In Genesis 1:26-27 God says, “’Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Who or what does the “us” refer to in this passage? The Trinity? The angelic council? God via a plural of majesty?
Who Makes Man?
First, notice the activity taking place in these verses: making. Making in Genesis 1 and 2 is something God does. God is the “Maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them” (Psalm 146:6). He does not collaborate with angels or other deities in creation (Isaiah 40:14). He is the only true and living God, and the only creator of the universe. Angels are never credited with creating mankind; nor are humans ever said to be made in the image of angels. But Jesus is credited with creating mankind. As the apostle John makes clear, the pre-incarnate Christ is the one through whom “all things were made” (John 1:3, emphasis added). Jesus was not only in the beginning with God but was God (John 1:1). Additionally, we have confirmation that the New Testament authors connected the image and likeness of God in Genesis with the image and likeness of the Son: “Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:28, emphasis added); “But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2, emphasis added).
What about the Spirit? Like the Father and the Son, creative activity is attributed to the Spirit. For instance, in Job, we read, “The Spirit of God has made me” (Job 33:4, emphasis added).[1] And Psalm 104:30 says, “When you send your Spirit, they are created” (Cf. Psalm 33:6). The Spirit is not absent in the creation narrative either. In fact, as Sinclair Ferguson points out:
- “While generally unnoticed in the exposition of Genesis 1, it can be argued that recognizing the presence of the divine Spirit in Genesis 1:2 would provide the ‘missing link’ in the interpretation of the ‘Let us make …’ in Genesis 1:26–27. The Spirit of God would then be the only possible referent of this address within the structure of the account itself.“[2]
The only personal beings attributed with involvement in the work of creation are the Persons of the Trinity, and strikingly all three Persons are said to be responsible for creation.
It is not surprising, therefore, that all three Persons of the Trinity are present at Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1:9-11), an event that echoes Genesis 1 and signifies new creation and the beginning of a new humanity. As Tim Keller writes: “There are three parties active in the creation of the world: God, God’s Spirit, and God’s Word, through which he creates. The same three parties are present at Jesus’s baptism: the Father, who is the voice; the Son, who is the Word; and the Spirit fluttering like a dove. Mark is deliberately pointing us back to the creation.”[3] The parallels between creation and new creation are intentional and illuminate for us who Mark thought the parties involved in Genesis 1 were.
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