The Greatest Story Ever ToldSample

Act 1: Creation, Part 2—Humanity

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.” - Frederick Buechner

In the beginning was God. He spoke and creation began. The cherry on top of creation? Us. Human beings. People made in the image of God. 

But why? Why would God do that? It seems like everything would’ve been better without people because of all the ways we get things wrong. 

You might be right. But we’ll never know. All we can know is that our good, loving, powerful, three-and-one God chose to create human beings. He created us with potential. Yes, potential for bad, but with so much potential for good. 

God created us to be an image of Him. A picture of who He is for the whole world. That means every person you see is a living, breathing, walking, talking picture of God. Yes, even your little brother. 

There are two super important ideas that we need to wrap our minds around when it comes to being made in the image of God.    

1. Being made in the image of God makes you valuable. If you compare our creation story to the creation story of other ancient religions, you will find one clear distinction: Human dignity. In every other story, humans were created as an afterthought to be slaves to the gods. In our story, we are the pinnacle of God’s creation to be the object of His love.
2. Being made in the image of God gives you purpose. Our purpose to show people God’s love, goodness, and creative nature through our lives. As a matter of fact, in the first chapter of the Bible we are told that we have a job to do! To steward and rule over creation on God’s behalf. What does that mean? That means God put us in charge of the creation and it is our job to take care of each other and the world. That has been our purpose from the beginning, and it is the result of being made in the image of God. 

You are valuable. You have purpose. In the beginning was God. And then, humanity. Living in harmony with each other. Genesis chapter 1 ends with the declaration that when God saw all of His creation, it was very good. That means the deepest part of you and the deepest part of me, the image-of-God part, is very good. When God sees you, He sees someone beautiful and someone good. 

Unfortunately, as we’ll find out tomorrow, things didn’t stay that way …