And please turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Genesis chapter 1. Today we are going to resume our study of the book of Genesis by looking at chapter 1, and I'm only going to read verses 26 through 28 of Genesis chapter 1, but I also want to read a few verses from chapter 2. We will read chapter 2, verse 7, and then skip down to chapter 2, verse 18, and read to 24. But we'll start in Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, and let's join our hearts together in prayer once again before we hear God's Word. Our Father and our God, we thank you that in the fullness of time you sent forth your Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law and to reconcile us to you. We thank you that Christ has purchased our redemption and that by your Spirit you effectually apply that redemption. to us through the means of grace. Lord, through the reading and preaching and hearing of the holy scriptures this morning, we pray that you would reveal Jesus Christ to us as our savior, our redeemer, and that you would cause us by your spirit to love him, to worship him, and to serve him with all our might. And we ask this in his holy name, amen. Genesis chapter one and beginning in verse 26. Beloved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, let us hear the word of God. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness 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. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And now Genesis chapter 2 and verse 7. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature. Verse 18, then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper, a fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them and whatever the man called every living creature that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. This is the word of God. And this morning I want to focus our attention once again on God's creation of man, male and female, in His own image. And one thing you may have noticed as we read through these verses from Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 is that the creation of Adam and Eve is recorded in two different places in those chapters. The first record is in Genesis 127, which records their creation in the form of a general statement. Genesis 127, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. That's the first record of their creation. The second record of Adam and Eve's creation is in Genesis chapter 2, which gives us a more detailed account of how God created the first man and woman. God formed Adam and subsequently Eve at particular times through special and direct, that is, non-evolutionary acts of creation. Genesis 2 makes it clear that Adam and Eve had no pre-human ancestry. They did not gradually emerge but were created by an immediate, that is a direct, act of God. God formed Adam's body out of the dust from the earth and then he formed Eve's body out of a rib from Adam. Now it is interesting that God did not form Eve's body from the dust like He did Adam's body and the other animals that He created on day six, but He formed her body from the substance of Adam's body. God formed Eve's body from the substance of Adam's body. And the unique way in which God formed the woman is connected to the unique relationship that God intended and did establish between the woman and the man. Adam and Eve are one flesh. She is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. as Adam put it in Genesis 2.23. And that union, that one flesh union between Adam and Eve is the same union that God forms between a man and woman when they are united in marriage. Now that's the significance of Adam's statement in Genesis 2.24 that, quote, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Because Adam and Eve were one flesh through a special act of creation, a man and his wife become one flesh in their marriage union. Through the bond of marriage they are no longer two, but one flesh, as our Lord Jesus said in Matthew 19 verse 6. Now the point is that the relation that God established between Adam and Eve in the beginning God created Adam, subsequently Eve from the substance of Adam, and established a relationship between them. And the relation that God established between Adam and Eve in the beginning is paradigmatic for the marriage relation in general for all mankind, for all human history. It's the paradigm, it's the prototype, it's the model according to which all subsequent marriages in human history are to conform. There is an inseparable link between the biblical doctrine of marriage and family and the special acts of creation by which God formed Adam and Eve. Consequently, if we reject what scripture teaches us regarding the creation of Adam and Eve, then we have no theological basis for the Christian doctrine of marriage and family. The two stand or fall together. Now it's important that we get the biblical doctrine of creation right because a lot rides on it. Not only that, not only the biblical doctrine of marriage and family, as important as that is, but a lot rides on it. It is in fact really the theological foundation for the whole Christian religion. And that's not an overstatement. It's especially important that we understand the biblical doctrine of man as the image of God, the imago dei, to use the Latin phrase, the image of God. We should note that Genesis 1, 26 and 27 contain A unique and unparalleled statement. You won't find it anywhere else about any other creature in the Bible. God says in Genesis 126, let us make man in our image after our likeness. That's not stated of any other creature anywhere else in scripture that God made. Man and man alone is the image of God. Man, by which I mean male and female, and man alone is the image of God. And for that reason, man plays a unique role in history, unparalleled by any other creature on earth, and even unparalleled by any other creature in heaven. Man plays a role in history that's unparalleled even by the angels of God in heaven. Man and man alone is the image of God. Now what does this mean, image of God? Let us make man in our image after our likeness. Well, the word image should bring to mind a reflection. If you look in a mirror, you see your image, you see your reflection, your image. Man is God's reflective image. The word image should also bring to mind a copy or a replica of an original. Man was created as an earthly copy or replica of the uncreated divine original. God is the divine, uncreated, original man as his image, as image of God, is an earthly created living reflection and replica of God. He's the image of God. He's a replica. A replica, of course, is not a clone. It's not an exact copy, but it is an analog. At the creaturely level, Man, as image of God, replicates God whose image he bears. The image of God, we should also say here, is not something that man possesses, it's not something that man has, it's what he is. He is the image of God. In other words, the image of God is not merely a component of our humanity. It is constitutive of our humanity. It's not something that is in us, that's a part of