Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, 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.
Many preachers believe that we bear God’s image in respect to possession of an innate immortality endued to all mankind. “The argument stands thus: God is immortal; man was made in the image of God, therefore man is immortal. The syllogism, however, proves too much, for it assumes that, because man was made in the image or likeness of God, man must be like God in every respect; else why select immortality from among the attributes of Deity! God is from everlasting, He is Almighty, Unchangeable, Infallible, etc. Shall we, therefore, reason that, because man was made ‘in the image of God’, he must be like God in these qualities! If not, why select immortality as the point of resemblance! There is nothing in the context pointing out this kind of resemblance, and we would naturally expect that the point or points of resemblance would be of a palpable kind. The connection in which the words stand would lead us to fix on some characteristic distinguishing man from the other creatures, and in which he bears some resemblance to God. The resemblance, whatever it is, can only be so in kind, not in degree.” (Immortality–The Gift Of God Through Faith In Jesus The Christ by William Laing)
“But,” says the Preacher of the Assembly, “Truly, this only I have found: that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” (Eccl 7:29) Because of the Fall, we need to be made new. “As the new creation is only a restoration of this image, the history of the one throws light on the other; and we are informed that it is renewed after the image of God in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness (Col 3:10; Eph4:24).” (Jamieson, Fausset, Brown)
A Sermon to Refute the Immortality of Mankind — Excerpt from "Immortality–The Gift Of God Through Faith In Jesus The Christ" by William Laing (from The Bible Standard August 1878)
“Endowed by his Maker with powers distinguishing him from all other earthly beings, and elevating him far above them, and fitted to control and subdue them, man was divinely constituted the lord of the world. Having the right of dominion over earth, and all upon it, he thus far resembled God—the Ruler of all. That man is not, by creation, an immortal being is clear from the penalty threatened him for disobedience. ‘The LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of. Eden, to dress it and to keep it; and the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die.’—Gen. 2:15-17. The penalty threatened was death. But an immortal being cannot die. This is so self-evident, that those who maintain that man is, by nature, immortal, in order to make the penalty threatened square with that idea, interpret death to mean endless life in misery!
It meant, say these divines, 1st. Death temporal; that is, the death of the body till the resurrection, and the separate existence of the soul during that time "in an intermediate state of misery and shivering anticipation of worse." 2nd. Death spiritual or deadness of feeling toward God, associated with active hostility to His authority, and intense desires towards all that is evil. 3rd. Death eternal or eternal life, to the reunited soul and body, in most excruciating torments, to all eternity.
All this was threatened to Adam by the words, ‘Thou shalt surely die’. How strange! Surely had God meant to punish Adam so severely, He would have pronounced the doom in plain, distinct terms, or added the necessary explanation? But we have no record of any explanation being given; and as we cannot imagine that Adam was skilled in metaphysics and systematic divinity, we cannot suppose him to have understood ‘death’ to mean all that. It was death that was threatened to the living soul, Adam. ‘Thou’—not thy body merely— ‘thou shalt surely die,’—cease to be a living soul. That which sinned was to die. And so we find it expressed in the sentence passed upon Adam after his sin: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread until thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’—Gen. 3:19. Is it possible for language to express more unambiguously and emphatically, that, because he had sinned, Adam—the man formed out of the dust of the ground, and into whose nostrils God had breathed the breath of life—was doomed to die—to be resolved into the original elements whence he came! Verily, no. At the very morning of human history, we see verified the divine fiat— ‘The wages of sin is death.’
In confirmation of the foregoing statement of man's original nature and penal condition, we point to the fact of his banishment from the tree of life, and the reason assigned for that enactment. Man was driven out of Eden ‘lest he should put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever,’—language quite meaningless if Adam was an immortal being, and could never die, but most expressive in the light of the facts as we have set them forth. ‘Thou shalt die’; ‘dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’ The tree of life in the midst of the garden, which Adam was appointed to dress and to keep, was endowed with such life preserving qualities, that it prevented dissolution, and imparted immortality to those who partook of its wonderful fruit. Had man stood the trial to which he was subjected, this tree of life would have made him immortal; but we know how he fell, and was driven beyond its reach, to toil and moil in suffering, sorrow, and decay, till life's brittle cord snapped asunder, and he returned to dust!” [End of article]
What is the meaning? “‘Let us make man.’ The thought is intimate and personal, and carefully considered. Here will be one who has connections with the infinite, and Heaven is called on to consider this special act of creation, and indeed to participate in it to some extent, for it will affect them too. But as Genesis 1:27 makes clear, ultimately it was the act of God Himself. So the next question that this verse raises is, who is the ‘us’? The answer is not difficult. We can compare its use in Isaiah 6:8 when God is surrounded by seraphim. The writer could only have in mind the spiritual beings, called in the Old Testament ‘the sons of God’ (Genesis 6:2; Job 1:6; Job 2:1; Job 38:7 - see also 1 Kings 22:19 etc; Isaiah 6:2 etc), from whom came His messengers (‘angels’) that He would send to earth, and one of whom was Satan himself (Job 1:6). In Hebrew the term ‘sons of --’ indicates not those who have been born from, but ‘those who are connected with’ or sometimes ‘those who behave like’. Thus these ‘sons of God’ are those connected with the sphere in which God operates rather than in the sphere in which man operates.... This brings out the meaning of the remainder of the verse. Man was to have the ‘image and likeness of the heavenly beings, of the elohim’. While the word ‘elohim’ usually means God it can, as we have seen, also refer to ‘out of this world beings’ e.g. 1 Samuel 28:13. Man was thus to have heavenly status and a spiritual and moral nature capable of communion with God, of active choice and of moral behaviour. While in one sense an earthly creature, bound to earth, he would also have a spiritual nature which could reach into the heaven of heavens.” (Peter Pett)
“‘In our image,’ Word Study on ‘image’ - Strong says the Hebrew word ‘image’( צֶלֶם ) (H6754) means, ‘a phantom, i.e. (fig.) illusion, resemblance; hence a REPRESENTATIVE FIGURE’... [“The word image can... be used of something that represents something else.” (Wayne Grudem)]— 'according to our likeness'— Word Study on ‘likeness’ - Strong says the Hebrew word ‘likeness’ ( דְּמוּת ) (H1823) means, ‘resemblance.’…”(Everett's Study Notes) Man is called to be a representative head or resemblance of God “allied to heaven as no other creature on earth is…. This precludes all pantheistic notions of the origin of man.“ (Albert Barnes) — “Let them (male and female) have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Gen 1:26b) "Man was made, then, to represent God to the lower creation over which he was set.” (F. B. Hole)
Dominion is also to be over fallen man, but not in an aggressive or arrogant way. “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ (Gen 1:28) “According to the account of creation in Genesis 1, the chief purpose of God in creating man is to bless him. The impact of this point on the remainder of the Pentateuch and the author’s view of Sinai is clear: through Abraham, Israel and the covenant this blessing is to be offered to all mankind. (John Sailhamer)
“And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.”(Gen 5:3)Just as it was with God, here it is with man’s offspring. Both “image” and “likeness” are used. We have children that bare our image— good or bad. “The only other person who has ever displayed the perfect image of God is Jesus Christ, whom Colossians 1:15 calls 'the image of the invisible God' and 'the exact representation of His being' (Heb 1:3).” (Broken Images by Lita Sanders) We are all "being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Cor 3:18)
Jesus first gave us natural bodies, and to those who overcome, He will give a new spiritual bodies. (1 Cor 15:44) Herein is immortality of man found—>
“And so it is written, the first man Adam "became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.” (1 Cor 15:45-49)
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