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 believer's position in Christ
55-0116A §35
That's the reason you're holy this afternoon, not because you deserve it, but because He chose you to be that way. When? Before the foundation of the world. ... holy and without blame before him in love: How could we do it? There had to be a masterpiece do that, and that was Christ Jesus. Listen, you don't remember it. Neither do I, but, we was, before the foundation of the world. When God made man said, "Let us make man in our own image, let us give them, (plural), let us make man in our own image, spirit man, and...
Lamb and Dove
60-0805 §38
When God made a man first, he made him both male and female in spirit. He made him in His own image, and God is a spirit. When He separated him, and put him in flesh, he put the masculine spirit in a man, and the feminish spirit in a woman. And if anything's contrary to that, there's a bit of perversion there. Exactly. You see a woman trying to act like a man, there's a little something wrong there. The cell's crossed up somewhere. That's right. You see a man so sissified that he won't preach against sin or nothing...
The unfailing realities of the living God
60-0626 §45
And when God made man in His own image, He put him on the earth as a lesser god. Jesus declared it when He said, "Is not it written in your laws, that you are gods? And if they called those gods who the Word of God come to (which was the prophets), how can you condemn Me when I say I'm the Son of God?" He said. See? They just couldn't understand it. See? But man was put here with a dominion over the earth. He had everything under his control. What Adam lost, Jesus proved that He had restored. He stopped nature. He...
God's power to transform
65-0911 §22
The first man was in the image of God, which is Spirit. John 4 says, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." But God is a Spirit, and the first man that He created was spirit-man. And he was in the image and in the likeness of God. And then He put this man in flesh, and man fell. So then God came down and become in the image of man, that he might redeem that fallen man. That's the real gospel story, to my opinion.
The Messiah
61-0117 §16
Now Isaiah 9:6, we just won't read it, but He was to be the everlasting Father, the mighty God. When God made man in Genesis 1:26 it shows (if you're putting that scripture down, Genesis 1:26), it shows that God made man to be a god to begin with. Man was made to be a god, a lesser god. He was made in the image and likeness of God. He had hands like God; he had feet like God, eyes, ears and intelligence like God---his whole fiber---because he was a son of God. And Jesus referred to him as god. Jesus said, "How can...