us, that can be abstracted from us, taken away from us. It's what we are as human beings. We are the image of God. Now a few chapters later in Genesis, we notice that there's a connection between the concept of image and sonship. As the image of God, we are sons of God. And those two concepts are parallel to each other. They are twin concepts. To bear the image of something is to stand in relation to that thing as son. Now, that notion is clear, I think, in Genesis chapter 5, if you want to flip over to Genesis 5 and look at verse 1. Genesis 5 verse 1 says, this is the book of the generations of Adam, when God created man, it's echoing Genesis 1.26, 27, Genesis 2.7, when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God, verse 2, male and female He created them, that's a direct echo of Genesis 1.27. And He blessed them and named them man when they were created. Now look at verse 3, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth. Image and sonship are twin concepts, they're parallel to each other. The father-son relation between Adam and Seth, who's the image of Adam, is analogous to the relation between God and man, the image of God. Man stands as created, man as man, man as created, stands in relation to God as his son. For God to create him as his own image means that God created him in relation to himself as son. So image of God and son of God are twin concepts. And since man, and man alone, is the image of God, he stands in a unique relation to God, a relation that is not shared by any other creature on earth. He's the son of God. Now, not the Son of God in the eternal uncreated Son of God sense, but He is the created Son of God. Now, that's the reason Luke chapter 3 and verse 38 calls Adam what? It calls Adam the Son of God. Now, Adam, of course, is not the eternal Son of God, but He's the created earthly copy or replica of the eternal Son of God. He's created to reflect the image of the eternal Son of God. That's his nature. And that's also his destiny. He's destined to reflect it in an even higher sense, as we're going to see. So we can put it this way, the second person of the Holy Trinity, there's one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son is the second person of the Holy Trinity. The second person of the Trinity, the eternal and uncreated Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father. furnishes the pattern or the archetype for man as image of God. He's created in the image and likeness of the eternal son of God. The eternal son of God is the original. Man is the earthly created replica or image of that original. And man's nature or status as son of God is the basis of his unique relation to God he alone sustains of all the creatures on the earth, and his unique role in history, unique to him, to him and him alone, unique to him, it's not even shared, it's unparalleled even by the role of the angels in heaven. He has a very, very important role to play that's unparalleled by any other creature. The concept of the image of God defines the nature of man, that's what He is. He is image of God, created as God's image. And it also defines His eternal destiny. Now to help us understand the concept of image of God, I want to point out three things and the first one is the only one I'm going to develop today, God helping us next Sunday. I'll come back and explain the second and third of these. But I want to point out three things today. The image of God brings into view, number one, man's moral agency. Number two, man's moral excellency, his moral character, our nature. He is morally excellent in terms of his nature, his character. And three, man's royal mandate. So number one, his moral agency. Two, moral excellency. And three, his royal mandate. So first of all, this is the one I'll focus on today. The image of God brings into view man's moral agency. Human beings are moral agents. When God created man, he created them with reasonable, that is rational, and immortal souls. Human reason and immortality set us apart from other earthly creatures. Man is a rational creature. Now, I know that's sometimes hard to believe, especially if you've known many of them, but use your imagination. And you gotta think back before the fall, not talking about how irrational we can be today, but I'm talking about man as man, originally created. Man is a rational creature. When God formed man, he endowed him with reason. He gave them rational and intelligent souls. In fact, they had a highly, highly developed intelligence from the very, very beginning. Their knowledge of God, their knowledge of themselves, and their knowledge of their environment was extensive. They didn't know everything, of course. They could learn more. But from the moment they knew anything, from the moment that they were conscious of their own existence, from the moment they knew anything, they knew a lot because God had implanted knowledge in their minds. Now you can see that in Genesis 2, we read those verses earlier where we are told that Adam named all of the animals. God brought all of the animals that He had created before Adam and Adam, whatever He named them, that was their name. His knowledge, Adam's knowledge of the created world was extensive. Where did he get that knowledge? He got it from God. How did he get it? He got it because God implanted it in his mind from the beginning. He had it from the moment he knew anything. He knew those things. He was born with that knowledge, created with that knowledge. The soul of man, which God imparted to him when he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, Genesis 2.7, was and is a rational and immortal soul. It's not only rational, but also immortal. The death of a human being, which is not natural to our nature. It's very, very important that we understand that. Death is not natural to humanity. Death is, Scripture is very clear on this and it is absolutely vital that we understand this because the whole of the Christian religion stands or falls on this. Death is the penal consequence of sin. The death of a human being is not the death of his soul. A person's death is not the end of his existence. At death, the body and soul are separated. God formed man from the dust of the ground, Genesis 2.7. