Image Bearers of God: Status and Purpose | Genesis 1:26-31
Introduction
I feel like one of the worst feelings you can have is not to know what you are supposed to be doing in a particular situation. Has that ever happened to you? That feeling that you have been put somewhere—maybe as a volunteer at an event, maybe it’s a specific project at work, maybe you showed up to help some friends move, and nothing is packed and just empty boxes are lying around—and you are just not sure what you’re supposed to do in those moments. It’s clear there is a project going on here, but you aren’t sure what your role is or what success would look like. What is my goal in those moments? What should I be doing? You think, “Please! Someone point me in the right direction!”
Until I became a parent, I didn’t realize how much humans need to be trained and taught what to do in every single situation. I was a third-grade teacher for two years, so of course, I knew people didn’t naturally know their multiplication tables or how to spell. Still, for some reason, I thought that if I showed someone how to pick up toys and put them in a bin, the next time I said, “Let’s pick up your toys!” they would surely just naturally take them to the bins. Nope. Sometimes I would even be met with looks of incredulity, as though my child was thinking, “Whoa–how did these toys even get here?! Who did this?” So, for what felt like the millionth time, I would walk my kids through what it looked like to pick up and where to put things.
We like to think that is just a kid problem, but sadly, it isn’t. I wore my glasses today because, truth be told, I am running out of contacts. A couple of months ago, Katie came back from Costco and said my prescription had run out, and I needed to get an eye appointment—and I forgot. I didn’t do my job and didn’t remember that if I didn’t do that job…Then I got to wear glasses again for weeks until I got the new prescription. We all run into this. We forget our jobs all the time—taking out the garbage cans on trash day, emptying the dishwasher, making our beds, or even caring for our friends and loved ones well.
But I think the problem often goes deeper than just forgetting. Go back to that original question: How many of us really know what our job is—our job here on this earth? Sure, we know some of the tasks we have been given, where we go, and what we do to earn a paycheck, but do we know our purpose? Do we know the identity we have and the job we have been given? I think we often don’t. Many people have not been told the grand purpose of why they have been put on this earth. Or, as we mentioned, we quickly forget. As a result, we do the equivalent of standing around like those friends at the moving party with no boxes packed and ready, hands in our pockets, unsure of what to do next.
Image Bearer Recap
That is one of the amazing revelations we are seeing here in Genesis 1. From the very beginning, God is not only revealing to us his grand plans in creating all things for his glory and his purposes, but he is telling exactly why he has created us—men and women, his people that he put here on this earth.
Last week, we started looking at day six of creation and God’s creating men and women in Genesis 1:26–31:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and 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.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
(Genesis 1:26–31 ESV)
We see here the beauty that God is not JUST creating man and woman, but he is creating us very specifically in his image. We are made in God’s very likeness, and as we said last week:
To be made in the image of God means that we reflect what is true about God in limited human form.
And
We were meant to rightly show the invisible God visibly.
Being made in the image of God means many amazing things for you and I, but what we see most clearly from Genesis 1 is that being image bearers means 1) we are in relationship with God and 2) we have a status (or roles) and purpose, and lastly, 3) this is all true for us even today because we have a God who covenants with us.
Image Bearers: Relationship with God
Image Bearers: Status and Purpose
The God Who Covenants
Last week, we focused on this first point—that because we are made in the image of God, we have a special relationship with God. He is our good Father, and we, in turn, are his beloved sons and daughters. And because all of humanity—men and women—have the very image of God placed on us and in us, we all have inherent value.
Image Bearers: Relationship with God
Type of Relationship: Sons & Daughters
Value of Relationship: Inherent Worth
Image Bearers: Status and Purpose
The God Who Covenants
All of God’s statements about his creation of humanity in Genesis 1 are about our grand UNITY and SAMENESS, not our differences. Men and women, all of God’s people in all our diverse ways, were meant to walk with him as sons and daughters and carry with us an inherent value because of the beauty of our Father imprinted on us!
Today, we turn to this second idea that also comes from being image bearers of God—the idea that we all have a specific status (or roles) and purpose because our God created us as he did. And we are going to see that as image bearers we have a very special status—we are Royal Priests! We are both royalty—kings and queens taking after our father, the great King, and we have a second status as priests. Our God and Lord Jesus Christ is THE Great High Priest, and God asks us to take a role as priests as well. From these dual roles and status, we have a great purpose: We are to have dominion over all God created as kings & queens, and we are to guard and protect what he has told us and his creation, and in doing so bring him worship as his priests.
