Why would God make us like we are?
Q: In what condition did God make Adam and Eve?
A: He made them holy and happy.
(Genesis 1:26–28; Psalm 8:4–8; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24)
Well, he both did and didn’t create us this way. He did create us as we are in the sense that both our soul and body are from God. He made us just as we are in all of our parts. Yet, there is something about our souls that is different from how God made us. He made us holy and happy. Holy and wholly in God’s image, without the stain of sin in us. Happy, totally without the miseries that we are so familiar with and enjoying joy in the presence of God.
For our first passage today, we turn to Genesis 1:26–28. We have looked at this passage before concerning the creation of man. Here we see that God created man, that he created him after his own image, and that he gave him dominion over the earth. In giving man dominion over the created order he was setting him, as the crown of creation over all creation. This is no sinful and miserable creature if God would place him as king under only himself. We face difficulty and misery everyday as we are subject to the rest of the forces of creation, such as famine, disease, and throughout much of the world, wild beasts. These all are things that were given to our first parents to happily rule over. Psalm 8 affirms this truth, saying, “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet…” In an age where many look on mankind as a scourge to creation, we must look back to Genesis 1:31 and remember. Remember, it was only after God created man, and gave him dominion over creation, was God’s assessment of creation “very good.”
The writer(s) of the catechism at times assumed a level of Biblical knowledge that I recognize that I can’t assume today. They assumed that people would know that being made in the image of God is to be holy. Rather than making that same assumption, I’d like to point to a couple of extra passages to show its Biblical basis. The first of these is Colossians 3:10. Here we see that being renewed in knowledge after the image of God involved putting off sin and taking on righteousness. To be fully in the image of God is to be holy. This reality undergirds Paul’s statement in Ephesians 4:24, where he tells us to put on the new self, “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” So, whatever else we say about man today, we must say that when God created man after his own image, he made him holy.
When we look at mankind today, both in ourselves, and the world at large, we see so much sinfulness and misery. It is hard to believe that we haven’t always been this way, but we haven’t. We were created as body & soul unions that were holy and happy. If you believe that the holiest and happiest you will ever be is in heaven, free of your mortal body, this reality creates some problems for you. God did not create man to be disembodied spirits. He created us body and soul and we were truly holy and truly happy. That is why the Christian hope, is not ultimately in heaven, but in a restoration of the holy & happy image of God in us in the Resurrection. We await the restoration of all things in the resurrection, our holiness and happiness among them.
Yours in Christ,