“God Formed the Man from the Dust”
The fifth in a series: “I Will be Your God and You Will Be My People.”
Texts: Genesis 2:4-25; Colossians 1:15-23
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In the words of Westminster Seminary professor, Cornelius Van Til, “man is like God in every way that a creature can be like God” (Van Til, Defense of the Faith, 13) Though these words may be shocking to us at first hearing, this is exactly what we find in the creation account when we learn that God created Adam and Eve in his own image. For as God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the very breath of life, God made man to be the creature-king to rule over and subdue the earth which God had made.
As we continue our series on the unfolding drama of redemption entitled, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” we have been working our way through the creation account in the opening chapter of Genesis. We have already covered the six days of creation, as well as the seventh day–that day of Sabbath enthronement when God ceased from his work of creation and occupied the heavenly throne from which he will rule over all that he has made. Once God finished his work of creation when the heavens and the earth were formed, the theater of redemption has now been completed. As the drama of redemption now begins to unfold, the time has come for God to create the man and the woman, the first pair from whom will come the entire human race. And so it is to the subject of the creation of Adam and Eve that we now turn, before focusing in the coming sermons upon the creation mandate given to the first couple to rule and subdue the earth, as well as the Covenant of Works which God will make with the first man.
As we have already seen when we surveyed the six days of creation in the opening chapter of Genesis, Moses has arranged the days of creation into “days of forming” on days one through three, and “days of filling” on days four through six. On day three, God created the dry ground and vegetation, forming the divinely-appointed realm for creatures of the earth. On day six, God filled the realm he had created on day three with the divinely-appointed rulers of that realm, the creatures of the land–the livestock and other creatures that move upon the ground. But on the sixth day, God also made man, the divinely-appointed ruler over all three earthly realms created on days one through three, including the land, the sea and the sky. Man was to rule in all three of the realms of creation.
Before we turn to our text (Genesis 2:4-25), there are several important points of background.
You may recall that in verses 26-28 of chapter 1, we read “then God said, `Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” This account of what took place on the sixth day is important for us because it sets the stage for what follows in chapter two.
As you may know, it is now commonplace for critical scholars to argue that since different names for God are used in Genesis 1 and 2, this must mean that there are two different creation accounts and that at some point quite late in Israel’s history, an unknown editor took these two different creation myths and edited them together in the form we now find in Genesis. If true, this means that the Genesis account was not written by Moses, and the creation account has its origin in the mythical polytheistic world of bronze-age Palestine. Supposedly, this primitive polytheism then slowly evolved into the kind of monotheism of later Judaism we see around the time of David and Solomon, say 1000 B.C. This, of course, does great violence to the biblical text by calling into question the historicity of the entire creation account and the first eleven chapters of Genesis.
Though this is unfortunately the most common understanding of the origin of the two accounts of creation in Genesis one and two, this position quite erroneously and irresponsibly assumes that the two different names for God necessarily implies two different authors who are drawing upon two different creation accounts from two different traditions. What is overlooked is the fact that in Genesis 1, Moses uses the term Elohim for God, quite fitting since this term is derived from a root meaning to be strong or powerful. This is exactly what we would expect in Genesis 1, since the focus in the creation account is upon God who was before all things and who created all things from nothing.
Yet in Genesis two, as Moses shifts from creation to covenant, he now uses the personal name for God–Yahweh–since the focus in this chapter has moved to God’s covenant relationship with the man and woman he has just formed on the sixth day. Far from being an argument in favor multiple authors, the use of two names for God is actually a very powerful argument for a single author, Moses, and for the literary unity in the two chapters. Chapter one of Genesis focuses upon creation, hence the name Elohim is dominant, while chapter two focuses upon God’s covenant relationship with the man and woman, which is why Moses now shifts to God’s personal name, Yahweh (Archer, A Survery of Old Testament Introduction, 126-127). Hence the use of two names for God is fitting and proper.
Another point we need to consider is that we are also told by Moses in Genesis 1:26-28, that both the man and the woman are image-bearers of God, and who, unlike the creatures created before them, were not “created after their kind.” Both the man and woman are uniquely created by God, in a way which is completely unlike the way the other creatures were made on the sixth day. We are also told on day six that the man and the woman were divinely appointed to rule over all three realms created on days one-three and filled on days four through six. Man is to rule “over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” If the literary highpoint of the creation account is God’s Sabbath enthronement on the seventh day, then the high point of God’s creative activity during the prior six days of creation is when God creates the man and woman in his own image on the sixth day, and then gives them dominion over all the visible creation, the land, the sky and the seas, as well as the creatures that fill all three of these realms.
With all of this in mind that we now turn to our text, Genesis 2:4 ff. Here, the scene shifts from God’s Sabbath enthronement on the seventh day to Eden and God’s creation of the man and the woman as creature-kings to rule and subdue the earth.