Image Bearers: Relationship with God
Type of Relationship: Sons & Daughters
Value of Relationship: Inherent Worth
Image Bearers: Status and Purpose
Status/Role: Royalty & Priests
Purpose: Have Dominion & Guard and Protect
The God Who Covenants
Father and King
But let’s remember something important before we dive into these image-bearer qualities today. Our sonship and daughterhood, as well as our status and roles as king-priests and queen-priests, only come because of WHO our GOD is. As we saw last week, our relationship with God as beloved children comes from HIS Fatherly love for us. He created us, he intimately breathes life into us, and he invites us into a relationship with himself as those in his likeness—image bearers. The same is true for these two roles as kings and queens and priests.
First, our God is THE King! You may not have thought about that as we read Genesis 1 over these past few sermons, but this God who answers to no one, this God who can create by his very words and commands, this God who oversees and initiates all of creation—this God is THE king. Scripture attests to this again and again!
“For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm!”
(Psalm 47:7 ESV)
“Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory! Selah”
(Psalm 24:10 ESV)
And, importantly, we are told this is who Jesus is as he comes to his people in the New Testament. Paul describes Jesus to Timothy as:
“[Jesus] the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.”
(1 Timothy 6:15–16 ESV)
But second, our God deserves worship as priests. We are to guard his good words and ways, and we are to praise him first and foremost because of who HE is! This is what the twenty-four elders in Revelation 4 say:
Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”
(Revelation 4:11 ESV)
Both our status as royalty and our status as priests come because of who God is first. We inherit these roles because of his character, not because of anything inherently special or worthy about us. Much like a prince inherits his father’s kingdom or a son takes over the family business, we too are given these things because of our great God and HIS amazing glory.
Little Kings and Queens
Now, it is likely not a leap for you to see God as King and even Jesus as God’s perfect king embodied. As we come to Christmas and the Advent season, one of the main images we think about is the king born in the lowly manger. Yet I think many of us don’t think often about our role as God’s little kings and queens. If God is King, then being in his image means we are little kings and little queens. We are princes and princesses, the royal family of the Most High King. Our sonship and daughterhood not only bring us into a familial relationship with God, but it means we are part of the same royal family with him.
That may be a new idea to many people. But that is precisely what we see here in Genesis 1:26–31. When God blesses mankind—men and women—and tasks us with a role, the first thing we see is our royal purpose. We call this section the Dominion Mandate because it is a mandate that helps outline where mankind is to have a reign or rule. Listen to this section again:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
(Genesis 1:26–31 ESV)
That language or subdue and have dominion is exactly the language of royalty. And as we said last week, we can see humanity's royalty even in the pattern of how God reveals the sixth day and the creation of men and women in this Genesis account. We noted last week how this section begs us to see how something unique and different is happening on day six when God creates mankind. Part of that difference is that, as God’s crowning achievement, his last act before resting, humanity is meant to be seen as his most important and most special creation. After creating a space and place for his people, God creates his people and gives them rulership over the creation he has made as his living images and viceregents over the earth.
And if you ever doubted this about our role, we are in luck! Psalm 8 is a commentary on this idea in Genesis 1:26–31. Listen to what the Psalmist says:
To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
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, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
(Psalm 8:0–9 ESV)
The Psalmist is marveling at what God did from the very beginning, at creation. There, in the first moments of creating his people, the Psalmist says that God “crowned” us, gave us “glory”, gave us “honor” and put “all things under his feet.” Each of those is a royal image, a picture of the kingly and queenly role God has called us to.
Priests
But that isn’t the only status we have or role we are given as image bearers. We are also given the role of priest. This is another idea that may be foreign to many people, but the language here in Genesis 1 and 2 is meant to make us see that this role and status were given to humanity from the very beginning. Especially for Israel, as they were wandering in the desert and establishing the tabernacle and priestly roles, they would have seen the connections to the priesthood immediately in reading Genesis 1 and 2.
When God summarizes this Dominion Mandate he gives in Genesis 1:26–31 when we see the account again in Genesis 2, he says very succinctly:
“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
(Genesis 2:15 ESV)
God’s summary of everything he said to mankind in the dominion mandate is summarized simply as to “work” and “keep” the garden of Eden. Those two words are not an accident. They come back in Numbers 3. As God is giving Moses the commands for how to make the tabernacle of God he also gives commands about the priests. He says to Moses:
And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Bring the tribe of Levi near, and set them before Aaron the priest, that they may minister to him. They shall keep guard over him and over the whole congregation before the tent of meeting, as they minister at the tabernacle. They shall guard all the furnishings of the tent of meeting, and keep guard over the people of Israel as they minister at the tabernacle. And you shall give the Levites to Aaron and his sons; they are wholly given to him from among the people of Israel. And you shall appoint Aaron and his sons, and they shall guard their priesthood. But if any outsider comes near, he shall be put to death.””
