Jesus: From Genesis to Revelation

Day 3: Day 6: Let Us Make Man in Our Image

Reading

Historical Context

Everything in Genesis 1 has been building to this moment. Five days of forming and filling – light, sky, land, vegetation, luminaries, sea creatures, birds – have constructed an elaborate stage. Now the audience is about to meet the lead actor. But before the act of creation occurs, something unprecedented happens: God pauses to deliberate.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Genesis 1:26).

Every previous creative act has followed the same formula: “God said, ‘Let there be…’ and it was so.” The pattern is command and instant result. But here the formula changes. The impersonal “Let there be” becomes the intimate “Let us make.” The distant command becomes a deliberation. Something different is about to happen, and the grammar itself signals it.

The plural – “Let us… in our image” – has generated centuries of debate. Three main interpretations have been offered. First, God may be addressing the heavenly court, the angelic beings who serve as his council (see 1 Kings 22:19-22; Job 1:6; Isaiah 6:8). This is the most common reading in Jewish scholarship. Second, the plural may be a “plural of majesty” or “deliberation,” a rhetorical device in which a speaker includes himself in a broader we. Third – and this is the reading the early church embraced almost universally – the plural reflects the inner-Trinitarian conversation: Father, Son, and Spirit deliberating together before the creation of the beings who will bear their shared image. The church fathers did not claim that Moses understood the Trinity. They claimed that the Trinity was present whether Moses understood it or not, and that the New Testament revelation makes audible what Genesis 1:26 whispered.

The Hebrew word for “image” is tselem, which in its broader Old Testament usage refers to a statue or representative figure. In the ancient Near East, kings placed images of themselves (tsalmu in Akkadian) in distant provinces to represent their authority where they could not be physically present. To be made in God’s tselem is to be God’s representative on earth – his visible agent in the world he has made. The word for “likeness,” demuth, adds the nuance of correspondence or resemblance – not physical appearance but functional and relational similarity. Humans are made to reflect God’s character, exercise his authority, and live in communion with him.

The commission that follows is royal: “And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (1:26). The Hebrew verb radah (“have dominion”) is the language of kingship. Humanity is created as God’s viceroy – ruling the created order not by exploitation but by representation. The king rules on behalf of the one who appointed him. Dominion without the image is tyranny. The image without dominion is passivity. Genesis holds them together.

Then comes the refrain for the final time, and it changes: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (1:31). Not merely “good” – tov me’od, exceedingly good. The Hebrew is emphatic. The only superlative in the chapter is reserved for the completed creation with humanity at its center. The world with its image-bearers is not just functional. It is beautiful. It delights the Creator.

Christ in This Day

Genesis 1:26-31 is the theological foundation for the incarnation. The God who made humanity in his own image will one day take on that image himself. If humans are made to bear the tselem of God, then the incarnation – God becoming human – is not a category violation. It is a homecoming. The image-bearer and the image-giver meet in a single person.

Paul identifies Christ as the true and perfect image of God – the tselem that Adam bore in part and that sin distorted: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). The Greek word eikon (“image”) corresponds directly to the Hebrew tselem. What Adam was meant to be – the perfect visible representation of the invisible God – Christ is. Hebrews 1:3 intensifies the claim: the Son is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” Not a partial likeness. Not an approximation. The exact imprint. In Christ, the image of God that was always intended reaches its full expression.

The plural “Let us” finds its deepest resonance in the Trinitarian nature of the incarnation. The Father sends the Son. The Spirit overshadows the virgin. The same “us” that deliberated over humanity’s creation deliberates over its rescue. And the Son who was present when God said “Let us make man” will say of himself, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The one who made the image-bearers will die for them.

The dominion mandate of Genesis 1:26-28 – humanity ruling over the created order – is also a Christological text. Psalm 8 meditates on this passage and marvels: “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands” (Psalm 8:4-6). The author of Hebrews quotes this psalm and applies it directly to Jesus: “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death” (Hebrews 2:8-9). Adam received the dominion mandate and failed to exercise it faithfully. Christ – the last Adam, the true image-bearer, the faithful ruler – fulfills it. He is the human being Genesis 1:26 always intended.

And the “very good” of Genesis 1:31 – God’s delight in a creation crowned by its image-bearers – foreshadows the Father’s declaration over his Son at the Jordan River: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). The delight God expressed over the first creation is the same delight he expresses over the new creation inaugurated by his Son. The “very good” of Genesis 1 will become the “well pleased” of the Gospels.

Key Themes

Connections

Old Testament Roots

Genesis 9:6 grounds the sanctity of human life in the image of God: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” The image survives the fall. Psalm 8 is a meditation on Genesis 1:26-28, marveling at humanity’s exalted position in creation. Genesis 5:1-3 uses the same language of image and likeness to describe the transmission of the tselem from Adam to Seth, establishing a theological bloodline that runs through the rest of Scripture.

New Testament Echoes

Colossians 1:15 identifies Christ as “the image of the invisible God” – the perfect fulfillment of what Genesis 1:26 inaugurated. 2 Corinthians 3:18 describes believers being “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” – the restoration of the tselem through union with Christ. Hebrews 2:5-9 applies Psalm 8’s dominion language to Jesus, the faithful image-bearer who succeeds where Adam failed. Philippians 2:5-8 describes Christ taking the form of a servant – the image of God humbling himself to take on the likeness of the image-bearers he created. James 3:9 warns against cursing people “who are made in the likeness of God” – a direct appeal to Genesis 1:26.

Parallel Passages

Compare Genesis 1:26-28 with Genesis 2:7-8, where the creation of humanity is retold in intimate, ground-level detail. Compare the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:28 with its distortion in Genesis 3:17-19 and its restoration in Hebrews 2:5-9. Compare “very good” in Genesis 1:31 with “well pleased” in Matthew 3:17.

Reflection Questions

  1. The shift from “Let there be” to “Let us make” signals something unprecedented. If the early church was right to hear the Trinity in this plural, what does it mean that you were created by the deliberate, personal, communal decision of Father, Son, and Spirit?

  2. To be made in God’s image is to be his representative on earth. Christ is the perfect image-bearer (Colossians 1:15). In what ways does looking at Christ – his character, his compassion, his authority – clarify what it means for you to bear the image of God?

  3. Genesis 1:31 says God looked at his creation – with you in it – and declared it “very good.” The Father will later look at his Son and say, “with whom I am well pleased.” How does knowing that God delights in what he has made – including you – change the way you see yourself?

Prayer

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – you said “Let us make” and we exist. You stamped your image on dust and called it very good. We worship you as the God who did not create us at a distance but deliberated over us, formed us in your likeness, and gave us a place in your world. Lord Jesus, you are the true image of the invisible God – the image we were meant to bear and have failed to reflect. Restore your tselem in us. Where we have distorted the image through sin, renew it through your Spirit. And give us the courage to exercise the dominion you entrusted to us – not as exploiters but as representatives of the King who made us, redeemed us, and will one day make all things new. Amen.