we’re created in a special way to display the full-orbed grandeur of our Creator.

One of the foundational realities of human beings, men and women alike, is that we are made in the image of God. See Genesis 1:26–27, which reads:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

In other words, we’re created in a special way to display the full-orbed grandeur of our Creator. We do this by creating, by thinking, by taking dominion, and by enjoying relationships with one another. But even this awe-inspiring theological truth can be a bit abstract, can’t it? What role, we might wonder, do our bodies have to play in being the image of God?

Before we’re converted, we understand—at least many people do—that we are either male or female. That’s well and good. But it’s only when we’re saved by the grace of almighty God that we truly begin to grasp the meaning of our bodies, our sexuality. We are created as men or as women to inhabit our manhood and womanhood to the glory of our Maker. He did not make us all the same. He loves diversity. He revels in it. He created a world that pulses with difference, that explodes with color, that includes roaring waterfalls and self-inflating lizards and rapt, at-attention meerkats. But humankind, man and woman, is the pinnacle of God’s creation.

This last sentence matters greatly. Oftentimes, exegetical and theological analysis of Genesis 1 concentrates on the “age of the earth.” We should give attention to this vital doctrinal concern, yes. But we should not miss that the spotlight is on humanity in Genesis 1, not the cosmos, not the earth. This will sound strange to evangelical ears trained to spend much time studying the earth, and little time studying humanity. Many systematic theologies have very short sections on anthropology, and comparably lengthy treatments of the different views of the earth’s age.

This is surely out-of-step with Genesis 1. The man and the woman are the apex of God’s handiwork. He pronounces his creation “very good” after creating them, and he rests after finishing his masterpiece, man as male and female. Evangelical theology needs to recover this reality. Doing so will help us see that anthropology, though a contested field in a secularizing age, is no “third-tier” matter. A rich and rigorously-constructed doctrine of humanity is essential to glorifying God with our minds, and secondly, answering the objections and challenges of a skeptical, gender-neutral age.

In Christ, we understand that our manhood or womanhood is not incidental. It’s not unimportant. It is the channel through which we will give God glory all our days. We have been put here to “image” God. After conversion, we understand that we’re here to give evidence of his greatness. We do that in substantial part by receiving our God-given sexuality as a gift. God created us as “male and female,” not as something else. The passage above states three separate times that God “created” the man and woman, stressing God’s role in making the man and woman his image bearers. There is intentionality, wisdom, and purpose in the creation of Adam and Eve, as the gospel frees us to see.

Simply receiving and reveling in this reality is a matter of worship. It’s not complicated, but it is profound. I am a man or a woman designed in just this way by God, we should think to our- selves as we consider the body given us from above. In the same way that the Grand Canyon was created to show God’s power, and the skies his handiwork, as a man or a woman I was formed to display the beauty of his brilliant design. In our fallenness, we’re tempted to think that we have no greater reason to live, and that we’re only “dust in the wind,” as the famous song says. In truth, we are diamonds in the wilderness. We’re no genetic accident, no freakish outcome of history. We’re the special creation of God.

You could sum these thoughts up like this: as believers, we’re not Christian Teletubbies. We’re not gospel blobs. We’re not the redeemed androgynous. We are gospel-captivated men and gospel- captivated women. When converted, we come to understand that our bodies are given us as vessels by which to put God’s wisdom and intelligence and love on display.

Whether single or married, whether young or old, we have been given our manhood or womanhood as a blessing. Our bodies, with their distinctive designs, tell us that there is an exhilarating intel- ligence, and a grander story, behind our frame and form. Man the image of God; woman the image of God. Here is grounds for the dignity and happiness of every person. Here is fuel for worship, worship that lasts a lifetime, and stretches beyond into all eternity as redeemed men and women gather in the celestial city to behold the Lamb of God.