Any
play demands a dress rehearsal. No greater drama in history exists than the
coming of Son to die on the cross for sinners. (And all heaven’s angels fall
down before the Lord and the Lamb who sits in the center of the throne- Jesus
Christ, the image of the invisible God!) Mankind was prepared for the Son’s
coming through the history of the fathers and the records of Israel. Indeed,
the history of the Old Testament is like a giant, ongoing dress rehearsal for
the coming of the Lord Jesus. Time after time in the Old Testament, people,
events, prophecies, and religious devotion all acted out pieces of the story of
redemption that was yet to appear in the life, death, resurrection, and
glorification of the Son. How familiar is Abraham’s story of offering up his
son, his only son, unto death (Gen.22), as it illuminates the heavenly Father’s
gift of love in the giving of His one and only Son, Jesus (John 3:16). And if
the LORD God spoke this glorious creation into existence (Gen.1), how much more
glorious will be the new creation when heaven and earth are joined as one
(Rev.21:1-9)? As it is the New Testament (Covenant) that captures the great
drama of redemption in Jesus Christ, the New Covenant is so much richer than
the Old Testament (Covenant). It is the difference between the dream and the
reality. This is what I call the “quality effect.”
The Quality Effect
In
writing about any theme of theology, the Christian must balance the past with
the present, Old Testament Scripture with New Testament Scripture. The doctrine
of the image of God, for example, is not contained in the Old Testament merely,
nor just in the New. It is in both. We know that God created Scripture in such
a way that His revelation of salvation grew in time. So, what we know about
God, His creation, and salvation in the Old Testament is surpassed in detail
and depth and maturity by the New Testament teaching of those things. In a
sense, then, God’s revelation to us in Scripture grows and matures like a child
growing up into adulthood: the Old Testament is like the childhood, teen stage,
and the New Testament the adult level.
This approach must not be taken too far,
however. A common mistake made by Christians is to think that what the Old
Testament teaches is merely a reduced
or limited version of what the New Testament tells us. For example, what we
know about Jesus in the New Covenant far surpasses what we are taught about him
by the Old Covenant. Although it is true that the New Testament has more info
(quantity) about a doctrine than the Old Testament does, this is not the true
nature of the growth of God’s revelation in the Bible. It’s true nature focuses
upon quality, not quantity. The New Testament does not merely give us more
detail about Old Testament teaching. The New Testament brings in new dimensions
of the knowledge of God, aspects
that lift a doctrine into a completely different level, effectively creating a wholly renewed doctrine. In that case, a
more appropriate image to describe the differences between the Old and New
Testaments is the radical contrast between caterpillar and butterfly. The
butterfly “is” the caterpillar in a different form, a grown-up image. But the
butterfly is not just a bigger version of a caterpillar; the butterfly is, to
all appearances, a different type of insect to the caterpillar. The proper
balance, therefore, is to put quality above quantity, and conclude that the Old
Testament feeds the New Testament with all the basics about a teaching, but the
New Testament takes these basics and creates what is essentially a new
doctrine.
Let’s look at a few obvious examples
of the quality effect. You cannot read the book of Hebrews and not be awed and
excited by the vast difference between the Old and New Covenants. The temple
had a high priest, but Jesus is the perfect great high priest after the order
of Melchizedek, ministering in the temple of heaven, so that he is incomparable
to the Old Covenant high priest (Heb.5; 7). There were many Old Testament
sacrifices; but Christ’s sacrificial death is the one and only sacrifice the
New Covenant promotes (Heb.10:1-18). The Israelites were wanderers in the
wilderness, waiting to enter the promised land and its sabbaths. By faith in
the Son of God, the people of God are sojourners on earth, traveling to the promised
land of heaven to participate in its Sabbath (Heb.4; 11). There are literally
hundreds of examples of the same quality effect.
This means that that Old Testament
doctrine will provide the basic materials for an elevated and qualitatively different
doctrine in the New Covenant. So, between
the Old and New Testaments there will be some growth in knowledge, in quantity
of information; but the real marker of maturity will be that the doctrine in
the New Covenant will be markedly different to that in the Old.
