When fully in God's likeness, we will be able to fulfill our awesome
responsibility of exercising dominion over - of assisting Him in
managing - the vastness of His creation.
In Genesis 1:26, God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according
to Our likeness"-the plural "Us" and "Our" denoting both God the
Father and the Word who would later be born in the flesh as Jesus Christ
(John 1:1-3,14). What is meant by God's image and likeness here?
Most importantly, God made us like Him in qualities of mind, such as
abstract thought, emotion, creativity and planning. But the underlying
Hebrew words used here concern actual form and appearance. The
word tselem ("image") has the sense of a statue, while demuwth ("likeness")
refers to physical resemblance.
Yet, as John 4:24 tells us, "God is spirit." The Greek word translated "spirit" here
and elsewhere in the New Testament is pneuma. In the Old Testament,
the Hebrew word translated "spirit" is ruach.
Both these terms can also mean "wind." Because wind is formless, some
argue that immaterial spirit cannot have form and shape. Yet in many
places in Scripture God and angelic spirits are described as having
bodily form. Thus it is apparent that spirit must be able to have form
and shape-and God the Father and Christ have the same form and
shape as the human beings who are patterned after Them on a lesser,
material level.
