What is it that sets man apart from the beast? The language of Genesis chapter 1 makes it very clear that it is the image of God in man that sets him apart from all other creatures.

At the outset, we need to understand that man shares certain important characteristics with animals. Of man we read, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground...” (Gen. 2:7), and of the animals, “And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field...” (Gen. 2:19). Animals are described as “living creatures” (Gen. 1:20) and man, a “living soul” (Gen. 2:7). The same Hebrew words are used for both. What then distinguishes man from the animals?

The image of God in humanity is critical to our understanding of what makes us human.¹But when it comes to defining what exactly this image of God in man is, our task becomes somewhat more difficult. What precisely is it that separates you and me from the animals? Those who embrace an evolutionary view of the image of God would have us believe that it has to do with man’s function in cre­ation (stewardship and development of creation), his ability to operate in a variety of relations (with God, others, and creation), and man’s unique abilities (his capacity to care for creation). This makes the image of God in man a matter of function and ability rather than a matter of being; what man does in relation to creation and not what man is.

However, it is exactly what man is that makes him utterly unique in God’s creation. He is made in God’s image and the beast is not (Gen. 1:27). It is only of man that it is written, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7a). This breath of life imparted to man is entirely different from the biological life that both man and beast possess (Gen. 1:24, 2:7b). The Hebrew word used here for “breath” is a different one than used before (Gen. 1:30); it is always used in reference to God for the life He imparts to man and not to animals. God formed man from the dust, much the same as a potter lovingly shapes and molds his wares, and then breathed into him life, a divine inbreathing that we can describe as a “kiss of life” or “mouth to mouth resuscitation.” What an exquisite picture of intimacy and care for man whom He formed as the pinnacle of His creation! This divine kiss of life sets man apart because through it God communicated to man something of Himself, enduing him with some of His divine attributes and thus separating and making him different from the beasts.²

While God has attributes that He does not share with humanity (for example, God is self-existent, all-knowing and all powerful), we can still see His shared attributes in humanity today, even though they are distorted by sin. Here we think of language, creativity, love, holiness, immortality, intellect, practice of religion and freedom, to mention just a few. This places man far above the beasts, as David sings out in Psalm 8:4-7: “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field.”

Sooner or later we have to ask the question, “Why?” Why did God raise man up above all of His creatures to be the vessels through which He displays His divine identity? The answer is simply so that man, through his God-given identity, would display God. One writer puts it this way: “A human being is a creature of God with a nature designed by God to consciously display God’s greatness and His beauty and His worth.” This is our core identity as created beings. We are creatures of God with a nature designed by God to consciously display God’s greatness, beauty, and worth. This was originally what we were created to be in Adam, and this is our essential nature in our second creation in Christ. What we lost is being restored, but it’s the same nature with the same design to make much of God. In other words, my fundamental identity is that I am designed by God to display God’s identity. My fundamental nature is that I was created and re-created to display God’s nature.³

This is one of the reasons why the worship of images is forbidden (Ex. 20:4). God has already created an image of Himself in man who, in turn, should reflect that image. Why build images of God when God has seven billion image-bearers spread across the face of the earth? But we need to understand the purpose of an image to prevent mistaken notion that man is to worship man, which, in our day and age, is far more common than we would care to admit. We need only to think of movie stars, pop stars, and, yes, even some high-profile pastors who are blatantly worshipped as gods.

The wax models in Madame Tussaud’s in London are strikingly similar to the actual persons they image; but they are only images that direct us back to the real people. So too, man as God’s image-bearer points us back to God Himself. The mirror only reflects a small part of the whole person yet bears strong resemblance to the one whose image is being reflected. The image in the mirror has no real substance of itself, but only reflects. The moon of itself has no inherent light but only reflects the full glory of the light of the sun! You and I display our true identity only insofar as we in some measure reflect the glories of our Creator. All other creatures, yes, even the heavens themselves, declare the glories of their Creator (Ps. 19), but it is man alone who consciously is to display the glory of His Creator. It is in man that God becomes visible, as it were. No higher honour can be accorded man than being made in the image of the One who made him.

This was the glory that belonged to Adam before his tragic fall in Eden. Since his fall into sin, man has been caught up in relentlessly pursuing self-identity, self glory, and self-exaltation, choosing not to be the man reflected in the mirror but to be the man himself; hurling the moon away, choosing to rather be the sun itself. In short, to be God and not His image-bearer, as the serpent tricked him into believing in the garden (Gen. 3:5). What a dreadful fall from that glory to which God had originally created man! Man’s true God-given identity was lost. Now man in a variety of destructive ways does his utmost to destroy that image wherewith he was created, as the demoniac in Mark 5:5 demonstrates. The image of God in man, however, was not entirely lost in the fall, praise God, but it became a sinister and malformed replica of what it once was. No longer a shining new limousine, but a wreck on the highway.

Where man failed, our gracious God stepped in and took action. Our glorious identity needed to be restored in some way. To the praise of His glorious grace, He sent His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam, to undo what the first Adam had done and so restore us. He died to bear the penalty for our treason and rebellion against God our Creator and was raised for our justification. He poured out His Holy Spirit into our lives and began the long process of re-creating us. Now with Paul we can say, In Christ, I am a new creature. “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:18). What exactly is this new creature? He is the “new man” being “renewed after the image of his creator” (Col. 3:10). Our Lord Jesus Christ, then, works through His Holy Spirit in that glorious and ongoing process of renewal that in this life will never be perfected, but the Christian can be assured that more and more he will be conformed after the image of his Master. A day will come, however — and what a day that will be — when, though we do not yet know what we will be, yet “when he shall appear, we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). For once and for always, man will fully and forever be what God created him to be: not only a receptacle but a radiant transmitter of the effulgence of God’s glory. Dear Christian, this is your true and final identity in your Lord Jesus. Is this not worth striving for, even in the difficulties and afflictions of the sanctification process?

Last, being God’s image-bearers in the here and now bears responsibilities, particularly for the Christian. First is the use of our tongues. James warns us that with the tongue we “curse men, which are made after the similitude (in the image) of God” (3:9). We curse God by speaking evil of others who are made in His image! If Christians truly realized this, they would be less inclined to slander others. Then, second, taking the life of another is forbidden, as God told Noah; the blood of another may not be shed at the hands of men “for in the image of God made he man” (Gen. 9:6). Man becomes so embroiled in the “ethics” of capital punishment that he forgets what lies at the heart of murder: the destruction of one of God’s image-bearers. It is an abomination in the eyes of God for man to do what alone is the right of God to do.