A Tale of Two
Covenants
To
speak of the richer quality of the doctrine of the New Covenant is another way
of saying that Christ and his New Covenant are primary. We all naturally gravitate to the New
Testament. We love the stories of Jesus in the Gospels. There’s nothing like
them. And so, the New Covenant displays that it is inherently more glorious,
richer, than the Old. The Old Covenant anticipated this glory and richness.
Moses wrote about Jesus (John 5:46). Jesus took aside two disciples to teach
them about himself from Moses and the prophets, even all the Old Testament
Scriptures (Luke 24:27).
It is not merely that the New
Covenant and its witness to the incarnate Son is superior to the Old Covenant;
the Old Covenant is temporary and makes way for the primacy of the New
Covenant. The Old Covenant was not made to last. That is why it is called the
“Old” Covenant; it is becoming obsolete (Heb.8:13). Even though the Old
Covenant still has some value (it is the word of God, the record of His
promises about the Messiah, and it gives us the outlines of what the New
Covenant religion will look like), it is on its way out. Paul the Apostle
brings up the same dynamic. Moses gave the Law to Israel, and his face shone
with the glory of the Lord. Yet, that glory is fading (= “becoming obsolete”)
because the Law makes way for the Gospel of Jesus Christ (2 Cor.3:7-9). Indeed,
the New Covenant, by its overpowering glory and richness, makes the Old
Covenant of Moses fade into nothingness, or as Paul says, “ For
indeed what had glory [the Old Covenant], in this case has no glory
because of the glory [of the New Covenant message of Christ] that surpasses it” (2 Cor.3:10).
The writer of Hebrews hits home the temporal
nature of the Old Covenant and the superiority of the New Covenant by declaring
that the Old Covenant system of religion was merely a copy of the New, heavenly
form of religion:
4 Now
if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, since there are those who
offer the gifts according to the Law; 5 who
serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the
tabernacle; for, “See,” He says, “that you make all things according to the pattern
which was shown you on the mountain” (Heb.8:4-5).
The
earthly tabernacle and all its religious expressions were made according to a
pattern given to Moses by God. That pattern was the heavenly temple. Therefore,
the whole of Old Covenant religion was made to reflect a greater, more
excellent form of spirituality that was in heaven itself (Heb.8:6). So,
everything about Old Covenant religion was patterned after the New Covenant’s
spirituality:
23 Therefore
it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed
with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than
these.
24 For Christ did not enter a holy place made
with hands, a mere copy of the
true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us (Heb.9:23-24).
Everything
from Israel, to the tabernacle, the Sabbaths, the promised land- and on and on
I could go- was created merely as a model, a temporary model, of New Covenant
realities.
The implication of this order is
quite breathtaking- it means that Biblical religion and doctrine ultimately
find their true and final expression in the New Covenant and its teaching. It
is for that reason the writer of Hebrews casts aside the earthly tabernacle and
temple with its sacrifices and priests and replaces them with the “real deal”,
namely, their heavenly counterparts: the heavenly priest; the heavenly
tabernacle; the heavenly sacrifice and priesthood. The writer of Hebrews
summarizes the difference between the Old and the New in this way (bear in mind
that Moses was “the” prophet):
God, after He spoke long ago to the
fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 in
these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all
things, through whom also He made the world (Heb.1:1-2).
What this means for the doctrine is,
it will find its true and final expression in the New Covenant, not the Old.
So, for example, the pinnacle of the teaching about the image of God is not as
spoken about in Genesis 1, but as stated in the New Covenant’s doctrine of
Christ as the image of God; for the Old Covenant teaching on the divine image
was patterned after the New Covenant’s doctrine of the divine image in Christ
and His church.
What I have given is a kind of
framework for reading the Bible and studying doctrine. It remains to interpret
verses within this framework. To help in that respect I will now give a few
tips for interpreting the Bible, especially the Old Testament.
WALKING
THE BALANCING BEAM
Gymnasts
are quite incredible, their sense of balance legendary. Hour after hour, day
after day, of training to improve their balance. Balance is important in
everyday life. We balance our checkbooks. We’re even meant to have a balanced
diet:) So our study of Scripture must have a balance of Old and New Testament,
and, in particular, we must practice reading Scripture in its own context. Like
the gymnast, the Christian must learn to balance on the beam, that is, practice
reading Scripture in its various contexts.
