In today’s post I would like to look at the glory and honor, the significance with which the eternal God initially bestowed upon mankind in creating men and women in His image and likeness for His glory, such that we would live lives that proclaim, display and magnify the beauty, majesty, excellence and goodness of God within intimate relationship with Him and one another, while enjoying and exercising dominion over all of the natural creation (Genesis 1:26-31)(Isaiah 43:7).
Psalm 8:1-9 was written by King David, who was proclaimed by God to be a man after God’s own heart. The Psalm provides us in verses 4 – 8 a summary statement of the glory and honor, the significance in which man was created, such that God would entrust the care of all of His creation not to immensely powerful angels, but to man, whom the angels would serve (Psalm 91:10-11).
The Psalm begins and ends with King David’s proclamation of the majesty of God, of His majestic name that is to be known throughout the earth, in all nations, by all peoples, throughout human history. God’s name was revealed to Moses as “I AM” or in Hebrew, Yahweh, which represents all that He is in the totality of His eternal being and King David says here that He is majestic (Genesis 3:13-14). The word majestic is a term used most often to describe that which has qualities of splendor or royalty. It describes an inherent beauty, power and excellence in someone or something that provokes in the observer fear and reverence, awe and wonder, as well as excitement, pleasure and delight. We speak of majestic mountains or a majestic sunset or of the majestic appearance of someone of great power and dignity.
King David’s primary intention here in Psalm 8, as it is in the multitude of other Psalms he wrote, was to glorify God; to proclaim, to exalt, to magnify Him for who He is in the infinite majesty and magnificence of His person, and thus reveal Him to be the most glorious, most desirable, most excellent, most essential, most awesome, most valuable being in the universe, the creator and sovereign ruler of that universe, and thus worthy to be known intimately, loved supremely, trusted explicitly, obeyed perfectly, worshiped exclusively and enjoyed eternally by and above all of His creation.
Although aspects of God’s glory would be displayed and magnified in the immensity of His vast and glorious universe, in the earth’s natural wonders, and in His angelic host, God’s glory was to be seen most clearly by all of creation, and by God, in the faces of His image bearers, men and women endowed with glory and honor, with the perfection of being necessary to know, love and be loved by God and one another.
Adam and Eve in their original state, BTF (Before the Fall), were the most magnificent, most significant and praiseworthy of all of God’s creatures in every aspect of their being. In Genesis 1:27-28, we are told that upon creating man and women in His image and likeness God blessed them, meaning that He conferred favor upon them, endowed them with all that was necessary for their happiness and wellbeing in Him.
Although God in his eternal state does not have a physical body, (John 4:23-24), He chose to create men and women with a distinct physical body that would display outwardly the beauty, excellence and magnificence of God’s infinitely glorious Being. We are told in Genesis 2:25, that the bodies in which God clothed Adam and Eve were so exquisite, so magnificent, so beautiful in appearance that it did not need to be covered or adorned with clothing as they were essentially clothed in the glory of God. Their bodies would have had the capacity, the ability to fully enjoy all of the pleasures and delights of the magnificent world and grand universe God created for man to enjoy.
They were endowed with an intellect, a will and emotions – just like God. They would have the capacity to think and reason and the capacity to experience, evaluate and regulate their emotions. Their will would be free to make moral, intellectual and practical choices, consistent with the nature and character of God, and to communicate and act on those choices through their physical bodies.
Like God, they would be relational beings, capable of knowing, loving and being loved by God and one another intimately and personally without fear or shame. They were created as moral beings with God’s righteous nature and character which would be displayed through their own unique and individual personality and talents. They would love and delight in what God loved and delighted in, finding their greatest joy, pleasure and satisfaction in what God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit found their greatest joy and pleasure and satisfaction in – namely the infinite perfections of God. Essentially, as beings created in His image and for His glory, God would enjoy us enjoying Him and one another.
God thus not only endows them with the beauty, glory and honor of His person, but grants them two glorious privileges, two divine responsibilities through which they will display His glory (Genesis 1:28).
He first commissions them to be fruitful and multiply, to procreate through sexual union between the man and the woman, within the context of marriage, a race of people conceived in the image and likeness of God to populate the earth (Genesis 2:24) (Matthew 19:4-6). All of their offspring, all of the human race that would proceed from them, would also therefore be endowed with glory and honor, with the perfection of being in which Adam and Eve were created by God.
Secondly, He commands them to exercise dominion -rule – authority –over the earth and all other forms of life on the earth so that all creation would fully glorify God and so that man could fully enjoy every aspect of God’s good creation. Under man’s dominion, all of God’s creation would live in peace. All varieties of plants, animals and trees as well as the very earth itself would live in perfect harmony with and obedience to man, as man lived in perfect harmony with and obedience to God, trusting in His infinite goodness, wisdom, power to bring about our eternal joy and happiness in Him.
However, it should be clear to anyone who has eyes to see, ears to hear and a mind that has not yielded to the insanity of what the Bible refers to as this present evil world (Galatians 1:4), that most of nature opposes man’s rule and dominion, and that the men and women who populate this world today bear little resemblance to those who were naked and unashamed.
So, the question becomes, to what or to whom do we owe this cosmic tragedy, this universal fall from grace that afflicts the whole world? God willing, we will look at the answer to this in my next post.
Grace and Peace ×