The Creation of Humanity
The creation of humans is God’s last act of Creation, at least in the
Genesis account. Humans are the culmination of the whole earthly
Creation, the purpose for which the earth was made.
Read Genesis 1:26–29 and Genesis 2:7. What is the connection between
these two different versions in regard to the creation of humanity?
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That God has created humans in His image is one of the boldest
statements of the Bible. Only humans have been created in the image
of God. Though “God made the beast of the earth according to its kind”
(Gen. 1:25, NKJV), “God created man in His own image” (Gen. 1:27,
NKJV; emphasis added). This formula has often been limited to the
spiritual nature of humans, which is interpreted to mean that the “image
of God” is understood to signify only the administrative function of
representing God, or the spiritual function of relationship with God or
with each other.
While these understandings are correct, they fail to include the
important physical reality of this creation. Both dimensions are, indeed,
included in the two words “image” and “likeness” describing this pro-
cess in Genesis 1:26. While the Hebrew word tselem, “image,” refers
to the concrete shape of the physical body, the word demut, “likeness,”
refers to abstract qualities that are comparable to the divine Person.
Therefore, the Hebrew notion of the “image of God” should be
understood in the wholistic sense of the biblical view of human nature.
The biblical text affirms that human individuals (men and women) have
been created in God’s image physically, as well as spiritually. As Ellen
G. White clearly comments: “When Adam came from the Creator’s
hand, he bore, in his physical, mental, and spiritual nature, a likeness to
his Maker.”—Education, p. 15.
In fact, this wholistic understanding of the image of God, including the
physical body, is reaffirmed in the other Creation account, which says
that “man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7, NKJV), literally, “a living
soul” (nefesh), as the result of two divine operations: God “formed” and
God “breathed.” Note that the “breath” often refers to the spiritual dimen-
sion, but it also is closely tied to the biological capacity for breathing, the
part of the man that was “formed . . . of the dust of the ground.” It is the
“breath of life”; that is, breath (spiritual) and life (physical).
God will later perform a third operation, this time to create the
woman from the body of the man (Gen. 2:21, 22), a way to emphasize
that she is of the same nature as the man.