“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
Oh, as I’m reading Genesis 1:27, I’m just overwhelmed in a fresh way by the wonder of how you and I have uniquely been created, apart from anything else in the world, you and I are created. Just think about this. We’re created in the image of God. What does that mean, like in the image of God because we know that God is holy. There is no one like him so he is obviously different from us, other than us but this text is clearly reminding us that God has made us to image himself, basically, to exist in unique relationship to him with the capacity to know him, with the capacity to relate to him, like you and I have been created for relationship with God.
Yes, he’s different from us. But he wants us to know him and enjoy him and love him and experience his love for us, like this is what we’ve been created to do, to walk with God, in relationship with God. We are created in the image of God which means we are not created to imagine ourselves apart from God or autonomous from God. Like I don’t want to do anything in my life autonomous from God. I want to do it all in communion with God, relationship to God.
We are created uniquely in God’s image and are meant for relationship with Him.
This Verse Explains That We Were Created In God’s Image
See your life this way today, you were created uniquely with the capacity to know and love and enjoy and worship and relate to God all day long. Like you are not intended to live a life separate from God or distant from God. You are created, I was created … Just think about this. To know the God of the universe. The God who created everything around us in the world. You and I can know him, can worship him, can hear from him, can speak to him and this is what prayer is all about so oh, what greater privilege is there than this to say right now God, we look to you. We speak to you and even right now we know you, the God of the universe are listening to us.
You’ve created us in your image with this capacity to be with you, to speak with you, to communicate with you, to hear from your word, to cry out from our hearts to you to share our burdens and our hurts and our cares and our concerns and our requests and our needs, along with our adoration, our affection and our love and our worship and our praise. Therefore oh God, help us, we pray, to experience this wonder of communion with you, of relationship with you.
Genesis 1:27 Prays For People To Still Be In His Image
God, I pray for every person who’s listening to this right now. God, please keep us. Keep us all from dead monotonous routine religion. Because this is not what we’ve been created for, that almost treats you like you are distant from us. Like yes, we praise you for your holiness and your complete otherness. However, we praise you for the privilege of knowing you, of being in relationship with you so help us to experience that. So God, I pray for that in my own life today, I pray for that … Every single person who’s listening to this, God, help us today to enjoy the fruit of being made in your image. So help us to enjoy being in relationship with you. In Jesus’ name, that’s possible, so in Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
