Made In His Image
March 30, 2025
Dr. Paul Cannings
Family is the most vital blessing that God put together for our enjoyment and the advancement of His kingdom. When God said let us make man in “His image and His likeness,” He said, “In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27). He then added, “Be fruitful and multiply.” The immediate plan, when God created man in His image, was to establish marriage so that everything is developed from it, even the church (Ephesians 5:32). He did not finish establishing the Garden of Eden until man was created; “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden to cultivate it and keep it.” (Genesis 1:5, 15) God’s plan to develop mankind was so directly attached to this process that before Eve could ever be named Adam’s wife; she was called his helper.
The same thing that God structured man physiologically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually to achieve can be one of the most painful experiences of a person’s life. This is because marriage, at its best, is the image and likeness of God at its best. Christ and the church are at its best in the New Testament. Because marriage tends to be focused on sex, having kids, buying a house, maintaining bills, and having family time, marriage can become so far removed from the original plan that it becomes no marriage at all (based on a Biblical definition).
The fruit of the Spirit provides all the characteristics necessary for marriage because marriage, at its core, is the image and likeness of God or Christ and the church. Marriage needs love, peace, longsuffering, joy, kindness, gentleness and self-control. These cost nothing, but their neglect can destroy everything. To not grow spiritually leads to the flesh not having a mechanism to contain it. The person’s life becomes like a dried-up stream that once had life but now has weeds, and the ground is bare, parched, and cracked. The flesh comes back quickly and brings with it; “immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these..” (Gal 5:19-21; NASU) These things do not allow a believer to experience the work of the Holy Spirit (`inherit the kingdom of God’ – Ephesians 1:13-14)
At its very core, gas is oil; at its very core, ice is water, and steam is water. The substance and the core of marriage is love, and the only person who makes that possible is God; “…..God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him.” (1 John 4:16) The person who made marriage and the earth to sustain it is the keeper of it. “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate (despise them when they try to steer a person away from God) his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:26-28; NASU) The very people Christ is telling us to hate, He commands us to love. This is because if the demands they may have cause us to neglect God, the very people we are thought to love, we soon hate.
A fish needs water, and a seed needs the dirt to blossom. In the same way, marriage needs God.