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and as a result, man became a living being, a living creature. He was, from the beginning, a body-soul unity. Death is not natural to us as human beings. The separation of body and soul is unnatural. So man from the beginning is a body-soul unity and at death the body and soul are separated. The body returns to the dust from which it was made. Dust you are and to dust you shall return, God said to them in Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. But even though the body returns to the dust from which it was made, that's not its final state. It's only temporary. It's the temporary state of the body until the end of the world. The soul, however, upon death, it does not cease to exist. It's immortal. The soul changes locations. And for the believer, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That's where the soul of the believer goes immediately at death. It goes to heaven. His body decomposes and returns to the dust from which it was made and it awaits the day of resurrection when it will be raised in power and honor and glory just as the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was raised on the third day in power and honor and glory. In the resurrection also the soul is reunited with the body and that reunion is permanent, it's indestructible, it's irreversible, it can never change. The resurrection of the body and its reunion with the soul Not only, I'm speaking here of the believer, the resurrection of the believer's body and its reunion with the soul, not only reverses the curse of death, which came upon man as a result of sin, but it advances the nature of man from an earthly state to a heavenly state. When Christ was raised from the dead, the nature of his resurrection body and soul was that it was no longer in an earthly mode of existence but a heavenly mode of existence. And so shall it be with us whenever we are raised from the dead at the end of the world. So it won't simply bring us back to that original state that Adam and Eve were in prior to the fall, but it will advance us to a higher state, a heavenly state. In other words, the resurrection at the end of the world advances the image of God. from an earthly mode to a heavenly mode of existence. The image of God you see, and this is what I really want you to understand, the image of God is not a static thing. It's not an unchangeable thing. It's not static, it's dynamic. It can and does change. It could have, before the fall, it could have advanced from an earthly mode to a heavenly mode had Adam been obedient to God. but it also could have changed in the other direction. It could have devolved from a state of innocence into a state of sin and that is in fact what happened to it because of the fall in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve sinned against God and that had an effect on their nature, that had an effect on their status as image of God. When man sinned, he did not lose his moral agency. He still has a rational and immortal soul. The mind of a fallen man can and does reason, think, and choose. And so the mind of a fallen man still has the faculties of thinking, feeling, choosing, But the problem is the mind of the fallen man is at enmity with God. It is hostile to God. It thinks and feels and chooses contrary to the will of God. The point is that man as the image of God is a moral agent and he does not lose his moral agency in the fall, but his rational faculties are now entirely disposed towards sin. Not partially disposed, but entirely disposed towards sin. To say it in other words, his mind is enslaved by sin. It's under the enslaving power, the controlling power of sin. Sin is the controlling force that drives his rational nature. Now I'm talking about a fallen man in a state of sin, an unregenerate man, a man who has not been regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God. Now that becomes clear, it becomes clear that the mind of the fallen man is under the controlling power, the enslaving power of sin. That becomes clear in the following chapters in Genesis. We look at Genesis chapter 6. By the time you get to Genesis chapter 6, this is crystal clear because in Genesis 6 verse 5, what does God say of man and the mind of man? Genesis 6, 5, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and notice this, that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. He didn't lose his rational nature, but this is what became of it in the fall. This is what happened to it in the fall. Now the Apostle Paul echoes that same notion in Romans 8 verse 7, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot. The mind that is set on the flesh and under the dominion of the flesh, that is the fallen nature. under the dominion of sin, it's hostile to God, it doesn't submit to God's law, it can't, it cannot submit to God's law. So man is the image of God as a moral agent, and his moral agency is not eradicated by the fall, but it becomes radically and pervasively sinful. Fallen man thinks, he feels, he chooses, but every intention of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually. Now, one theologian by the name of Cornelius Van Til put it this way. He compared the mind of man to a buzz saw, by which he means a skill saw, circular saw, you know that saw, the loud one that your neighbor uses early in the morning when he's working on his fence. It's purely hypothetical, not that this has ever happened to me, by the way. But a skill saw, if the mind is like the skill saw, after the fall, the skill saw is still there, but something is wrong with it. It's set at an angle. It's not set at a 90 degree angle anymore. It's set at an angle, a different angle. And every time it cuts, it cuts in a crooked way. It still cuts. It still functions. He still has it. He still has his rational nature. but it's always cutting in the wrong direction. Now, regeneration, what the Holy Spirit does to us when he unites us to the Lord Jesus Christ through spirit-gifted faith and he brings us from death to life, regeneration does something to our minds. It does something to our rational nature. Our rational nature is regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God. What does that mean? It means he fixes the buzzsaw. He resets it. He sets it back the right way, so that the mind reasons properly. Only the mind of the regenerate man can reason properly. Without that, it cannot, it will not, because it always will reason contrary to the will of God, except what God, by his common grace, allows him to do. Now, the Apostle Paul explains the difference between the regenerate mind and the unregenerate mind in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, rather, where Paul says this, 1 Corinthians 2, 12. Now, we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God so that we might understand. the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. Now listen to this, the natural person, this is the person who's unregenerate in a state of sin, whose mind is under the enslaving controlling power of sin. The natural person does not accept the things of God, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him." Now listen to this, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The Holy Spirit must regenerate our rational nature, renew it for us to understand the things of the Spirit, the things of God. But that thanks be to God is what the Spirit of God does for us when he unites us to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this is part of our nature as image of God that is restored in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is affected by the fall because sin has power over our rational faculties, has control of our rational faculties, but we are delivered from the dominion of sin and we are renewed in the image of God and we are able to reason properly now in accordance with the will of God and the revelation of God.