Genesis 1:26,27 - Male and female He created them

1:26

We now come to the creation of man. The Hebrew word for man is “adam” and later becomes his name.  This part is referring to the whole of mankind. In my comments on the previous two verses I focused on the similarities between man and the other creatures, here we focus on the differences. Man is made in God’s image, this alone makes us unique from all other creatures. In the understanding of the day, the image of a god contained the essence of the god that it represented. “Likeness” indicates a resemblance in substance. We are not gods, and a large part of the human problem is that we like to live as if we are gods, but we do resemble God in some way, and have something of the character of God. Because of sin this image is badly distorted and corrupted, but if we want to see what we are meant to be like, then we should look at Jesus. One key characteristic is that we were created to rule over the rest of creation. Now we can jar at this. Why? Again because of sin. Because of sin we see numerous examples of evil rule of varying degrees, so we associate ruling with selfishness and exploitation of others. This is not what godly rule is like, and, as always, Jesus shows us what godly rule is meant to be like.

1:27

“Male and female He created them”. This is so important, especially in our day when society seems to be denying any real difference between male and female, denying the importance of biology. Male and female were created equal but different, and in God’s creation they complement each other perfectly. In a fallen world we complement each other with a number of difficulties! Yet we do still complement each other. And see how our male and femaleness is so closely tied in with our being made in the image of God. That is probably the prime reason why there is such an attack on this. There have always been attacks on this. In the past it usually came in the form of men exploiting or oppressing women, instead of treating them as equals. Today it comes in the form of trans-ideology.