In Genesis 1, we read about how God planned to make human beings. When we understand why God made humans the way He did, we begin to understand our incredible human potential.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness …” (verse 26). God and the Word are the two God Beings that were involved in this creation process. You can read more about this in John 1:1-3. And they decided to make man in the image and likeness of God.

What does that mean? It has everything to do with why God created man in the first place.

If you back up to Genesis 1:25, you’ll note that God made the living creature after its own kind, the creeping thing after its kind, and the beast of the earth after its kind.

Note the difference! Only mankind is made after the God kind! Mankind is a special creation that God has a special purpose for.

Mankind is made to look like God. The Bible shows that the glorified Jesus Christ—who was the Word—has a head, hair, eyes, feet, hands and a voice (Revelation 1:13-17). Mankind has the same likeness.

While on Earth, Christ’s disciples asked Him to show them the Father. Christ told them that those who had seen Him had seen the Father (John 14:9). As a human, Christ looked like God the Father. And of course, Christ looked like a human man.

God molded Adam out of the clay to look like Him. But God’s molding goes beyond that.

God also wants to mold mankind into His spiritual and character image. In Mystery of the Ages, Herbert W. Armstrong wrote, “Now God renewed the face of the earth for man, made to become in the character image of God and also in the likeness or form and shape of God.”

Not only does mankind look like God physically, we are to take on God’s very character. And that requires that we allow God to mold and shape us.

“But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand” (Isaiah 64:8).

Why did God make mankind to look like Him and to develop the very spiritual character of God? Because mankind was created to ultimately be born into the very Family of God!

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:49-50, “And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”

Flesh and blood cannot be born into the Kingdom of God. But God shapes the character of those flesh-and-blood humans He calls so that they can grow spiritually—eventually being born into God’s Family.

The physical creation of mankind was completed in the Garden of Eden and then replicated through reproduction. But the spiritual creation within man continues! Those whom God calls today must let God continue to mold and shape them into His spiritual and character image.

For more on this amazing creation, request our free book Mystery of the Ages.