The first part of verse 4, where Moses writes “this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created,” serves as a kind of heading for what follows all the way through to the end of Genesis chapter 4. Ten times in Genesis this formulation “this is the account of” will appear at the head of each section of Genesis, as Moses arranges these various sections by contrasting the elect line with the line of those who remain outside of God’s covenant. The first of these ten sections covers an amazing amount of theological and redemptive-historical ground: God’s creation of Adam and Eve, the cultural mandate, the covenant of works and time of probation in the Garden, the fall of humanity into sin, as well as the birth of Cain and Abel, until, then finally, we come to the account of Adam’s line beginning in Genesis 5. Indeed this first section of Genesis sets the stage for all of redemptive history which follows.
In the later part of verse 4, we read, “when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens—and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.” The opening words of this new section are significant for several reasons. For one thing we are told that at some point in the creation process, described in the first half of verse 5, no plants had yet appeared, because as we learn in the last clause of the verse, rain had not yet come. Man could have compensated for this–working the ground includes irrigation–but God had not yet created man either.
In verse 6, Moses describes how God subsequently sent water–the NIV reading, “streams coming up from the earth,” is a poor translation, as the Hebrew means something like a mist, or rain cloud appeared, meaning that later, God instituted the rain-cycle so that vegetation might appear as described earlier as occurring on day three. This too, is a strong argument against reading the days of creation in Genesis 1 as 24 hour days, since it is evident that what is described here probably took many aeons as well as seeming to indicate that what transpired on the days of creation are the same kinds of natural geological operations we see ongoing in the present (Kline, Space and Time in Genesis Cosmology, 13-15). In other words, it is by normal providential means that God transformed the earth which was formless and empty into the glorious home for the sun and moon, the fish and the foul as well as the creatures of the land. If this is not the case, then what we see in here in Genesis 2 flatly contradicts what is said Genesis 1, since there we have flora on day three, when here, Moses says, there can’t be any flora until the rain-cycle is established, and that would, of course, be impossible without the sun and moon, which did not appear until day four. In any case, once the rain-cycle is established, it is now time for God to create man the creature-king and divine image-bearer.
It is not until verse 7, that Moses returns to a further elaboration of the creation of the man and woman as set forth earlier in Genesis 1:26-28.
In verse 7, we should struck with the amazing simplicity of the account of the creation of man, just as we saw in Genesis 1:27– “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” There are two key verbs in this declaration–God formed man from the dust, and then, God breathed into him. Like the animals, man is a product of the chemical compounds of the earth. But unlike the animals–all of whom by contrast are created after their kinds–it is the intimate act of God breathing his very breath into the man he had formed which causes man to become a living being. And though man has a material component–a body–and an immaterial component–a soul which lives on after death–what is essential to see here, is that man is neither body or soul, but that man as created is the unity of body and soul–man is a living being. This is why death is such a horrible form of curse, for that which is joined together by God himself in creation is ripped apart at death, which is the consequence of human sin, and not some kind of natural human limitation (Kidner, Genesis 60-61).
It should also be noted at this point that the Biblical account of creation allows for a very, very, old earth. As the great Reformed theologian B. B. Warfield once pointed out, the age of the earth is not a theological question. The historicity of Adam is (Warfield, "On the Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race," in Biblical and Theological Studies, 238-261.
Indeed, we simply recall to mind the fact that since God is outside of time there is no theological problem whatsoever with the earth being many thousands of years old, if that turns out be the case. As alone eternal, God is the creator of time–he is not bound within it. There is no need to pretend that dinosaurs and man walked the earth at the same time. There is no need to call into question carbon dating and other scientific methods out of fear that these things will falsify the Christian faith! For the God who created all things also breathed forth the Scriptures. It is only human sin and finitude which creates a conflict between science and God’s word.
But though the universe is quite old, the creation of man–in both the biblical account, as well as that which up until now has been supported by the archeological record–seems to be much more recent. In fact, quite recent. Though there are fossilized remains of hominids–ape-like creatures who may have walked erect and even used primitive tools–which go back 250,000 years or more, but human life, on the other hand, appears suddenly, dramatically, and quite recently, somewhere between 8-5 thousand years B.C (Kidner, Genesis, 26 ff).
As we will see, Biblically defined, man is much more than a tool maker. Man is the builder of culture, created to rule and subdue all creation. Evidence shows that while Neanderthals, for example, clearly used tools, they never created culture. And as recent DNA results have shown, Neanderthals have DNA which bears no relation to modern humans. Whatever these creatures were, they were not human. They are not divine image-bearers, nor is there any evidence that they are our evolutionary ancestors (see Rana, Who Was Adam?, Nav Press).
