Who Was the Bible Referring to When He Said Let Us Make Man in Our Own Image?
1) Direct Answer
It was the one God speaking in counsel with His own Word—His Logos—the expression of Himself by which He would create all things and later be manifested in Jesus Christ. It is not three persons, and it is not angels.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- Genesis 1:26-27 says, “Let us make man in our image… So God created man in his own image.” The very next verse returns to the singular—one Creator.
- Isaiah 44:24: “I am the LORD that maketh all things… that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.” God did not share creation with another person.
- John 1:1-3: “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was God… All things were made by him.” The Word is God’s own expressed thought made manifest—God creating by His Word.
- Ephesians 1:11: He “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” God’s “us” is His own divine counsel—God communing with His Word.
- 1 Timothy 3:16: “God was manifest in the flesh.” The image God had in view would be fully revealed in Christ, the true image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).
Now notice: Genesis 1 shows man created in God’s image (spirit nature and dominion), and Genesis 2:7 shows man formed from the dust. First the image; then the body.
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- If “us” meant three divine persons, we would have three creators—yet God says He made all things alone and by Himself (Isaiah 44:24).
- Angels did not create the world.
- “Us” is God deliberating with His own Word, His plan, His self-expression. As a man speaks within himself, God spoke with His Logos.
- “In our image” points to God’s nature reflected in man—spirit, holiness, and dominion—and finds its perfect fulfillment when God Himself was manifested in Christ.
4) Reinforcing Statement
It’s one God, not three. The “us” is the one Lord counseling with His own Word, creating all things and purposing to reveal Himself perfectly in Jesus Christ.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
The Masterpiece
64-0705 §47
Remember, 'Angelo could only cry out and smite the image and say, "Speak!" But how different it was to God, the great sculptor. When He made a man in his own image, so perfect that it reflected Him. God spoke through the image of man, showing what He would do. He spoke through the prophets as they were in their potential image, as He was bringing up to the Head. But when He come in the Head, He was all the image of God. He was portraying Himself. Then smitten for us... Now He is the masterpiece to us, the gift of G...
The unity of one God in the one Church
58-1221E §10
Now, in the beginning, Genesis, which is the seed chapter of the Bible, we find in there that when God made a man, He made him in the way that He knew that he was to be. And he could never be any greater design than what he is. When He begin to make life, He made it from the lowest life, which is, more or less, the polliwog, the frog; and on to the highest life, is man, which is in the image of God.
Identification
64-0216 §12
I just wonder today, if we couldn't look in the Bible, and say "That's me," as we wonder which one is it. Which character in the Bible would we look like? And let's just take that for a little text now, and stay with it for awhile. And as we look into God's Word, let's identify ourself for He give others in there for examples, of what we are. Now, remember that God takes his (spirit), or takes his man, but never his spirit. Satan takes his man, but never his spirit. So let's see if we can identify our present state...
Questions and Answers on Hebrews, part 3
57-1006 §97
Now, if you take the theophany when you are looking at that, that's a man. Now, that's where we were in the beginning. Now, you do not understand it now, but you was back there in the beginning that way. When man made... When God made man in His image, He made him a theophany. And He only placed him in flesh... When God made man in His image, in His likeness, they were... In Genesis 2, or Genesis 1:28, I believe it is, "There was no man yet to till the soil," and God had done made male and female. That's right: "No...
Believest thou this?
60-0402 §46
Here some time ago a woman that belongs to a certain group of people... I never make it a habit to make it ... about denominations, but this woman... They do not believe that Jesus was divine. They said He was just a prophet. Now if He was just a prophet, we are all in sin. He was either God, nothing less than God, or the biggest deceiver the world ever had. That's right. He was more than a man. She said, "He wasn't divine." There is so much of that in this social gospel today, trying to make Jesus Christ a prophet...