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Returning to Gen. 1: 26, we must now consider a little more closely the added clause
"after our likeness" (demuth). The LXX Version translates this by kath homoiosin, which
we may compare with the Apostle's use of the word when speaking to the Athenians in
Acts 17::
"Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the
Godhead is like (homoios) unto gold, silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device"
(Acts 17: 29).
Isaiah also challenges us with the question:
"To whom then will ye liken (damah, see demuth above) God?" (Isa. 40: 18).
And Ethan says:
"Who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? Who among the sons of the
mighty can be likened (damah) unto the Lord?" (Psa. 88: 6).
Nevertheless it is true that man was made after the likeness of God, and in James 3:
we read, concerning the tongue:
"Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are
made after the similitude (homoioses) of God" (James 3: 9).
The prophet Hosea uses the word damah when speaking of the way in which God had
condescended to use figures of speech:
"I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets"
(Hosea 12: 10).
During His public ministry, the Lord Himself used many similitudes. For example:
"The kingdom of heaven is like (homoios) unto treasure" (Matt. 13: 44).
"Unto what is the kingdom of God like?" (Luke 13: 18).
"Whereunto shall I liken this generation?" (Matt. 11: 16).
Man is to God what a figure of speech is to thought, a symbol, an analogy, a type.
When Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream the successive kingdoms of Gentile rule in the
form of an image, neither he nor Daniel ever imagined that such kingdoms were actually
like the image itself, but simply that this image and its peculiar construction "shadowed
forth" in symbol the moral characteristics of the kingdom concerned. So, in Gen. 1: 26,
there is no question of external resemblance. Whether seen in the frail type of Adam, or
in the glorious person of the Son of God, the "image and likeness" are never to be
understood as physical. The Saviour Himself taught that God is spirit, that no man has
ever seen His shape. It is true that He declared that "He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father", but no one with any understanding of the word would think that He intended
physical likeness here. The Father was set forth in the life and character of the "Word
made flesh", but the Father was not "like" the physical form which the Lord took when