So, why do Christians need to meditate on the Law of God? Why do we need to know what God likes and dislikes, to spend time thinking about how God wants us to interact with Him and with other people? Because, as verses 26 and 27 make clear, human beings are fundamentally different from the plants, from the sea creatures, from the birds, and from the beasts of the earth. And how? Because we have somehow been made in God’s own image.

Now, there are lots of ways that mankind uniquely displays the image of God. Unlike all other forms of life, we are able to worship Him consciously. Instead of just being able to communicate with each other, as so many other species do, we are able to speak to God and to listen to His voice. In fact, we’ve even been able to understand some of the languages in which God spoke the universe into existence, from the physics and chemistry that allows the stars to shine (Genesis 1:14) to the DNA and RNA through which all biological life is expressed (1:20, 24).

But as verses 26 and 28 make clear, the clearest way God expresses His image in human beings is the control He has given us over the rest of creation. Yes, God holds sovereign sway over everything He has made, but He has entrusted some of that authority to us. His stated purpose for mankind was for us to subdue and rule over everything else He has made.

And all of us share in that responsibility, for notice that in verse 28 God entrusted His dominion to both male and female. In fact, since Adam and Eve aren’t singled out by name, all those who are descended from them, all those who thus bear the image of God thus share in that awesome obligation, to govern and care for all animal and vegetable life in the way God wants us to.

So think about it. A football coach has to understand the rule book before crafting his plays, just as his players need to understand the same rules as they run them. A representative or senator has to understand the constitution before drafting his bills, and the rest of the legislature must keep an eye on the constitution as they consider them.

Just so, every human being needs to understand God’s expectations of us, how God wants us to express love for Him and for one another, if we are properly to exercise the authority He has given to us. For if we stop listening to Him, if we shirk our responsibility, there’s simply nothing else in all creation that can keep this world running in the way God intended for it to work.

Genesis 1:26-31 (NASB)

26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 And God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so.
31 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.