By Humphrey Mtandwa
The book of Genesis shows the creative process of how God called light out of darkness and how he created the animals, plant life, sea life and creeping animals. God spoke and things became, but when he got to man, He said let us make man. The process He used to fashion man was different from the process He used to create other beings. The Bible states that He said He would make man after his own image and likeness.
Genesis 1:26 (KJV) “And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
The question many people fail to ask is what is the image of God or what does the word likeness really mean? When you look deeply into the meaning of these words, you will discover that the word image means resemblance. So as man, we resemble God. When you look at yourself you are looking at the image of God, but what’s strange about that scripture is that God looked at that man he had made in His image and he said he was good. But when you read the second chapter, the man had no body as yet. Could it be the image God was referring to was the man he created in chapter one of Genesis and not the person in chapter two? When you look into the word you discover that man is not the body, but the body houses the man. So could it be the body is not the one fashioned in the image of God, but the Spirit of a man.
The writer of the book of John said God is a Spirit and those that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. So God is a spirit and Him being a spirit created us in His image. Looking again at the word likeness it means similitude. The word similitude means a quality of state that makes beings similar to each other. So we not only resemble God but we also are created in His similitude.
If man can only identify himself and who he really is we would not live the lives we live and the world would not be in the state it is. God used just His word to create this world we see and after that He created the world He said to use “I have made you in my image”. So in essence, God was saying what I did you can do. No wonder man is so fixated at making or creating life. The challenge is man are going about the process wrongly. We have focused on the outside that we have lost focus on our true nature. We have been made in His image and given this body as a tool to use on the earth. Even without the body, we are still alive. We need this body only to function in this world. If only we can discover His true nature in us. The Psalmist said you are gods and in that scripture he was lamenting how men walk in darkness and in despair when they are gods and should not be limited by anything in this world. We have been made in the image of God and after his likeness so that we dominate our environment by that nature and unless we wake up to the reality of who we are, we will continue to be dominated by our environment. As man we have the same creative capacity God has, but because we are focused on the flesh or our housing, we will not fully realise who we really are ….. it’s time to wake up to who we really are.
God bless you.
- Humphrey Mtandwa is an anointed minister of the gospel and teacher of the Word based in South Africa. He has written several books including The Enoch Generation, Truthfulness and Theophany. He blogs at mtandwa.blogspot.com and can be contacted via e-mail or WhatsApp on +27 610286350.
