Why did God create Mankind in His Image?

 

Mankind is like a statue erected by an ancient king, as the statue bore the image of the king and signified rulership, Mankind bears God’s image in the cosmic temple of the world, representing His authority and dominion. Mankind is the visible representation of the invisible God. If one wants to know what God looks like, simply look at Mankind, the only creature made in God’s image.

The main purpose of God creating Mankind in His image was for dominion over the earth. Dominion is the application of the following four principles: to be fruitful, to multiply, to replenish and to subdue (Genesis 1:28 KJV). To be fruitful implies to produce, to multiply means to reproduce, to replenish is to distribute and to subdue is to have control. God followed these principles to create every living thing on earth and in heaven,  including His most important creation, Mankind. Since we are created in God’s image we also have the creative abilities like God. The book of Deuteronomy 10:17 NIV says: “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome”. The gods and lords implies Mankind; thus it is our responsibility to pursue the legacy God gave us, which is to have dominion over the earth as His gods and lords on earth.

To succeed with dominion over the earth, we must effectively manage and apply the following four principles as God did when He created the heavens and the earth which are: Creativity, Focus, Time and Hard Work . To elaborate on the principles let us start with creativity which is observed in Genesis 1:1 KJV: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. This scripture outlines creativity as the main principle source for what we see on the earth and the heavens. The second principle is focus, which can be defined as: Following One Course Until Success. God followed one course of creativity until He was successful with His creation. The book of Genesis 2:1-2 NIV says: “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done”. We learn the last two principles here which are effective time management and hard  work. It took six days for God to do His creative work (time management) and on the seventh day God rested (hard work), you can only rest after hard work. Therefore, these are the four principles we must apply to have dominion on earth: Creativity, Focus, Time and Hard Work.