Ripples in the
Water
When
reading the Bible, two extremes ought to be avoided. The first is reading into
a verse information gathered from another book, thereby failing to understand
what the verse is saying in its own context. In Genesis 2:24, Adam states that
he and the female are one flesh. What does this mean? Jesus takes the “one
flesh” teaching and applies it divorce. Man and woman are one in marriage and
therefore should not divorce, with the exception found in adultery (Matt.19:3-9).
But what can prepare anyone- old-time Jew or modern Christian- for the way Paul
uses the one-flesh principle? He uses it to teach Christ’s union with the
church and his love for it (Eph.5:28-22). I never saw it coming! Both Jesus’
interpretation and Paul’s are correct, of course. And I may say, in keeping
with what I said before, that the Old Testament teaching finds its mature
expression in the New Testament. Even so, we must not, and cannot, ignore the
immediate context of Genesis 2:24: Eve was literally of the flesh of Adam; Adam
and the female were a unit, one in marriage, husband and wife. Genesis 1 gives
more info: man and woman are both “man” (= mankind) and are therefore one race
or kind. Together they will provide children to populate the earth and subdue
the animals (Gen.1:26-28).
Conversely, we should not stick
merely to what the immediate context of a verse says to understand theology.
Let’s take an obvious one. Mormons jump all over 1 Timothy 2:5 (“For there is one
God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”)
and say that Jesus was just a man. If we stick merely to the context, or even
the chapter, there’s arguably nothing there to disarm the Mormon heresy. So, we
must step outside of the chapter, and perhaps 1 Timothy, to find evidence of
Christ’s deity. Likewise, Genesis 1:26-28 are verses that are often held at
ransom to the immediate context. Some scholars insist that if you want to know
what the image of God is in Genesis 1:26-28, you must stick to the very
immediate context. Some are more kindly and extend the context to Genesis 2. I
agree that we must get as much info from the immediate context as possible. But
I don’t think that it is possible to understand “us” in Genesis 1:26, for example, without going outside Genesis 1 and 2. This may
seem like exegetical treason, but it is not. In fact, one cannot avoid reading
back into Genesis 1 any number of theological concepts. What do I mean? Is the
God of Genesis 1 the only God? Well of course! But how do we know this from the
text? Is this the God of Israel? Yes. The immediate context does not tell us
so. Were there angels present when God created all things? Yes (Job 38:7). But
the angels are not mentioned in Genesis 1. It patently follows that, due to the
unique nature of Genesis 1 as the first chapter of the Bible, the reader must
read back into the text themes and information gained from other texts.
Consequently, when reading the Bible
we must appreciate both the immediate context in which a verse, or verses, is
written and the wider context of the same verse, or verses. For example, the
immediate context of Genesis 1:26-28 and its teaching about the divine image is
Genesis 1 itself. The next ripple of context is Genesis 2, since Genesis 1 and
2 are a unit. Genesis itself follows as the next ripple. After that, there is
the ripple of the Pentateuch, written by Moses. Then there is the ripple of Old
Covenant writings as a whole. Finally, there is the ripple of the New Covenant.
NO
NEED FOR NOVOCAIN
I
get the feeling that some Christians would rather have their teeth pulled than
go through a study of the Old Testament. I mean, those gigantic genealogies and
everlasting details about how to sacrifice. What’s the point of putting salt in
an offering? And does it really matter who is the son of whom? Can’t we just
summarize chapters and say the twelve tribes went into the Promised Land,
instead of having to read all about the tribes and their own clans? I feel your
pain; I’ve often just passed over huge tracts of Old Testament land. But, as
time has gone by, I’ve learned a trick or two. I’ll pass on some of what I
know, and maybe you’ll actually enjoy my study:) My prayer is that you won’t
need Novocain to do it.
Specifically, I want to pass on five
ways of interpreting Old Testament prophecy. I call them, “Reading the fine
print,” “Growing pains,” “Deja vu all over again,” “Multiplication plus
subtraction,” and “How to layer clip art.” Let’s begin with “Reading the fine
print.”
