All the creatures God made, humankind is the highest and most complex. Due to pride, humans often forget that God is their Creator. They have created beings, and they are dependent on God.
Human personhood in the image of God states explicitly that we, as humans, are created by God in His image and His likeness. Adam and Eve were not products of revolution; Because Adam and Eve were created in God’s likeness. They were able to experience and respond to God’s fellowship, love, and glory, with hearts capable of loving and of wanting to do what is right.
There are three different aspects of God in humankind. Adam and Eve possessed a moral likeness to God, in that they were righteous and holy, with hearts capable of loving and wanting to do what is right. They obtain a resemblance to God in intelligence, created with spirit, mind, emotions, and power of choice.
When Adam and Eve sinned, this image of God in them was seriously marred but not destroyed. Their moral likeness to God became corrupt when they sinned so that they were no longer perfect and holy but now tended to sin, which they pass on to their children. The New Testament confirms the corruption of God’s image when it says that redeemed believers must renew themselves to the original likeness of God. At the same time, sinful humans still have aspects of the resemblance to God in intelligence, with a capacity for fellowship and communication with Him. However, the image of God was marred in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned but not obliterated.
Human personhood, made in God’s image, is a triunity involving the components of spirit, soul, and body. Genesis, chapter two, verse seven, states, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” The soul may be briefly defined as the nonmaterial aspects of mind, emotions, and will in human personhood that results from the union of spirit and body. The soul with the human spirit will continue to live when an individual physically dies. The body s the material element in an individual that returns to the dust when a person dies. The spirit is the nonmaterial life of a human being. It resides in our spiritual capacity and conscience and by which we have most direct contact with God’s spirit. Of the three components constituting the ‘whole” human personhood, only the spirit and the soul are indestructible and survive death, either to live in heaven or hell.
When God created us in His image and likeness, the responsibilities of human personhood have several points to follow. He made us this way so that He could develop a living, personal relationship with us for all eternity. In this way, we could glorify Him as Lord. God desires a people to enjoy Him, exalt Him, and live righteousness and holiness before Him. When Satan succeeded in tempting Adam and Eve to rebel against and disobey God, the Lord promised to send a Savior to redeem the world. It was God’s will that human beings love Him above all and love their neighbors as themselves. This twofold commandment of love summarizes God’s whole law.
God also established the institution of marriage in the Garden of Eden as a covenant of love. He intended that marriage to be monogamous, a lifelong relationship between one husband and one wife. Within the context of marriage, God commanded that the human race “be fruitful and multiply,” as stated in Genesis, chapter one, verse twenty-eight. Man and woman were to reproduce godly offspring in a family context. God considers a family that serves Him as a high priority in the world; and raising children within these healthy family relationships.
God also charged humankind to subdue the earth. God expects believers to fulfill His divine purpose: Taking good care of His world by consecrating all things in the ground to Him and managing His creation in a glorifying way.
Because of sin’s presence in the world, God sent His Son to redeem the world. The task of bringing that message of God’s redemptive love is His people: whom He has called to be witnesses of Christ and His salvation to the ends of the earth.