If anything is clear from Moses’ account in Genesis 2:7, it is that man and woman appeared as a result of a direct creative act of God. Man’s essence is not that of an upright-walking tool-maker. That which distinguishes Adam from the animals is that he alone is created in God’s image. Man was made to rule and subdue the earth. He was made to marry and form families, to build cities and farms, and to create all forms of culture. Indeed, it will not long afterwards as the story of redemption unfolds that we are told, “nothing will be impossible for man.” According to Scripture, the first man’s life begins only when God breathes life into him. In fact, there is no hint in the text here that a different type of creature– created earlier on the sixth day–somehow became the first man after countless generations of change and evolution. What is clear in Genesis two is that the creation of Adam was completely unlike that of the creatures and beasts who move along the ground, for Adam and Eve alone were created in God’s image–a notion which has profound theological ramifications.
However literally we take the idea of God forming Adam from dust of the ground, the fact is that God breathed into the man and Adam was immediately constituted by God to be both the biological as well as federal head of the human race. He is the first man. He is the representative for all subsequent men and women. And this truth is one of the absolutely essential doctrines of Christianity. If there is no Adam, there is no original sin. If there is no Adam, there is no federal headship. If there is no first Adam, then, there is no second Adam either. I see no way to take the subsequent biblical record seriously if Adam is not an historical individual and if the creation account is mythological. The historicity of Genesis is the foundation for everything else which follows in the great story of redemption. In fact, the drama of redemption to follow, presupposes the historicity of the creation account!
Not only does the creation account clearly state that man is unlike the other creatures of the field, a number of subsequent biblical passages flesh out the implications of this “image of God” language here in Genesis. For one thing, we are told in Genesis 9:6 that the divinely-given prohibition against the taking of life comes directly from the fact that men and women are divine image bearers: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” Yet, in certain cases, God commands particular animals to be slain, as in the case of sacrifices for sin. Indeed, so seriously does God take the fact that the man and woman have been created in his image, we read in James 3:9, “with the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.” Since all men and women are divine image-bearers, human life is so precious, that not only is murder regarded as among the most heinous of crimes, we are not even to curse our fellow image-bearers, since such an act is an offence to God in whose image they have been formed.
The essential difference between humans and the other creatures of the earth, is that men and women bear God’s image, the animals do not. The only intrinsic rights animals possess are those rights which we as humans choose to give them! The animal rights movement is simply paganism applied to puppies.
Further implications of the image of God can be seen in the fact in the New Testament, when Paul considers those things which are entailed in the re-creative process of regeneration, his words framed in terms of those attributes humanity possessed before the fall of humanity into sin. We are told in Colossians 3:10, that we “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Likewise in Ephesians 4:24, that we are “to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Thus when Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, they possessed true knowledge of God, true righteousness and true holiness before him, that which theologians call “communicable attributes” of God. These are attributes which God possesses in infinite measure but which are now indeed manifested in a finite measure in the first couple. Indeed, possessing such glorious moral attributes, Adam and Eve were like God in every way that a creature can be like God. And yet at the same time, they remain forever unlike God, since they are created and possess these attributes in a creaturely measure and only so long as they remain in this state of innocence.
Another critical difference between the first man the creatures can be seen in several Psalms which describe the majesty of man and woman as divine image-bearers. In Psalm 8, we read these glorious words about God’s creature–kings: “what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.” The language in this Psalm clearly resonates with Moses’ words found in the creation account we have just read. For the Psalmist says that man and woman are but a little lower than the angels. They are crowned with glory. They are designed by God to rule and subdue the earth, as God’s divinely appointed creature-kings. This is why God cares for us as he does. We bear the divine image.
And then there are the glorious words of Psalm 139:13-16, where read– “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Unlike the creatures, formed after their kind, it is God’s wonderful and direct creative activity which lies behind the birth of each one of us. He has knit each of us together in our mother’s womb. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. For it is God who has formed us so carefully and wonderfully, and it is God who has ordained our days as participants in the great drama of redemption.
But the height of the man and woman’s honor and glory is most clearly seen in the words of Paul, found in Colossians 1:15-16. For in these amazing words we discover that Jesus himself is the perfect image of God and that he who created all things and holds them together, became man to save us from the guilt and consequences of our sin.
According to Paul, it is Jesus who is the true “image [ikone] of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” In other words, this is to say that in Jesus Christ the nature and character of God have been perfectly revealed (Bruce, Epistle to the Colossians, 57-58). Jesus Christ is the very image of the invisible God by whom “all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
The original divine image-bearer has now become visible. As John puts it in the opening chapter of his gospel, “no one has ever seen God, but God the only Son who is at the father’s side, has made him known” (1:18). In Jesus Christ, the creator now leaves his royal throne in heaven to take his place on the stage at the great center point of the drama of redemption known as the incarnation. This is what Paul is getting at when he says in Galatians 4:4 that “when the time had fully come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law.”