Reading the Fine
Print
Acts
2 supplies us with two examples of Peter reading the fine print:
25 For
David says of Him,
‘I saw the Lord always
in my presence;
For He is at my right hand, so that I
will not be shaken.
26 ‘Therefore my heart
was glad and my tongue exulted;
Moreover my flesh also will live in hope;
27 Because You will not
abandon my soul to Hades,
Nor allow Your Holy One to
undergo decay.
28 ‘You have made known
to me the ways of life;
You will make me full of gladness with
Your presence.’
29 “Brethren,
I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died
and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30 And so,
because he was a prophet and knew that God
had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, 31 he
looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did
His flesh suffer decay. (Acts
4:25-31)
Peter
says that David prophesied about the resurrection of Christ. Peter is referring
to Psalm 16. The Psalm, when read at face, value seems to be about David. David
says, “I…I…I”. Lots of “I”s! Yet, David was not speaking about himself but of
Christ. Peter joined the dots together: Christ had died, but his flesh was not decayed;
David had died, and his body was well rotted. So, the Psalm could not be about
David, ultimately. Jesus was the “son of David”, the Messiah, so the Psalm,
concluded Peter, was ultimately about Jesus Christ. Peter had read the fine
print.
The other example of Peter using the
“read the fine print” method was his use of Psalm 110:1-2 in Acts 2:34-35. The
Psalm cannot be about David. In his lifetime, David reigned in the midst of his
enemies, but he says that someone
else called “my lord” (Psa.110:1) will reign in the midst of his enemies. Maybe
David, Solomon’s son, or some other king of Judah, is referred to. Even then,
no king of Israel was a priest after the order of Melchizedek (Psa.110:4). So,
the Psalm can only apply to Jesus.
Another example of reading the fine
print is any Old Testament passage referring to the worldwide rule of Israel or
a king. No one has ever reigned over the world, except Christ Jesus the Lord.
Psalm 2 cannot possibly be a reference, ultimately, to David, or to his earthly
sons, for they never received “the ends of the earth as their possession”
(Psa.2:8). Jesus is the Son that we must pay homage to (Psa.2:11).
Jumping ahead of myself, I will give
you one example of reading the fine print in respect of the doctrine of the
image of God in the Old Testament. Psalm 8:4 says that the LORD made the “son
of man” a little lower than God. 99 times out of 100 this is taken as a
straightforward reference to Genesis 1:26-27 and God creating Adam. But he is the most unlikely candidate to be called “son of man”. Why? God was his
“father”, for God created him. Adam is a son of God (Luke 3:38); Adam is no son
of a man. He is man! So, “son of man”
must be a reference to someone other than Adam, one of Adam’s seed. Ultimately,
the prophecies about the son of man were fulfilled in one Jesus of Nazareth.
Growing Pains
The
second element of interpretation of Old Testament writings I have called, “Growing
pains.” It is focuses on the growth of the awareness of the Messianic promises.
How much did Adam and Eve know about
Christ? What about Moses, David, Elijah? Well, we don’t know exactly, but we
can give a healthy guess based on what they wrote and on what was said to them.
Let me take an example- Genesis 3:15-16. Did Eve understand that before her was
a promise of a savior, a deliverer? I would say yes, but in a very, very
opaque, shadow-like manner. She understood enough, in other words, but not the
detail we know. She understood God was holding out to her hope through her
seed, a man (Gen.3:15-16). It is for that reason, I believe, she exclaimed when
she first bore a child, “ “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord”
” (Gen.4:1). She did not know of a “Messiah” or a “Christ”, for these terms
came later, after her death. But she deduced that God was going to restore the
fellowship between mankind and God through a man.
There can be no doubt, however, that
the Old Testament saints didn’t have the comprehension that we have of Christ
and His work. On two different occasions, Daniel asked for an explanation of
the things that he saw, but was told he was not to know the times and outcomes
of the events (Dan.8:15; 12:8-9). All of the Old Testament prophets had this
lack of understanding:
10 As to this
salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful
searches and inquiries, 11 seeking to
know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He
predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not
serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to
you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from
heaven—things into which angels long to look (1 Pet.1:10-12).
