The Worth of God’s Work

You have great worth as an intentional creation of God’s. Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that there is something more special about being a human being.

Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like ourselves. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

You have even more worth being a person who is made in His image.

What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Being made in God’s image doesn’t have anything to do with our physical bodies or with how we look or sound. God is spirit (John 4:24). God’s image is found in our soul, the very part of each of us that is handcrafted out of nothing but God’s pleasure. It is our soul that bears the likeness of God. Like God we can be creative, we can reason, we have a similar capacity to act with the same affections that God has such as love, grace, goodness, mercy, and compassion. Bearing His image means that God can communicate to with us, and we with Him. It means we can be in a relationship with Him and appreciate His love for us and express our love for Him. As God rules and has authority over His creation, making us in His image means that we have authority to rule and care for and love the world God created for us (Genesis 1:26). We are God’s physical ambassadors in this world, for this world.

Being made in the image of God, we are both the height of God’s creation and are the subject of God’s special care and planning. Jonathan Edwards says in his sermon, The Watchman’s Great Care for Souls,

And as the souls of men are more directly from God, by the more special and immediate exercise of His divine power as a creator, and are what He challenges as His by a special propriety, and are the most noble part of the lower creation, and are infinitely distinguished from all other creatures here below in that they are immortal beings; so they are, above all other creatures which God hath made in this world, the subject of God’s care and special providence.[i]

We know this from Romans 8:28-30, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.” God’s love for you as a believer in Christ influences everything He does in this world. Everything God does He does for His own glory. He glorifies Himself by saving you that His “Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” Everything God orders, allows, and brings to pass through His sovereign power aims to prove His love to His Son and to you and to all those whom He has chosen as His own by bringing you into the full possession of His glory.

[i] WJE 25, p. 65.