 |  |
If I desire to understand the righteousness of God, the love of God, the peace of God,
the forgiveness of God, or any other of His glorious attributes or gifts, I can see them as I
shall never see them otherwise, in the life, person, walk and work of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with
our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life
(For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you
that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us" (I John 1: 1, 2).
Here therefore is the Godward side of the great movement. God stoops down and
reveals Himself in the Person of His Son. The manward side also will be found to be
completely covered by the same term `likeness' and this we must approach from more
than one point of view, first as to man at his creation, secondly in his redemption and
thirdly in the Person of Christ as The One Mediator, "The Man Christ Jesus". The reader
must remember, therefore, that our argument has not yet been fully presented. We must
consider the same line of teaching from man's standpoint.
No.9. An Examination of Gen. 1: 26, 27.
Man as a "shadow" of the Lord and of His purpose.
pp. 141 - 143
We have seen that in the mystery of godliness, "God was manifest in the flesh", and
that in the person of Christ, the invisible God, condescended to the limitations of His
creatures, and that Christ is a necessary Mediator by reason of the gulf that exists
between Creator and all creatures, just as surely as He must be the Mediator because of
the moral gulf that exists between sinful man and a righteous God. Instead, however, of
commencing with the teaching of Scripture, that Christ was made in the likeness of man,
we must start with the creation of man, to see how emphatic the Scriptures are that in
the beginning, man was made in the likeness of God. Two things are stated in Gen. 1: 26
"In our image, after our likeness". How are these words to be understood? Delitzsch
suggests that in the word `image' we have the outline, and in the word `likeness' we have
the filling up of the outline, but upon close investigation it is difficult to understand in
what way man was created in the outline of God and what the after "filling up of the
outline of God" can mean. We must therefore turn once again to the fountain head of
truth in order to obtain all the help we can by examining the usage of these two words
and their equivalents in the N.T.
Tselem `image'. This Hebrew word occurs 17 times in the O.T. and is translated
`image' every time, except in Psa. 39: 6 where it is rendered `in a vain shew' (margin
an image). The Chaldee tselem occurs also 17 times, and these references are confined to
the book of Daniel. In every occurrence the Chaldee word is rendered `image' except in
Dan. 3: 19 where the AV. reading is `form'. This word tselem is allied with tsel `a