Q. How did God create man?
A. God created mankind male and female, in His own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.
Commentary
The crown of God’s creative work was the making of man. The catechism confesses that God created mankind male and female, in His own image. Among all the creatures, man alone was made in the divine image, set apart from the beasts by a reasonable and immortal soul and made for fellowship with his Maker. This image was given to humanity as male and female, two distinct and complementary expressions of one humanity, both equally bearing God’s image and together commissioned in His service. The distinction of the sexes is therefore not a human convention or an accident of biology but a part of God’s original design, declared by Him to be very good.
The catechism specifies the content of that image as it was first given: knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. Adam was created with a mind that truly knew God, a will rightly ordered to obey Him, and a nature wholly pure and undefiled. This is called original righteousness, not merely innocence, but positive conformity to God in the whole soul. We know this is the substance of the image because Scripture describes the renewal of fallen man in Christ in precisely these terms: the new self is “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24) and “renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10). What was lost in Adam is restored, and more than restored, in the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.
To this God added dominion over the creatures. Man was appointed as God’s vice-regent over the earth, to rule the lower creation under God and for God, cultivating and keeping the world as a faithful steward. This dignity is immense, but it is a derived and accountable dignity; man rules as a servant, not a sovereign. The doctrine of man’s creation in the image of God thus establishes both the high worth of every human being (male and female, of every age and condition) and the solemn calling under which we live. We were made to know God, to reflect His righteousness and holiness, and to govern His world for His glory; and though sin has marred this image, it has not erased it, and in Christ it is being remade.
Scripture Proofs
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Genesis 1:27–28).
“And to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).
“And have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10).
2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689
4.2: After God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, rendering them fit unto that life to God for which they were created; being made after the image of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it, and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject to change.