God’s Design for Family (Part 1): Our Purpose as Humans
By Family Minister, Dr. Brandon Steenbock
Why do we exist? This question has plagued philosophers, abstract thinkers, and moody teenagers for centuries. Maybe you think you have an answer, but if someone walked up to you on the street could you tell them? Could you explain in a single sentence why humans exist?
“Because God made us.” That’s a good answer, though it doesn’t explain why God made us. “To glorify God.” That’s better; it gives direction and purpose. We might still wonder how exactly our existence glorifies God, and what to do to glorify God.
The first page of the Bible gives us an answer. God tells us in the Genesis account why we exist and what we were created for. And it turns out that there is a close relationship between God’s purpose for our existence and his purpose for families.
The Creation of Humankind
In Genesis 1:26-28, God tells us about the creation of humans:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
For many Christians, this passage is so familiar it’s almost easy to skip over it. But if we want to understand ourselves, we need to dwell in this passage a little longer.
“Let us”
Notice the hint of our Triune God. The New Testament expresses more clearly that there is one God in three persons and three persons in one God. However, the idea is not absent in the Old Testament. From the outset, we see the work of a Triune God in creation. The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters in verse 2, and now we see the communal nature of the Triune God, as the three persons interact with each other to plan their greatest creation. Our existence and our purpose flow from the nature of our Triune God.
“Image”
God uses two words to describe what mankind will be in relation to God – “image” and “likeness” – and it may seem these mean the same thing, but they are different. “Image” translates the Hebrew word tselem, which describes a figure carved to represent something, like an idol or a figurine. Similar words in other Middle Eastern languages refer to a statue of a king representing his rulership of the city when his capital is elsewhere.
Humans do not physically represent what God looks like, because “God is spirit” (John 4:24), and therefore does not have a physical body (apart from the human body of Christ). Rather, humans were created to reflect and represent God’s nature – his righteousness, his holiness, his moral perfection. His ability to execute justice and his ability to love unconditionally. In a nutshell, to be made in God’s image means to be a perfect reflection of his perfect nature.
“Likeness”
The word “likeness” translates the Hebrew word demooth, and is something that gives the impression of something else. For example, when you hear wind blowing through trees and it gives you the impression of something moving through the trees. Or when you see a man’s face imprinted on a coin, and it gives you the impression of that person, even though it does not really look that much like him.
Humans were created to give the impression of God’s divine royalty. Humans are unlike anything else in creation, with bodies and souls designed to live forever. To see a human is to see an immortal being, and to see a dignity and honor that comes from being shaped by the hand of God and given life by his own breath.
“So that they may rule”
God rules the world, and he chooses to rule it through humans. The reason we are made in God’s image and likeness is so that we are able to serve as God’s representative rulers over all creation. Our physical bodies are necessary so that we can interact with the physical world to rule over it. God made us to reflect his perfect righteousness and holiness so that we could perfectly rule the world on his behalf.
If that sounds a little too lofty, remember that before sin entered the world, humans were in every way the perfect representation of God’s character. And at the end of time, the Bible says we will rule with Jesus in heaven. The incredible thing about our God is that he chooses to share his glory with his created children.
“Male and Female”
We cannot ignore God’s purpose in making humans as male and female, or the importance God assigns to these two different but corresponding natures. Our sex is part of our design, and from it flows much of who we are as individuals. Modern-day attempts to blur or even erase the meaning of sex and gender are nothing more than attempts to flee God’s good design, and therefore to flee from God entirely. But they do not change what God has done.
Nor can we ignore that both male and female reflect God in unique ways. If all humans are made to reflect God’s character, then males reflect it in certain ways and females in others. This is why God has roles for men and women in the Bible; we are not the same.
“Be fruitful and multiply”
God’s blessing on the act of procreation flows right from his description of our creation as male and female. It is more than just permission to enjoy sex and have cute babies. It is tied to our purpose as humans. Right after blessing humanity and commanding that we “fill the earth and subdue it,” God repeats his explanation of our purpose. So this command to “make more humans” is so that we can be successful in doing what we were made to do.
Of course, not every human will get married or have children. This is a reality of living in a world impacted by sin (which we’ll look at more closely in a later entry in this series), and it can be a source of heartbreak. The fact that some don’t experience these blessings doesn’t invalidate God’s design; rather, the heartbreak we feel when it doesn’t happen is precisely because these things are so closely tied to our design as humans. When we can acknowledge that this is why it hurts, that can also open the door not only to some healing, but also to seeing other blessings and purposes that God gives to us. Similarly, the single and the childless can affirm and support families as they pursue God’s purpose in their lives as well.
This section of Scripture is so important as a foundation for our understanding of the family. We are reminded that this is part of God’s design for humans from the beginning, that a man and a woman would join together and produce more children. He did this so that together, humanity could fulfill its ultimate purpose of caring for creation as God’s perfect representatives.
The family is not just a good idea, not just something humans came up with to bring order to society. All of us – whether single or married, childless or parent to many – can together pursue God’s design.