Genesis 1:26–27. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness... 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
God’s Touch on The Creation of Man

Psalms 8:4-5 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Psalms 100:3 Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves;
The truth that we read in God’s word that elevated society and mankind past the horrors of human and child sacrifice, is that God directly created man in His image.

The Bible lets us enter into the counsel of the Godhead before man was created on the sixth day of creation. Genesis 1:26-28 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…

We are given the exact process of this creation in Genesis 2:7 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.
God specially created man in His image. He did this by using the elements of His existing creation, the Bible says the dust of the ground, but He also did something that was unique to humankind. God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and he became a “living soul.”

There are two truths of man’s creation that you must take note of because upon these two truths hinges the difference between the horrors of the ancient pagan world, the modern neo-pagan world and the hope of the Judeo/Christian world.

The Image of God: Two Truths

First truth: Man was made in the image of God. What does that mean? What is the image of God? First it was not a physical image. The Jesus Himself told us, John 4:24 God is a Spirit. Colossians 1:15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.

The image of God in man instead is a moral image. As Henry Thiessan writes, “it consists in both man’s rational nature and in his moral conformity to God. The theologian Hodge said, “He is the image of God, and bears and reflects the divine likeness among the inhabitants of the earth, because he is a spirit, an intelligent, voluntary agent…”

It was also a mental image, capable of freewill. To quote Hodge again, “God is a Spirit, the human soul is a spirit. The essential attributes of a spirit are reason, conscience, and will. A spirit is a rational, moral, and therefore also a free agent. In making man after his own image, therefore, God endowed him with those attributes which belong to his own nature as a spirit.

Finally, it was a social image. Thiessan again, “God’s social nature is grounded in his affections. He finds the objects of his love in the trinity. As God has a social nature, so he has endowed man with a social nature. Consequently, man seeks companionship.

The Second Truth: God breathed in the physical body of man and that physical body becomes something much, much more. God breathed into a senseless, soulless body and man then become a living, sentient, self-aware soul.

Only man has this. I’m sorry but instead of all dogs going to heaven I have to tell you, no dogs go to heaven. Nor do cats, horses, cows pot-bellied pigs or turtles. Only man has a living soul that can commune with God in heaven just as Adam and Eve did before they sinned.

John MacArthur says it well, “We are not mere mortals. We are not merely flesh. We are immortal. The shell of skin, and bones, and muscle is only a vessel, it’s only a repository in which something of the very image of God resides.”