The lack of knowledge in Old
Testament prophets and saints sometimes spilled over into confusion. Eve, for
example, exclaimed that God had given to her a “man,” a man to reverse the
divine punishment and overcome the serpent. That “man” was…wait for it…Cain!
So, to say Eve didn’t quite understand the LORD is the proverbial understatement!
The
Lord rebuked Nicodemus, a teacher in Israel (“the” teacher) for not
understanding the Scripture (John 3:10).
Even
John the Baptist got confused. He understood loud and clear that Jesus was the
Messiah- “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”, he said (John
1:29). However, a number of months later he asked Jesus if he really was the
One (Luke 7:19-28). This was not merely a question of, “Who is the Messiah?”,
“When will He come?” John’s doubt was directed toward Jesus’ seeming lack of
Messianic authority. John the Baptist was in jail. But wasn’t the Messiah meant
to deliver Israel from its enemies, free the saints of the Ancient of Days from
their opponents, and establish the LORD’s kingdom on earth? To put it another
way, even though John had all these prophecies about the Christ, he didn’t
understand their full implications.
Jesus’ disciples were confused. Yet,
he had given them small-group instruction on a daily basis. They made huge
mistakes in trying to understand what He taught them. How often did He get
frustrated with them? Even after His resurrection, the Son continued to educate
His disciples. The two on the road to Emmaus did not recognize the man they
were speaking to, that He was the risen Lord, so Jesus rebukes the men, “ “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all
that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:25).
The
“light-bulb moment”, the act that gave to His disciples clarity about the
Christ, was only after Jesus opened up the minds of His disciples to understand
the Old Testament’s witness to Him (Luke 24:45-47). It was not until the Day of
Pentecost that we see the disciples growing into mature believers in terms of
their understanding of the Christ’s person and work. It was Peter who said to
Jesus that He will not wash his feet (John 13:10), and to whom Jesus declared,
“ “Get behind me, Satan” ” (Matt.16:23). Now this same Peter is proclaiming
boldly the full mysteries of the Messiah to a vast crowd of devoted Jews (Acts
2:14-41)! How come? The Spirit had enlightened him, and empowered him, to
preach Christ Jesus (Acts 2:1-13).
Thus, Moses and David would have
understood a lot about the coming Messiah, His sufferings and His
glorification. Who He was as a person, and the time of His coming, were not
known to them. Other factors about Him they would not have known. More than
this, they would have, at times, not fully comprehended the levels of meaning
in their own prophecies and writings. And at other times, in their personal lives, they would have got confused over the
person and work of the Messiah.
I’ve said these things about
“growing pains” to encourage you to think for yourself as you study. Too many
scholars and writers live by the rule that you cannot really read into an Old
Testament verse any kind of Messianic flavor. Why not? Well, they say, you’ve
got to keep to the context. And if the context is about David and his time, for
example, and there’s not a straightforward prophesy about Jesus, then you can’t
go around making connections between Jesus and the verse. If we followed this ‘rule’
of the Old Testament scholars, we would have to give up reading the Old
Testament to meet with Christ; and- I don’t know about you- I’m not interested
in reading a Jewish book just for the sake of it! It is important to recall
that, if Jesus expected the Jews, many of whom were ungodly, to understand that
the Old Testament was about the Christ, then we who have the same Spirit as
Peter can confidently read the Old Testament by itself and find Christ in it!
Deja
Vu All Over Again
A
major part of reading the Old Testament is when you’re reading a passage, you
feel you’ve read it before, but not the exact same passage. This is deliberate,
for it is built into the Old Testament, believe it or not. Part of it is the
replication of history, as in 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles. Another
aspect is the repetition of names and sacrifices, and various other details. What
I’m referring to, however, is the storyline: it feels like the same storyline
is playing itself out time and again. And you know- it is! Repetition is the
most fundamental of learning tools. As I’ve said, the Old Testament was a dress
rehearsal for the coming of the Son. For that reason, the Old Testament, like a
broken record, plays the same theme over and over and over and over. It is the
story of man set up to serve God, empowered to please Him; man falling flat on
his face in sin; God intervening to deliver man, to punish; and from there, God
intervening to restore and forgive man, rebuild him, and empower him again. And
so the cycle starts again. Israel keeps making the same mistakes over and over,
yet God keeps delivering- read the book of Judges.
