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2023-10-27 | Romans 1:18-32 | In the Image of GodSet-apart from all other creation, God uniquely created mankind to truly know Him. For that to happen, He created us “in His Image.” First He created Adam, who had within him, both male and female DNA. All men do! And even before Adam had a companion in the garden, God called Adam “them” and said, “This is My image,” and told him/them to multiply and fill the earth. For that to be possible, hidden within Adam, this visible male, was both a woman and child. Even while he was standing alone in the garden, they were inside him already, just not visible. But, they could not remain invisible if mankind was meant to know God, to understand what it means to be created in God’s image. His invisible attributes had to become clear for everyone to see He is the only real God. After that, no one could offer ignorance as an excuse.

So, God took some female DNA from Adam and fashioned a woman. In a very real sense He “extracted” the woman from the man to make her visible. Now we could see the man and the woman separately with all their distinct characteristics. “This is His image.” And He commanded that they marry and be fruitful and multiply, thus completing the family—the perfect image of the Creator Himself. God is a Divine Family, the Father, Spirit and Son, thus His expressed image needed to be represented by all the same separate and distinct family members. As such, the human family was created in God’s image, the man—a husband and father; the woman—a wife and mother; and the children as the fruit of their marriage. Do you see it: Father, Spirit and Son?

When you contemplate the existential crisis of our day, you can simplify it into two opposing beliefs. One position believes men and women are distinct and definitive, marriage is a holy union between them, and children are the blessed fruit of that union. The other position believes any or all of the following: gender is not determined by genetics; it is a social construct and there has never been a distinction between a man and a woman, nor is gender limited to male or female, or even the idea that you must pick only one. Marriage is unnecessary, or if desired, may take place between any genders or no genders at all. And of course, the unborn child is the fruit of nothing. It is not even human or alive, and has no rights to live, other than what the person carrying that clump of tissue permits. By the way, the person incubating that amorphous cluster of cells can be a woman or a man or neither, just to clarify.

One side believes in the family, as God presents it to us, as His visible image. The other has rejected any or all aspects of the family, and by inference has rejected the image of God Himself. In other words, there is no God! Could opposing beliefs be any more contrary? The destruction of the family is the enemy’s chief strategy and thus the restoration of the family to the image of our Creator is the most important work on earth today. The wrath of God is coming against all who oppose this reality.