Choose to love Him!

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27

If you’re like me, you grew up learning about the “fact” of evolution, that it all started in some primordial goo, and after a #gagillion years, monkeys and apes and, ultimately, humans show up. We were taught that we were made of what Carl Sagan called “star stuff.” In my home, my brother, sister, and I were taught that evolution and God could run hand in hand. I remember my mom and dad saying, “God used evolution to create humans.” They said evolution has been proven scientifically, so we had to figure out how God fits into it.

I was young and somehow reconciled it with what I learned in school. Therefore, I simply accepted those words as truth. I never really thought about it again for 30+ years. It is so easy to buy a lie without thinking through the way that lie affects the way we think about and view everything. Without even realizing it, the building blocks of our worldview begin to be laid as children in school and around the dinner table. And it all starts with our view of how we came to be.

As I read the creation account in Genesis 1 in January 2000, I began to think that what I had been taught may not have been exactly true. The Bible presents God speaking everything into existence out of nothing. The verb bara, translated as “create” in Genesis, always has God as the subject. This little fact presents us with a marked difference between God’s creativity and our creativity. We make a pot out of clay while God spoke the clay into existence.

Scripture paints a picture of men and women as the crowning achievement of the entire creation narrative. How wondrous and beautiful it is that we are created in the Creator’s image. What does that mean? Does it mean that God looks like we do? That He has arms and legs and fingers and toes? Not at all.  Our being made in His image has nothing to do with physical appearance. His image in us involves personality and relationships. We have the capacity for self-determination, logic, rational thought, and reason.

Perhaps the ability to choose love is the most significant attribute of being made in His image. We have the ability to love and form relationships. We are unique among all of creation in that we are capable of loving Him, accepting His love, and loving other people. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” What would life be like without the ability to love and to be loved?

The most profound display of love in the history of the world was when the Creator became the created, and in the most shocking act of sacrificial love ever, took on the punishment that was ours, to save us from an eternity in torment. I love the Complete Jewish Bible’s translation of John 3:16, 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only and unique Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may have eternal life, instead of being utterly destroyed.

Being made in His image affords me the ability to trust Him, to believe in Him, to have faith in Him, and to enter into a saving relationship with Him.

Well, what do we do with the truth claim that God created man in his own image? My hope and prayer for you is that you will choose to love Him and to love others.

Father God, what an incredible thing it is that You created and breathed life into humankind as Your image-bearers. Wow! Lord, my prayer today is that I would live and walk in a manner that is worthy of You. I praise You in the mighty name of Jesus, Amen.