Genesis 1:26-27 "Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness..."

"Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them" (Genesis 1:26-27).
 

Question:

Where it says that God made us in His image and likeness, what does this mean? I thought that God is a spirit and all the definitions I've read point to a body.

Comment:

This passage is from the first of two different and distinct creation stories that open the Book of Genesis. The second is the familiar story of Adam and Eve, with the Lord God creating man first, and all other living things later—plants, then animals and birds and finally woman—so that man would not be alone. In this first story, however, a much more distant and spiritual God creates all of life first, then humankind (both male and female) on the sixth day before the day of rest.   Metaphysically, the first creation story describes the process by which Divine Mind brings divine ideas into expression, culminating in what Charles Fillmore called "the divine idea that includes all divine ideas"—the Christ, the spiritual essence of all humankind. In the second story we see the Christ bring divine ideas into tangible expressions of the substance of God.   What does it mean to be created in the image and likeness of God? It can't be a question of physical appearance, because God is not at this point a manifest being, but an eternal force of omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience—the infinite energy that "swept over the face of the waters" and created all that is. To be the image and likeness of such a creative energy means that we, too, are creative beings, expressing the energy of God through the creative power of our own thoughts and making the infinite divine manifest as our human experience. The creative process described in Genesis 1 isn't over and complete even now. It continues through us, the image and likeness of the divine, as we bring more of the energy of God into expression.   Blessings!

Rev. Ed