The Creation of Human Beings
By Ron Jones
©Titus Institute 2009 (Updated August 2022)
Where did human beings come from? Did they evolve over millions of years? Did Adam and Eve really exist? The Bible clearly states that the first human beings, Adam and Eve, were created directly by God. Genesis 1 gives a general statement of their creation. Genesis 2 gives the specific details that Adam was created first, then Eve. In Genesis 1:27, it says, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." In this verse, God reveals to us three great truths. First, he created human beings directly. They did not evolve from lower life forms. God created human beings and animals with similarities, but there is no ancestral connection. Humans do not evolve from any animals or other creatures. They were directly created by God.
Second, he created human beings in his image. The "image of God" is primarily our intellect, will, and emotions and our ability to have a relationship with God and each other. No other creatures that God created have been created in his image. Human beings are unique, different, and special from all other earthly creatures.
Third, he created them as either male or female. There are only two sexes and genders, male and female, with the DNA being different and distinct between men and women. This is how God created human beings and it cannot be changed. Genesis 1:27 is a general statement of the creation of human beings by God on the sixth day of creation. Then in Genesis 2, Moses (who wrote Genesis) explains the details of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first human beings and parents of all human beings who have ever lived. God first created Adam out of the dust of the ground. Genesis 2:7 states, "Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature."
After creating a garden home for Adam to live in and showing him how to work the land, God declared that Adam needed a "helper fit for him." Genesis 2:18 states, "Then the LORD God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'" The word Hebrew word translated "helper" means one who aids and supports. It is used by Moses of God aiding and supporting him in his conflict with Pharaoh. So, God is a "helper." This shows "helper" does not mean an inferior assistant. God is defining the role that he will create woman to fulfill. "Fit for him" means "suited to him, corresponding to him, like him." This brings out the "sameness" of man and woman; they are of the same nature, not like man and animals. They are equals but they have different roles in the marriage and family.
Later in Genesis 2, God created Eve from the rib of Adam. Genesis 2:21-22 says, "So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man." Why did God create Adam directly from the dust of the ground and Eve from Adam's rib? God wanted to show that he created man and woman to fulfill certain roles in the marriage and family relationship.
Right after he created Eve, God created the marriage relationship. Genesis 2:24 says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." Marriage, according to God's plan, is the fundamental relationship in society in order to raise children and build a stable civilization. It is defined by God to be between a man and a woman. What is woman helping man do? Fulfill the first great commission of creating and maintaining civilization. This is explained in Genesis 1:28 when God says, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
This commission is to create civilization, homes and communities where people live together and work together based in marriage and the family. God gave them a commission together and then differentiated roles. There is no inequality here anymore than in the Trinity. The Son had the role of redeemer and God the Father sent the Son to become a human being on earth. Neither is inferior to the other, but they have different roles in redemption. This is how the human race started.
All of this happened exactly as recorded in Genesis. Genesis is a history book of the beginning of the world. Adam and Eve were real people and were the real parents of all human beings. Adam and Eve followed the Lord God and were fruitful and multiplied and their descendants filled the earth. Because every human being descended from Adam and Eve, there is only one race, the human race. Within the human race are many ethnic groups with different and distinct languages, cultures, and physical features (like skin color). No matter what ethnic group we are a part of or the color of our skin, we all have the same ancestors. We are all related to each other. That is what God intended. There is a unity of the human race based on our common heritage. And we are all made in the image of God.
You may ask, "If all human beings are descended from Adam and Eve, how come we have so many ethnic groups?" Before the Noahic flood, all human beings on earth spoke the same language and lived as one people on the earth. Slowly over time, they became evil. In fact, they were so evil that eventually Noah and his three sons and their families were the only people on the earth that trusted God and lived righteously for him. God sent the world-wide flood to destroy all inhabitants of the earth and saved Noah and his sons and their families in the ark.
In Genesis 9:1 God told Noah's three sons to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." God wanted the sons of Noah to spread out over all the earth and raise their descendants in different places. God's plan was to have many nations on the earth, separate and sovereign from each other, so that evil would not spread so quickly as it had before the flood. Globalism is not God's plan for the world until the kingdom of Jesus Christ. But the sons of Noah and their descendants didn't want to separate from each other so they stayed together. Soon, they started again to rebel against God.
In Genesis 11, they decided to turn away from God and build a tower that would be a tribute not to God but to themselves as the rulers of the earth. This would have been the beginning of the preflood false religion that had destroyed the lives of most of the descendants of Adam and Eve. So God confused their languages. Genesis 11:7-9 says, "Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech. "So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth."
Once they couldn't understand each other's language they had no choice but to migrate throughout the earth and settle in different places which was done by tribes or large families. Genesis 10 gives a summary of where the descendants of each of the sons of Noah went. This is real history. This is what actually happened although it is denied by the world. The basic difference between these people groups was language, not skin color or culture. It was language. It was this separation and isolation of groups of people with the same language migrating into different geographical areas with different amounts of sunlight which developed the different physical traits of each group such as different skin colors, eye shapes and others. They also developed different cultural beliefs and practices.
Paul tells us that God's plan was to have separate and sovereign nations developed from one group of descendants from the sons of Noah. In Acts 17:26-27, he proclaims to the Athenians, "And he [God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us." Even though human beings are different and distinct in ethnicity, we are still one race of human beings made in the image of God and we all share the same human nature.
Man is basically made up of two major parts: the material and the immaterial. God created human beings with two basic parts, a soul/spirit (immaterial) and a physical body (material). The physical body can exist in this physical world and share in the physical experiences of this physical world. The soul/spirit can think, feel, will, have a relationship with God, and exist in both the physical world in a body and the spiritual realm of heaven without the body. As we saw in Genesis 2:7, God made our body from the dust of the earth so that when we die, our bodies can return to the earth until we are resurrected from the dead. It is by our bodies that we function in the physical realm God created for us to live in. At the moment of death, our soul/spirits separate from our physical bodies and enter heaven. Paul states in 2 Corinthians 5:8, "Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord."
Paul is contrasting our present status on earth and our future status in heaven with Christ. These are the only two realities for Christians. We are here on earth or in heaven with Jesus. There is no in-between existence for us. When we die, we enter the presence of Christ immediately. In the last days, the Lord has promised that he will resurrect our physical bodies and transform them into spiritual bodies like his resurrected body. He will then reunite our soul/spirits with our resurrected bodies. Then we will live in the new heavens and the new earth forever in our spiritual bodies. In Philippians 3:20-21 Paul says, "But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself." Everything that we are as human beings is because of God. We owe everything to him. God's plan for human beings is an incredible display of his grace and mercy to his creatures.