(Numbers 3:5–10 ESV)
You can see those same two words—guard and keep—again as part of the duties and roles of the priests. In fact, they are the same words God uses in Genesis 2:15. God’s people, men and women, are given the role of priests by God as well as kingly and queenly duties of dominion. Like the priests guarded the temple and the holy dwelling place of God and kept his words and ways, so too men and women were to guard the holy dwelling place of God—Eden—and keep his words and ways. In fact, that is exactly how Ezekiel talks about Adam:
You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created, they were prepared.
You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you.”
(Ezekiel 28:12–15 ESV)
Adam is described as adorned like the high priests of the temple and tabernacle with jewels on him like the high priest’s ephod (or garment). Additionally, Ezekiel 28:18 alludes to the sanctuary or temple of God being profaned at the time when Adam and Eve sinned.
Eden: An Ever-Expanding Temple of God
There is an amazing and astounding picture that should begin to come into view for us as we start to notice all the implications of being an image bearer of God and what God is doing in creation!
God, our King and Father, was creating HIS kingdom. A place specifically for his people who would imagine him as their sons and daughters and as little kings and queens. God’s people were meant to take this area, Eden, and, like our Father, rule over it and expand it. We were to have our own little image bearers (that is what it means when it said we were to be fruitful and multiply), modeling like our Father that we would create others and bring others into this process with us. But this was more than just a garden or simply a building project!
God’s very presence was there in Eden from the beginning, hovering over it, and God himself walked with his sons and daughters in this garden. Eden was a temple, a sanctuary where the very presence of God was with his people. Eden was the first temple of God where his people met with him and knew him. And as God’s image bearers, his people were given the job of both expanding the temple grounds across the entire earth, acting as creative kings and queens, but also protecting the holiness of God and his very words and ways as his priests. That is why the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil becomes so important. It signifies their priestly duties to keep God’s words and ways.
This motif of God’s created temple on this earth, filled with his king-priests and queen-priests walking in his presence, comes back again and again in Scripture. This is exactly why we see God give instructions for the tabernacle and temple as one of the first things he does as he recreates a people for himself in Israel. He is bringing his people back into their role as those who guard his place and expand his kingdom outwardly as his priests. We see this in the tabernacle and temple, which are both adorned inside with garden imagery. We see this as the temple is placed on a hill in Jerusalem, just like Eden was on the top of a hill. We see this in the lampstand, which is an image of the tree of life. The imagery connections happen again and again.
And this is where everything is headed! In Revelation 21 through 22, in God’s recreation, he alone has recreated the new heavens and the new earth and brings down a new Jerusalem, a new dwelling place, onto a mountain, which will be his dwelling place with his people. But we are told now there is no temple in Revelation because:
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
(Revelation 21:3–4 ESV)
“And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”
(Revelation 21:22 ESV)
God has finished the project in Revelation, and now the entire earth and the entire cosmos are filled with his presence! Everything is temple!
Jesus: High Priest and King
Friends, you do not need to wonder about your job! And if you have forgotten it, come back to it again today! From the very beginning God created you and I and all of humanity to be his sons and daughters but also to be king-priests and queen-priests, those who expand his kingdom as much as possible across this great earth as we go out and spread the glory of God. And that is what we lost in sin! In sin we no longer rightly image God. We no longer truly act as his sons and daughters, and we have lost our kingly and queenly reign and no longer guard and protect his ways rightly as his priests.
That is why Jesus came not only to die for our sins, but to be THE GREAT King and High Priest. We are told Jesus came in the order of Melchizedek, a king and a priest:
“This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life [as a King].
For it is witnessed of him, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”
(Hebrews 7:15–17 ESV)
Jesus came to both expand God’s kingdom as a king and to offer true worship through sacrifice as he guarded and protected the very righteousness of God as his High Priest. And that sacrifice was himself.
You and I are now called back into that role through Jesus!
