God says in Gen. 1:26, “Let us make man in our image after our likeness”. Does “us” refer to God or to angels?

Full Question

Answer

It would be more correct to say that God created through the agency of angels. How­ever, the point still unanswered is whether or not man was made in the image of God or of the angels only. The term ‘Elohimi describes to the Hebrew mind the one whom we call God, and being a plural term, is mostly con­strued by brethren to be representative of angels acting in behalf of God.

So when Elohim said, “Let us make man in our image after our likeness”, the plurality of the concept is emphasised by the use of the words ‘us’ and ‘our’. The distribution of spirit power in creation is thus shown to be manifest in a plurality of spirit-formed and spirit-borne beings. However, the singularity of that power, the source of all creative energy, is preserved in the following verse, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”. Why this reversion to the singular if God is to be obscured by the presence of his angels?

It is not sufficient to reply that the form of the angels in whom God’s spirit was operating is the visible pattern of the image being moulded into the creation of man, whilst God’s invisible power is the cause. This is a truth that does not cover all the facts as I see them. We need to appeal to other Scriptures to re­inforce the view that God Himself is also discernible in the morphology of man.

Psalm 8:5 is a commentary on Gen. 1:26, and both writers use ‘Elohim’. In Hebrews 2:7 Paul cites Psalm 8:5, rendering ‘Elohim’ as ‘angels’ and the argument at that point seems to be conclusive that angels are all that inspiration intends for Genesis 1.

But in 1 Cor. 11:7 Paul also comments on Genesis 1 and says that man is in the image and glory of God. Here he uses ‘Theos’, the Greek term meaning God and not angels. Then three verses down he mentions angels (Greek: angeloi) while still in the context of the creation record. It is therefore obvious that when Paul means angels he says so and when he means God he is equally explicit. Can we escape the conclusion that man was originally in the image (Greek: eikon) of God – Himself, when he was made a little lower than the angels? (Angeloi)

It will only be by the grace of God that we will not only be made like angels in the age to come, being raised in status to their un­dying nature, but we will be like him, who is the image (eikon) of the invisible God (Col. 1:15) as well as the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person. (Heb. 1:3.)