Man is the unique creation of God. He is not like the plants and animals. Man is made in the very image of God – an awesome and humbling thought.
After God finished creating the animals on the sixth day of Creation, He was ready for His finest work – a creature that would bear His very image and likeness – a creature called “man.” Genesis 1:26-27 puts it this way: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
Now, it seems that all of creation was designed with man in view. Everything else God created was for man’s welfare and enjoyment. Man was to rule over the entire earth and everything in it. But God did something in the Creation of man to remind man that he was not God. He made man out of the elements of the earth.
The word “man” in Genesis 1:26 is not the normal word for mankind – anthropos – from which we get our word anthropology. It is the word “adam,” from which the first man got his name. Actually, the word “adam” means “red.” It means “to be ruddy; to be flushed in the face,” and probably was a reference to the red clay out of which God made his body.
Now the point, you see, is that man is not a god made out of some special, heavenly substance. Man may be special, and man may be created in the image of God, but man is simply a creature of the earth.
Now you know the real meaning of the word.
Did you know that you are very special to God, because you (and I) are created in His very image?