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
(1 Peter 2:9–10 ESV)
Now in Jesus, through faith, you and I get to walk again in our very status and purpose before our God. Not only as sons and daughters, but as king-priests and queen-priests who can rightly expand God’s kingdom and guard and protect his ways as true worshippers of God.
Conclusion/Application
This has so many implications for you and me. We know our job! In everything we do, we are now in Jesus Christ, we are given the status and purpose of continuing to expand God’s kingdom and to work as his royal priests who help the world to rightly see God now, AND come to walk again with him as renewed royal priests.
Now you may be wondering, how do “I” do this? I don’t have an important job. I don’t have the authority to take over any land or nations, let alone the TV remote! I don’t have a job at the church, so I’m not a pastor, so how am I supposed to be a royal priest? All those concerns are not really a problem! In Jesus, we have been given a new mandate as Jesus conquered sin and death and has brought you and me back into our right status and purpose again with our King and God. Matthew 28 is actually a recommissioning of God’s people, a new-creation Dominion Mandate. And remember what Jesus says:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
(Matthew 28:18–20 ESV)
We exercise our royal priestly role now as we go forth and make disciples. We expand God’s kingdom through the renewed hearts of people as they come to faith in Jesus Christ as his royal priests to minister to them. That is something each and every one of us can do!
And we can do that because now WE have the very Holy Spirit and presence of God with US! Things are even better now than before! Now, instead of there being one place like Eden or one place like Israel with the tabernacle or temple where we have to bring people to so they can see God, you and I are each the very temple of God with his Holy Spirit within us. Together as a church we also get to image the very temple of God to the world around us. And we get to share the beauty of who God is with everyone we meet.
That means in every place God has placed you, you get to act as royal priests. In your family you get to help expand the very kingdom of God as you share with them the beauty of who God is and guard and protect his ways. We do this with our neighbors, in our jobs, and with every unbeliever we come into contact with. You and I are now God’s mobile temples with the very presence of God on us and in us that we might be spreading his kingdom and temple in a thousand directions at any given moment. We are God’s plan to begin to build his kingdom and temple across this earth today until that moment when he comes again and decisively makes this entire earth and this entire universe the very temple of his presence!
That should be a breathtaking picture! And it may be a bit of an overwhelming and new picture—don’t worry! We will get to look at these images again and again in Genesis. Our job in this in-between moment, between the first creation and the recreation, is to retake our place as beloved sons and daughters, royal priests, working alongside the Holy Spirit to expand God’s place and reclaim his people. We are taking part in the great expansion of our God’s kingdom not through physical territory or through the daily slaughter or goats or lambs, but through the work or engaging lost image bearers that they might see our worship of God and magnify him themselves. That is amazing!
That means that our motto and summary of Scripture here at Main Street:
Love God
Love Others
Make Disciples of Jesus
is exactly what sons and daughters, priest kings and queens do today!
Main Street, to the degree you walk with your Father and your King, and to the degree you worship him as the God worthy of all praise, bring others into that with you. Each and every one of us can do that today. And, this is why it is so important that we all keep encouraging one another and we continue to grow and learn, because we want to not only be better sons and daughters who love our Father rightly, but we also want to live out our status a kings and queens, and rightly work out our role as priests rightly keeping God’s words and ways.
Response
I think today would be a great day for us to respond in corporate prayer. Remember, when we say corporate pray we mean praying out loud to God together. Yes, pray to God that we might remember our status and purpose, or even that today, here at Main Street, someone will grasp onto the beauty of what Jesus is offering them for the first time. But also, let’s put on this role of royal priests and stand before our God petitioning him and worshipping him this morning in prayer!
This is a great way for us to model our royal priestly role—to offer praise and worship up to God together. And there are so many things we could say in prayer and praise to God!
Today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. We have brothers and sisters today who are persecuted for trying to live out the image of God we have been talking about these last two weeks. We can pray for those being persecuted right now. We can pray for those who will be persecuted in the future. We can even pray for those who may be persecuted and afraid to live out the image of God, and don’t even know it—in the workplace, in schools, in many different spheres of even OUR culture here in Boise.
We can lift up a prayer for those in physical need today. Statistically, everyone here in this room and in America lives in the top percentage of money earners in the world. Yet even people here have difficulties. Pray for those with physical needs today—needs for money, needs for physical health, needs for friendship.
And most importantly, praise our God who made all things and is making all things new again despite the sins of his people. Praise our God that he provided a way back to Himself through Jesus Christ!
Communion
Benediction
“I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.”
(1 Timothy 6:13–16 ESV)
