become the same as God in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
On our side, we simply need to be proper men, believers in Christ who have the life of God and live by this life, cooperating with God so that He may work Himself into us a little more each day.
Our desire shouldn’t be that we would be like God; it is an evil thought that we would be God, but it is a divine thought and intention that God would make us the same as He is.
The apostle John tells us that, when we see the Lord, we will be like Him (1 John 3:2); this means that right now we may look the way we look and be the way we are, but when we see the Lord, we will be like Him, for we will see Him even as He is.
God created us in His image and according to His likeness so that we as men would fulfill His plan, express God, defeat His enemy, and bring in the kingdom of God into the human race.
May we give up and put aside any desire to be like angels or like God; may we realize how important it is to be a man, and may we cooperate with the Lord’s inner work to make us the same as Christ as the many sons of God.
As men, we are the means for God to manifest Himself, we enable God to move on the earth, and we are the means of God’s administration. When we as men cooperate with God, He has a way to move, to manifest Himself, and to administrate.
God made us in His Image to Work Himself into us and make us the Same as He is to Express Him
Genesis 1:26 tells us God’s intention in creating man, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.
Man was made in God’s image and according to His likeness; in a general way, we may say that man looks like God, but actually this verse means more than that.
In the Bible there’s a mysterious thought concerning the relationship between God and man (see Gen. 1:26; Ezek. 1:26; 1 John 3:2; Rev. 4:3 21:11).
According to our natural thought, we may think that God is a supreme Being in the heaven, and He is omnipotent and omniscient, while we are a little creature on earth; we seem to be like two streams that never meet.
But as we read the Bible we see that there’s a mysterious connection and relationship between the supreme God and the little creature man.
We are told that, when the Lord returns, we will be like Him; we are not merely creatures – we are made in God’s image, and He will make us the same as He is.
God wants to be the same as we are, and He wants to make us the same as He is, so that God and man, man and God, would be thoroughly blended, mingled, and incorporated together.
God’s desire is to become the same as man is and to make man the same as He is. His intention is to work Himself in Christ into us, making Himself the same as we are and making us the same as He is (see Eph. 3:17).
He does this not by some kind of outward maneuvering or arrangement but by working Himself in Christ into us. He doesn’t outwardly correct or modify us but rather, He works Himself into us to dispense Himself into us and inwardly transform us to make us the same as God is.
He Himself became a man in His incarnation two thousand years ago; He became just like as, and through incarnation He brought God into man, and through death and resurrection He brought man into God.
He became a life-giving Spirit to enter into all God’s chosen people to regenerate them, sanctify them, renew them, transform them, conform them, and eventually glorify them, to make man the same as God is.
The whole Bible shows such a mysterious thought concerning God’s relationship with man.
Even before God made man, He held a council among the Three of the Godhead, and a unanimous decision was made: Let Us make man! This “Let Us” reveals that there was a meeting, a council, and the three decided to create man.
God did His creating work in the first five days; He called light into being, He separated the waters above from the those beneath, He caused land to arise, He created the cattle and the birds and the fish, and on the sixth day God said, Let Us make man….
The creation of man was a deliberate action, a decision made in the Godhead unlike His work with all the other creatures. There must have been a discussion, a council between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and a decision was made to create man.
The decision to create man was made in eternity past, indicating that the creation of man was for the eternal purpose of the Triune God (Eph. 3:9-11).
In eternity past God intended to have man for the fulfillment of His purpose to manifest His multifarious wisdom through the church. God’s intention in creating man was to carry out His divine economy for the dispensing of Himself into man (1 Tim. 1:4; Rom. 8:11).
God created man in a special way to be a vessel for Him to come in and fill man with Himself. In every aspect man was compatible with God; He used the dust of the ground to form man’s body, then He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (thus man’s spirit was formed), and man became a living soul.
There’s a spirit in man, something that was breathed out of God’s mouth and is close to God (but it is not God), so that man can be a vessel to contain God and carry out His economy. Hallelujah!
Thank You Lord for creating us in Your image and according to Your likeness so that we may be a vessel for You to come in, work Yourself into us, transform us metabolically, and be expressed through us! Hallelujah, we have a spirit, and God as Spirit can come into our spirit to regenerate us and then inwardly transform us to make us the same as God in life, nature, expression, and function, but not in the Godhead! Amen, Lord, we open to Your dispensing and to Your transforming work; make us Your corporate expression on the earth!
God Created us in His own Image, according to His Likeness, to Express Himself through us
There’s a deeper significance to this seemingly simple statement, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness (Gen. 1:26).
Man was created by the Triune God in Their inward image; the image of God is Christ as the Son, the expression of the invisible God, in the essence of His attributes such as love, light, holiness, and righteousness.
According to Col. 1:15 and 2 Cor. 4:4, Christ is the image of God; God Himself is invisible, but Christ is the invisible God being made visible. Jesus the Son of God came to express God’s attributes in His human virtues.
