Alive: Grow in Your Relationship With JesusSample

You are like God. The Bible begins with the shocking, scandalous claim that humans, male and female, are made “in the image” of God—much the same way that someone might say you’re the “spitting image” of your mother. No, we are not All-Powerful or All-Knowing or Universally Present throughout all of time (all things that are true about God!). Nevertheless, you and every beautiful, horrible, ornery, ridiculous human being you know were created to be like Him. What better place to begin our study than by considering who God is and how we’re created to be like Him?

The Bible begins with God’s story of Creation. In its opening chapters, we read along as God makes, fashions, and forms. He speaks and blesses. He gives, names, and controls. And over and over again, He calls His Work “good.” He is most insistent upon that point, repeating it again and again: “This is good! This is good! This is very, very good!”

God spoke beautiful and fascinating things into existence, finishing with humanity. Then He urged His created humans to do the same.

Passages in Genesis tell us that God placed His Creation under the command of humans. But that “rule,” that “dominion,” was not the kind of rule tyrants wield over sycophants. It was the kind of rule gardeners exercise over gardenias. Like the first humans, you were made to cultivate Creation, to care for it, to fashion new and exciting things from it, and to turn to those around you and say, “This is good! Take it, taste it, enjoy it. It is so very, very good!”

Up until this point in the Creation Narrative, our God was a busy God, a working God. Then, as the work of Creation drew to a close, God rested. Later passages in the Bible make explicit what is implied in Genesis 2:1-3: We are made in the Image of a resting God, and therefore, we must rest. But how do we rest like God rests? He doesn’t grow weary. He doesn’t need sleep. His Constant, Conscious, Sustaining Power is what holds all reality in existence. God did not cease being God in Genesis 2:2. So what was He doing?

Observe the full sweep of Genesis 1. God began the Universe with a flurry of activity, flinging stars in their places, carving mountains from the deep, braiding vines into jungles. Then, with a final flourish, He spread His Arms out to His new Creation and empowered humanity to go garden, to steward what He made.

Biblical scholar Allen P. Ross reminds us that the Hebrew word for rest in this passage “is not a word that refers to remedying exhaustion after a tiring week of work. Rather, it describes the enjoyment of accomplishment, the celebration of completion.”(1) If God’s Work is the joyful work of pouring good things out into reality, then God’s Rest is the thankful rest of drinking those good things in.

Genesis 1–2 sets in motion the natural rhythm of human life: work and rest, giving and receiving, offering good to others, and accepting good from others. But of course, we don’t carry this rhythm as we should. We’ll deal with what went wrong tomorrow, but you don’t need me to tell you that the world is not as it should be. Work that should be enjoyable and fun is often exhausting and thankless. Rest that should be peaceful and serene can be frenetic and lonely. But choosing to follow Christ means choosing to reenter this dance of giving and receiving, to relearn the rhythm of Genesis 1–2.

If giving is more difficult, then look for a way today to make something good and offer it to someone else. If receiving is more difficult, then make time today to enjoy something good, receiving it as a gift.

1. Allen P. Ross, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of the Book of Genesis, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988), 113–114.