I told you changes were coming. Here's the first. Each Monday I am going to roll out what I call a God First, Man Second reminder. My whole goal here is to take verses from the Bible and ask the following questions; what does this say about God? Secondly, what does this say about man? I believe the order is important, because asking who man is first will yield us very different answers. Let's get started.
Genesis 1:26-28
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
These verses, the whole chapter in fact, say a lot about God. You might recall that after every day, God looked at His creation and declared it good. That tells me God is good. He doesn't seem to be the good-enough kind of guy.
Oh, and He is Creator. That tells me He is creative, because I was never going to dream up the duck-billed platypus. I just wasn't.
And God is Ruler. One can only grant rule to someone else if he has it to give. God gives it to us, so He must have had it Himself.
This, in turn, tells me that man was created good, was given a purpose, and we have it in ourselves to create. We're not number one in this story, but we've been dealt a pretty stacked deck, in our favor.
Had we asked these questions the other way around, we might have assumed that we are the center of the universe, something that many of us already do conclude. We're mistaken. Very mistaken.
God first. Man second.
Genesis 1:26-28
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
These verses, the whole chapter in fact, say a lot about God. You might recall that after every day, God looked at His creation and declared it good. That tells me God is good. He doesn't seem to be the good-enough kind of guy.
Oh, and He is Creator. That tells me He is creative, because I was never going to dream up the duck-billed platypus. I just wasn't.
And God is Ruler. One can only grant rule to someone else if he has it to give. God gives it to us, so He must have had it Himself.
This, in turn, tells me that man was created good, was given a purpose, and we have it in ourselves to create. We're not number one in this story, but we've been dealt a pretty stacked deck, in our favor.
Had we asked these questions the other way around, we might have assumed that we are the center of the universe, something that many of us already do conclude. We're mistaken. Very mistaken.
God first. Man second.
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