Image refers to the inward image of the essence of God; it mainly refers to the attributes of God, the essence of what God is. When an attribute of God is expressed, it becomes an image; strictly speaking, we as men don’t have the attributes of love, light, holiness, and righteousness, but we do have these virtues.
In us there’s a yearning and desire to love others, to be in the light and walk in the light (and thus we hate darkness), to be holy by being separated from anything sinful and uncommon, and to be right with others and with ourselves.
When Christ lived on earth, the attributes of God were expressed in His human virtues; He expressed God in full.
The first positive item in God’s economy is to have man in His image and according to His likeness for man to be one with Him so that He may express Himself in humanity.
Jesus was made, or created, in God’s image and according to God’s likeness; when He entered into a human womb, Christ joined Himself with the created man, Adam, and thus was created by God.
The Triune God is a constitution of all His attributes; the totality of His divine attributes is God’s inward essence, what God is, and this essence needs an expression – this is His image.
The image of God is embodied in Christ; all the fullness of the Godhead is embodied in Him. For man to be made in God’s image is not a small thing, for it involves all of God’s divine attributes, which are replicated in man to become His human virtues.
Man was made according to God’s likeness, the form of His being. Christ laid aside the outward likeness of God but not the essence of God (Phil. 2:6-8), and He was found in fashion as a man.
God’s image, referring to God’s inner being, is the expression of the inward essence of God’s attributes, the most prominent of which are love (1 John 4:8), light (1:5), holiness (Rev. 4:8), and righteousness (Jer. 23:6). God’s likeness, referring to God’s form (Phil. 2:6), is the expression of the essence and nature of God’s person.
Man is not so low as we may think; man was created in God’s image and according to His likeness; we have God’s form, we bear His attributes, and we have the capacity to contain and reflect all that God is in His attributes. God created man to be a duplication of Himself so that man may have the capacity to contain God and express Him.
According to 2 Cor. 4:6-7 we are earthen vessels containing a glorious treasure, and by beholding Him we reflect the glory of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). We common men can reflect the glory of the Lord!
We are men in God’s image and according to His likeness; we do not come from monkeys, for no other created animal has the capacity to receive God, contain God, and express God but man.
God made us in a special way because He wants to make man the same as He is, His duplication, to be totally one with Him and be His expression and representation on this earth.
We are made in God’s own image so that through His economy we may receive His life and nature and thereby become His expression (1 Tim. 1:4; John 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:4; 2 Cor. 3:18).
Because we were created according to God’s kind, our human virtues have the capacity to contain the divine attributes (10:1; 11:10).
For God to create man in His image means that God created man with the intention that man would become a duplicate of God, the reproduction of God, His corporate expression; this reproduction makes God happy because it looks like Him, it speaks like Him, and it lives like Him (John 12:24; Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:10; 1 John 3:1-2). Hallelujah!
We are such ones – we’re not just individual men but a corporate man who looks like God, speaks like God, and lives like God; such a man makes God happy, because God can now have a corporate expression on the earth!
The first man, Adam, failed to express God and represent Him, but the second man, Christ, came and fulfilled God’s purpose in expressing and representing God.
On the cross, this One created a one new man, a corporate man, which is the church, His Body, to continue the Son of God as the first God-man. Now we are here as the one new man to continue the first God-man in expressing God and representing Him!
Hallelujah, God created man in His own image and according to His likeness! Thank You Lord for creating us in Your image with the human virtues to contain and express Your divine attributes. Thank You for creating us according to Your likeness, the form of God, to look like God and express God. Thank You for coming into us to regenerate us and be one with us. Amen, Lord, fulfill Your purpose in us and through us – gain Your duplication and reproduction for Your corporate expression! Gain the one new man that looks like You, speaks like You, and lives like You to express You on earth!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. James Lee for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1991-1992, vol. 1, “The Central Line of the Divine Revelation,” chs. 5-6, 9, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The One New Man Fulfilling God’s Purpose in Creating Man (2019 fall ITERO), week 1, God’s Eternal Purpose and the One New Man.
- Hymns on this topic:
# God has made man on the sixth day in a special way. / In God’s image and God’s likeness, man was formed from clay / With a spirit, soul and body, a three-part man / God’s vessel was this man. (Song on, In eternity, in the beginning)
# “Consider Him,” let Christ thy pattern be, / And know that He hath apprehended thee / To share His very life, His pow’r divine, / And in the likeness of thy Lord to shine. (Hymns #656)
# When Thou first didst man create, / Thine own likeness to possess, / Thine intention was that he / Take Thee in and Thee express. / Be the person of our heart; / Manifest Thyself through us. / Build the saints into Thine house / That we’d bear Thine image thus. (Song on, Lord, Bring Forth the One New Man)
About aGodMan