The doctrine of the image of God in
the Old Testament is really lots of episodes of déjà vu. For example, the essential story of Adam and Eve and the
divine image, with the Fall of man and his restoration, is repeated over and
over in different forms. Adam fails as the image bearer. In steps Seth as the
image bearer. His lineage fails. In steps Noah as the image bearer. He gets
drunk. So we move on to Shem as the image bearer. His lineage tanks also.
Eventually we get to Abram as the image bearer. He tries to circumvent God’s
promise by having a child by his servant and not by his wife. Isaac and Jacob
fail as image bearers. Eventually, Moses is called in as the image bearer,
covered in divine glory, yet he loses his temper too much, so he doesn’t enter
the land. After a while, we get David, but he’s got too much blood on his hands
as an image bearer. Perhaps his son Solomon will be the true image bearer.
Nope! He gathers himself a harem of godless women who take his heart from the
LORD. Need I go on?
Closely tied to the repetition of themes
is that the same promise of God can be fulfilled multiple times. This I call
“multiplication plus subtraction.”
Multiplication
Plus Subtraction
The promises of
God in the Old Testament sometimes- for it depends on the promise- receive
multiple fulfillments that end with Christ. For example, Nehemiah praised the
LORD God for fulfilling His promise to bring Israel into the land of the
Canaanites (Neh.9:7-8). However, we know that this promise to enter the land
was fulfilled way back in Joshua’s day (Jos.21:45; 23:15). Ultimately, the New
Testament says that the “land” promise is fulfilled in the heavenly land, Mount
Zion itself (Heb.11:39-40; 12:18-24) by fixing our eyes on our heavenly Joshua,
Jesus (Heb.12:1-3).
A main reason for many fulfillments
or repetitions was to teach the Israelites the most important lesson about the
promise itself: that it was spiritually fulfilled. For example, God’s covenant
with Israel concerning the land was an everlasting
covenant (Gen.17:8), one which will endure the ages. Israel must have noticed,
however, that it was constantly subdued and controlled by foreign nations and
exiled on a few occasions. Israel did return to the land, during the time of
Nehemiah, but from that point on Israel was under the rule of this or that
power. So, the land was never wholly theirs…not really! A mindset developed in
Israel that the promise of the land, for it to be everlasting, would finally
have to rid Israel of every individual enemy and all things that displeased the
LORD God. But this proved impossible, as Jesus taught the Jews. In other words,
the promise was never going to be fulfilled on a literal level but on a
spiritual level; for every time Israel literally tried to settle down in the
land and rid itself of enemies and of everything displeasing to God, Israel
always failed. Jesus came along and taught that “rest” from sin was found in
him alone (Matt.11:28-30), and that the Son of Man was from the “land” of
heaven (John 3:13; 6:62).
Let’s use the divine image as
another example. Time and again, God’s words imply a promise to restore the
earth, to restore the image, to restore man. But again and again this fails.
Eventually we get to the New Testament and we see that the image is not tied to
this world but to the next, and is fulfilled not by physical things, but by
spiritual truths.
How to Layer Clip
Art
Reading
the Old Testament doctrine of the image of God is like doing clip art. In clip
art you can put one layer, that is picture, on top of another. In this way an image
grows and develops, getting more details as you go along. Reading the Old
Testament is like that, for you start off with the basic idea of the image of
God in Genesis 1. Then Moses lays on top of this the additional picture of
Genesis 2. Upon them both he puts the picture of the image taken from Genesis
3. And on and on it goes. The further you go on in your study, the more
detailed the picture of the divine image gets. As each chapter goes by, the
writers of the Old Testament add more and more new information about the image.
By the end of our study of the Old Testament we have a detailed and much clearer
picture of man in the divine image when compared to Genesis 1:26-28.
