Following His selection, God predestinated us (Eph. 1:5; Rom. 8:30). Darby’s New Translation of the Bible translates this word “predestinated” in Ephesians 1:5 as “marked out beforehand.” Have you ever realized that before the foundation of the world you were marked out? You cannot escape God’s hand. I have tried a number of times, but I never made it! The more I tried, the stronger He grasped me. Where will you go to escape God? Wherever you go, He is there (Psa. 139:7-10). Sometimes you may have been bored with coming to the church meetings and decided to go somewhere else. When you got there, the Lord Jesus was waiting for you! This shows that you have been marked out.
After God’s good pleasure, after His plan (arrangement, administration. economy). after His selection, and after His predestination, He came to His creation. The record of God’s creation of man is very brief. There are only two verses. Genesis 1:26 is God’s own word, and the following verse is Moses’ record. In these two verses are three crucial points.
First, verse 26 indicates the divine Trinity. The word Elohim (God) is plural, and in God’s own conversation He uses the pronouns “us” and “our”: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” The pronouns referring to God are plural. It is easy to realize that this implies the divine Trinity.
Some teachers have pointed out that when God said, “Let us make man...,” it was a conversation in a council. The divine Trinity had a council to consider the creation of man. In creating other things there was no such conversation recorded. The making of man, then, must have been crucial. To create the heavens and the earth was not as important as the making of man. Man is the focus of God’s purpose in creation.
Second, only man was made in the image of God and after God’s likeness. The tiger was not made in God’s image; nor was the elephant made after His likeness. Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
Image refers to the inward being; likeness refers to the outward expression. You may refer to Colossians 1:15, which speaks of Christ as “the image of the invisible God.” How can an invisible God have an outward likeness? I cannot explain this. It is a mystery. It is like John 1:14, which says that God as the Word became flesh. In Genesis 18, however, He appeared to Abraham as a man. Abraham prepared water for Him to wash His feet and prepared a meal for Him (vv. 4-8). He appeared again in Judges 13, this time to Samson’s mother. She saw this Man, who, after talking to her and her husband, ascended (v. 20). Here is an ascension before Acts 1! How can we reconcile these portions of the Old Testament with the New? We cannot.
In the same way it is a wonder, a mystery, that God created man in His image. Second Corinthians 3:18 says we are being transformed into His image. Romans 12:2 says we are “transformed by the renewing of the mind.” These verses indicate that the image is something inward, made up of the mind, emotion, and will. The thinking organ, the loving organ, and the deciding organ comprise the inward being. Man is wonderfully made. Even after the fall, man is still marvelous (Psa. 139:14). We are marvelous beings because we were created by God in this way.