To Paul’s Jewish readers who were no doubt familiar with the creation account, Paul’s declaration that Jesus is the very image of God, certainly recalled to mind the creation account and Genesis 1:26-27, as well as Genesis 2:7. If Jesus is the true image of God, and men and women are created in God’s image, this must mean that men and women are in some sense a copy, or a reflection (an ectype) of Christ’s original heavenly glory, that which theologians call his archetypal glory. To be created in God’s image doesn’t mean in any sense that we are divine, or even that we possess some sort of divine spark. What it does mean is that Adam and Eve were created as copies or reflections of Jesus Christ’s eternal glory. This is why God is mindful of the plight of humanity, even after the fall when that image is defaced and deformed. This is what is means to say that we are but a little lower than the angels. For we reflect the glorious image of God’s Son, who is described as the image of God par excellance in Colossians 1 (Bruce, Epistle to the Colossians, 57-58).
What is supremely important in all of this is that the original and true divine-image bearer took on human flesh to conquer death and the grave, to reconcile Adam’s fallen children and divine image-bearers back to God after humanity’s fall into sin and ruin. For it is sin which effaces and distorts that glorious image in which we were created. And it is Jesus who came to restore it.
Thus it is Jesus Christ the true image of God–who by becoming man–not only sanctifies human nature by becoming truly human, it is Jesus who restores us to our former glory. A process which begins in this life with the new birth, and ends with the resurrection and glorification. It was because Adam and Eve were created as divine image-bearers that the supreme image-bearer could take on a true human nature to save us from the guilt and consequences of our sin. The image of God prepares the way for the incarnation, when Jesus Christ becomes true man.
What are the applications, then, of this great biblical truth to our particular situation?
Though there are a host of ramifications of this, we can take up but three before picking up with some of the others next time when we talk about the cultural mandate. The first of these is the uniqueness of man and woman as divine image-bearers. Adam and Eve were created by God when he breathed into Adam the breath of life and when God later formed Eve from the man. It is this divine act which clearly distinguishes humanity from all the other creatures God has made. This leaves open no possibility for man to have non-human ancestors from the human race has supposedly evolved. God made man and woman in his own image to be living beings, and he made them to rule and subdue the three realms of creation. And this is what is means to be human.
It always amazes me when men suppresses the truth in unrighteousness and declare themselves to be God. But they also rejects this teaching about the image of God, preferring to exalt themselves not by thinking of themselves as divine image-bearers, but as mere beasts, whose essence is located in an active brain wave and in bodily impulses–merely an upright tool-maker. It is Christianity, which truly exalts humanity, seeing all men and women as divine image-bearers and kings of creation.
A second thing we ought consider is that it is this glorious original creation of Adam and Eve as divine image-bearers which makes the subsequent fall into sin such a heinous thing. Men and women are created as a body-soul unity. It is death–the consequence of sin–which tears apart that which God created to be one. This is why death is such a terrible thing. It is also the teaching of Scripture about the image of God in all men and women which gives us our doctrine of valuing all human life–including that of the unborn. Abortion, infanticide and euthanasia are the great moral evils of our age. Every aborted fetus is a divine image-bearer. Every sick and suffering person retains the divine image, something so precious to God, that we are commanded not even to curse fellow image-bearers, much less snuff out their existence by bringing on premature death. It is because we are image bearers that human suffering is so awful and why life is so precious. This is why we clothe the naked and feed the hungry. This is why we do everything we can to alleviate human suffering and promote the public good and civic righteousness and justice. This also is why we must preach Christ to the ends of the earth.
Third, in the incarnation, the true image of God becomes the image of man so that he might die for our sins, rise again from the dead for our justification, and restore God’s elect to that glorious state which we originally possessed in Eden, when men and women possessed true righteousness, holiness and knowledge. It is the true image of God who took upon himself a true human nature to save us from all our sins, including those sins in which we have cursed our fellow image-bearers, or taken their lives in our hearts or with our hands. Jesus has died for all of our sins, and we are now covered with his perfect righteousness–the beginning of the restoration of the divine image in us. Thus it is Jesus Christ who defines what it means to be truly human. For when God formed us from the dust of the ground, he formed us in the image of his Son. And though that image is now marred because of human sinfulness, one day, Jesus himself will restore that image in us to its full glory. This, beloved is our resurrection hope. And this is what is means when we are told that “God formed man from the dust of the ground.” For we are but a little lower than the angels, formed in the image of our blessed Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen!
To read the next sermon in this series, Click here: Riddleblog - In Eden -- Genesis 2:8-25