First, God created man according to His image and gave man the authority to rule over the creatures that were in the air, on the earth, and in the water. God gave man dominion over the sea, the land, and the air. We want to see a little concerning this matter of image and dominion. If you carefully read the Bible, you would see that Christ is the image of God. Therefore, the fact that man was created in the image of God means that man was created according to Christ. Man is the image of Christ. What is an image? An image is an expression. For God to have an image means that He has an expression. Christ being the image of God means that Christ is the expression of God. Man being the image of Christ means that man is the expression, the manifestation, of Christ. God is in His Son that His Son might be His image as His expression. God also created us according to His Son that we may be the image of His Son as the expression of His Son. After we are saved, the one thing God wants to do in every one of us is to cause each one of us to be conformed to the image of His Son. This work is not only a work of conformation but also a work of transformation. From the moment we are saved, the Holy Spirit within us, in coordination with the outward environment, transforms us daily so that we become more and more like Christ. Ultimately, when the Lord returns, we will be changed from the inside to the outside, from our spirit to our body, to be exactly like our glorious Lord. Then we will be wholly the same as Him. What is this for? This is for us to express Christ. To express Christ is to express God. God in Christ comes into us as the mold to conform us to His very form so that we may be His living image to express Him.
On the other hand, by reading the Bible we can also see that God’s dominion is placed completely upon Christ. God gave Christ dominion over the whole universe so that Christ would have all the authority in the heavens and on earth and would act as God’s representative, vested with full authority. We thank God that because we have believed in Christ, received Christ, and been joined to Christ, His authority has become our authority. On the day when Christ comes back to the earth to be King, the overcoming saints will be co-kings with Him to reign together with Him. Before that day arrives, the overcoming saints and the overcoming church must reign and rule over all things on the earth today with Christ in their spirit.
Therefore, the image of God is upon Christ, and God’s authority is also upon Christ. The One who can express God is Christ, and the One who can represent God is also Christ. However, not only is Christ such a One, but today all of us who are in Christ are also such persons. Every one of us has the image of Christ and the authority of Christ. It is in Christ that we express God and represent God. God gave us His image in Christ, and God also gave us His authority in Christ. It is in Christ that a proper believer or a proper church has the image of God and the authority of God. Under normal conditions, people should be able to see God’s image and expression in us, and they should also be able to see God’s authority and representation.
Perhaps you would ask what this has to do with building. What I want to say is that in the beginning God created only one man in His image and wanted only one man as His representative. He did not create many men in His image, nor did He want many representatives. God did not create many Adams; rather, He created only one Adam. We must realize that the Adam whom God created was not merely a single Adam but a collective Adam. When Adam was created, were you and I in him? We all must acknowledge that when Adam was created, we were all in him. The Adam who was created was not a small Adam but a great Adam, a collective Adam, a corporate Adam. God did not want many individual Adams to be His image and to represent Him individually. Rather, God wanted the many Adams to become a great Adam collectively to be His one complete image and His one corporate representative. This implies the principle of building.
In this universe God wants only one collective image and one collective representative. God’s intention is not that you would be an image, I would be an image, and another would also be an image. No, God’s desire in Genesis 2 was that the descendants of Adam who were in Adam would all be the one unique image of God. Through this we can see the matter of building.
We all know that every saved person is an image of God. This is right. However, we may have the concept that, as saved ones, we are individual images. I am an image individually, and another brother is also an image individually. Therefore, if there are 20,000 saved ones, then there are 20,000 images of God. This kind of concept is wrong. We must remember that regardless of how many thousands of saved ones there are, there is only one collective image and one collective representative. Both the image and the representation are in one great person. This is building, and this is coordination. We are not the many individual images of God. Rather, in our assembling together we are built together and coordinated together to become a great person as God’s one complete image. If in the beginning God had created twenty-eight Adams or a hundred Adams, then today we could suggest that it would be all right for us to say that we are individually God’s images. However, in the beginning God collected millions and millions of Adam’s descendants and put them all in Adam to make them a great Adam as God’s image. This image of God and representative of God is not the many scattered individuals. Rather, it is the one complete, great person, a collection of many, many persons to be God’s unique image and unique representative in the universe. This is the building, the coordination, and the oneness.