Genesis 1:26,27; Genesis 2:7
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): “Let us make man.” The three Persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, consult about it, and concur in it; because man, when he was made, was to be dedicated and devoted to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That man was made in God’s image, and after His likeness, are two words to express the same thing.
MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): Wherein doth the image of God in man consist?
JOHN WESLEY: God’s image upon man, consists in his nature, not that of his body, for God has not a body, but that of his soul.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): The image and likeness must necessarily be intellectual; his mind, his soul, must have been formed after the nature and perfections of his God. The human mind is still endowed with most extraordinary capacities; it was more so when issuing out of the hands of its Creator. God was now producing a spirit, and a spirit, too, formed after the perfections of His own nature. God is the fountain whence this spirit issued, hence the stream must resemble the spring which produced it. God is holy, just, wise, good, and perfect; so must the soul be that sprang from Him: there could be in it nothing impure, unjust, ignorant, evil, low, base, mean, or vile. It was created after the image of God; and that image, Paul tells us, consisted in righteousness, true holiness, and knowledge, Ephesians 4:24, Colossians 3:10. Hence man was wise in his mind, holy in his heart, and righteous in his actions.
PHILIP MAURO (1859-1952): The words, “Let Us make man, in Our image, after Our likeness” reveal a truth of fundamental importance. Against this foundation truth of Scripture―which is closely linked to that of redemption by Him Who came in the likeness of man―evolution raises the monstrous and impious fiction that man was made in the image and likeness of the ape, by means of an unbroken continuity of changes imperceptibly small.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): I do not know, and I do not say, that a person cannot believe in Revelation and in evolution, too, for a man may believe that which is infinitely wise and also that which is only asinine. In this evil age, there is apparently nothing that a man cannot believe.
PHILIP MAURO: There is nothing in all the animal creation which answers to the mental, moral and spiritual nature of man; or to his power of verbal expression of thought; nothing from which those marvellous and godlike attributes and powers could conceivably be derived by evolution…The real problem of the evolutionist is not to account for man’s physical being by evolution―impossible as that is―but to account for the origin of his mental, moral and spiritual attributes which are his real distinguishing characteristics. As to those, the facts all bear witness that evolution is a monstrous delusion―doubtless a phase of that “strong delusion, that they should believe a lie,” to which, according to the prophetic Scriptures, they of the last days were to be given over, who “received not the love of the truth that they might be saved,” 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12.
C. H. SPURGEON: In all its bearing upon scriptural truth, the evolution theory is in direct opposition to it. If God’s Word be true, evolution is a lie. I will not mince the matter: this is not the time for soft speaking.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): If you believe in evolutionary theory, you are really saying that God never made man perfect, but is bringing him to perfection. Therefore there is no true sin. But the Bible teaching is that man was made perfect and that he fell from that perfection, with the result that this power, this canker, has entered human nature and is there as an evil force within.
JOHN WESLEY: The Scripture avers, that “by one man’s disobedience all men were constituted sinners;” that “in Adam all died,” spiritually died, lost the life and image of God; that fallen, sinful Adam then “begat a son in his own likeness”―that every man may say, “I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin did my mother conceive me;” that “there is no difference,” in that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,”―of that glorious image of God wherein man was originally created.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): The lie of evolution strikes at the very foundations of Truth, for it repudiates man’s fall, and sets aside his need both of redemption and regeneration.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: If we say that we do not believe in the account of the creation―if we say that, we are in fact flatly contradicting everything our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ said about Himself, the law, and the prophets. Everything in the Old Testament, according to Him, is the Word of God.
PHILIP MAURO: To say that Jesus Christ was evolved, and that He was the product of His environment, is both to repudiate Christianity, and also to reject the plainest facts of history. Here we reach the climax of the matter. Christ is “the Truth,” John 14:6; and the conclusive test of every doctrine and every system is to bring it into the presence of Christ. When subjected to that test, evolution fades into nothingness like the mists in the presence of the sun. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was not an evolution. It was a complete reversal of the course of nature. The people who are “quickened together with Christ” are not an evolution, but a “new creation,” Ephesians 2:5,6; 2 Corinthians 5:17
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): It is a change by which we once more recover something of the divine nature, and are renewed after the image of God. It is a complete transforming and altering of all the inner man.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost, John 20:22. Jesus breathed on [his disciples] in allusion to God’s breathing the breath of life into man, at his creation; or rather, to the Spirit Himself, Who is the breath of God, and proceeds from Him, as from the Father.
ADAM CLARKE: He breathed on them, intimating by this that they were to be made new men.
HENRY SCOUGAL (1650-1678): It is a union of the soul with God, a real participation of the Divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, or, in the apostle’s phrase, “it is Christ formed within us,” Galatians 4:19.
ISAAC AMBROSE (1604-1664): As the print of the seal on the wax is the express image of the seal itself, so Christ is the “express image,” the perfect representation of God, Hebrews 1:3.
PHILIP MAURO: The supreme disproof of evolution then is the risen Christ, and the results which have everywhere followed the preaching of the risen Christ.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Let us seriously consider it, and say, to our Creator’s praise, We are fearfully and wonderfully made, Psalm 139:14. Elihu, in the patriarchal age, refers to this history when he says Job 33:6, I also am formed out of the clay, and Psalm 139:4, The breath of the Almighty hath given me life, and Job 32:8, There is a spirit in man.
