 |  |
The Lord Jesus Christ is "The Likeness" after Whom Adam was created. While it has
always been a difficulty to interpret the image and the likeness of Gen. 1: 26 on the
physical plane, because God is spirit, the difficulty ceases when we realize that the
"Image" is the "shadowing forth" for which honour Adam was created, and the `likeness'
according to which he was created, was the likeness of Him Who had form and shape
before His incarnation, and was destined in the fullness of time to be made flesh, to be
found in fashion as a man, to be made even in the `likeness' of sinful flesh.
Man's hope in the Lord is not exclusively upon the plane of spirit. In the resurrection
the exchange of the earthly image for the heavenly image is defined as the exchange of
corruption for incorruption, of mortality for immortality, and even though the
resurrection body of some will be a heavenly and a spiritual body, they will be bodies
nevertheless, and not spirits. So, in Gen. 5: we read:
"In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him . . . . . and
Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image" (Gen. 5: 1, 3).
There can be no doubt that Seth, the son of Adam not only resembled Adam his father
in mind and spirit, but in body also. In Phil. 3: we have the pledge concerning the
body, while in Col. 3: we have the insistence upon the mind, neither the one nor the
other being a contradiction, but rather a presentation of complete truth.
"Who shall change this body of our humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto His
glorious body" (Phil. 3: 21).
That is the pledge regarding the renewal of the `image' and `likeness' so far as the
body is concerned.
"And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of
Him that created him" (Col. 3: 10).
It will be remembered that in explanation as it were of the intention of the Creator, the
words "let them have dominion" immediately follow the words "in our image, after our
likeness". This dominion first exercised over fish, fowl and beast, is to extend until some
at least of Adam's sons, shall reign with Christ in that supernal glory "far above all". It
will be remembered that the cherubim are described as having four faces, that of a lion,
an ox, a man and an eagle. Adam, who had lost the dominion entrusted to him, would see
in the symbolic cherubim at the gate of Paradise, God's pledge that this dominion should
be restored.
As a parallel with this suggested meaning of the word cherub, we might place the
name of the Archangel. Michael is simply mi `who' Kha `like' El `God', "Who is like
God?"
We have covered a deal of ground in our endeavour to attain to some Scriptural
understanding of the meaning and intention of the words of Gen. 1: 26, and we earnestly
commend every reader not only to re-read the evidence submitted, but to supplement it