People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.
“Slightly lower than the angels” is a whole lot better than slightly higher than the apes. Let’s get the order straight. God, angelic beings, man, animals, and vegetables.
God has one destined end for mankind – holiness! His one aim is the production of saints. God is not an eternal blessing- machine for men. He did not come to save men out of pity. He came to save men because He had created them to be holy.
You are the result of the attentive, careful, thoughtful, intimate, detailed, creative work of God. Your personality, your sex, your height, your features, are what they are because God made them precisely that way. He made you the way He did because that is the way he wants you to be… If God had wanted you to be basically and creatively different He would have made you differently. Your genes and chromosomes and creaturely distinctives – even the shape of your nose and ears – are what they are by God’s design.
On Knowing Oneself, Issue 280, January 1987, p. 13, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.
You will never really enjoy other people, you will never have stable emotions, you will never lead a life of godly contentment, you will never conquer jealousy and love others as you should until you thank God for making you the way He did.
On Knowing Oneself, Issue 280, January 1987, p. 14, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.
Jenny, God has made me for a purpose – for China; but He has also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure
Chariots of Fire.
I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.
Quoted by J. R. Miller, Finding One’s Mission, Peiner Publications, n.d., p. 2.
If in fact life was not created by God, and if human beings in particular are not created by God or responsible to Him, but are simply the result of random occurrences in the universe, then of what significance is human life? We are merely the product of matter plus time plus chance, and so to think that we have any eternal importance, or really any importance at all in the face of an immense universe, is simply to delude ourselves. Honest reflection on this notion should lead people to a profound sense of despair (Wayne Grudem and Jeff Purswell).
Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith, Zondervan, www.zonderan.com, 1999, p. 137-138.
Special significance of the creation of male and female in the image of God:
1. It is only after God has created man that He says of all He has made: it is “very good” (1:31). This is not simply because God’s creative task is finished but because mankind is the pinnacle of all He has made.
2. The creation of man is introduced differently than other products of creative work, with the personal and deliberative expression, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”
3. The one God who creates man as male and female deliberately uses plural references of himself (e.g., “Let Us,” “Our image,” “Our likeness”) as the creator of singular “man” who is plural “male and female.”
4. The “image of God” is stated three times in 1:26-27 in relation to man as male and female but never in relation to any other part of creation (are angels created in the image of God?).
5. The special term for God’s unique creative action, bara, is used three times in 1:27 for the creation of man in His image as male and female.
6. Man is given a place of dominion over all other created beings on the earth, thus indicating the higher authority and priority of man in God’s created design.
7. Only the creation of man as male and female is expanded and portrayed in detail as recorded in Gen. 2.
The Image of God in Man, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.
