Something surprising happens in the epic story of creation. Everything God creates is spoken into existence, commanded to be as God desires, whether light, the sun, moon, and stars, the land and all that grows from it, or the animals of all kinds. Every time God says “let there be . . . and it was so.”
However, the very final act of creation, the making of us, is remarkably different. Now the wording is not a command, an imperative, but a subjunctive which means it expresses “what is imagined or wished or possible.”
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.” Genesis 1:26
The scripture does not say, “God said, let there be man . . . and it was so.” Why the difference? Why does God not simply command us to be as he wishes, and why choose to say God “makes” us?
The account of creation does speak about the forming of human bodies which are given life through God’s breath, but that is only the beginning of their “being made”. The implication seems to be that the “making” of humankind is a process which begins on the sixth day but is not finished immediately. We might say that the rest of our scriptures are describing how that process takes place, how God continues to form us in and toward his image and likeness.
The arc of this whole story finds its culmination in Jesus. The travails of Israel illustrate that mankind, though bearing the image of God, fails to grow fully into his likeness. But in Christ, the fullness of God dwells (Colossians 2:9). Only God himself can complete this work which he began.
When Jesus says from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he refers to more than his passion, ministry, or mission, but to the “making” of humanity. In Christ, the first fully human being, all humanity has reached what God intended when the words were spoken, “Let us make man . . .”
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