In what sense is man made “in God’s image”?

In disclosing to his “master worker” the divine purpose to create mankind, God said: “Let us make man [ʼa·dhamʹ] in our image, according to our likeness.” (Ge 1:26, 27; Pr 8:30, 31; compare Joh 1:1-3; Col 1:15-17.) Note that the Scriptures do not say that God created man in the image of a wild beast or of a domestic animal or of a fish. Man was made “in God’s image”; he was a “son of God.” (Lu 3:38) As to the form or shape of God’s body, “at no time has anyone beheld God.” (1Jo 4:12) No one on earth knows what God’s glorious, heavenly, spiritual body looks like, so we cannot liken man’s body to God’s body. “God is a Spirit.”​—Joh 4:24.

Man and woman are “in God’s image” in that they were created with moral qualities like those of God, namely, love and justice. (Compare Col 3:10.) He also has powers and wisdom above those of animals, so that he can appreciate the things that God enjoys and appreciates, such as beauty and the arts, speaking, reasoning, and similar processes of the mind and heart of which the animals are not capable. Moreover, man is capable of spirituality, of knowing and having communication with God. (1Co 2:11-16; Heb 12:9) For such reasons man was qualified to be God’s representative and to have in subjection the forms of creature life in the skies, on the earth, and in the sea.

The highest form of earthly life and a product of the Creator, Jehovah God. Jehovah formed the man out of dust from the ground, blew into his nostrils the breath of life, “and the man came to be a living soul.” (Ge 2:7; 1Co 15:45) After Adam was created and after he named the animals, Jehovah caused a deep sleep to fall upon him; and while he slept, God took one of Adam’s ribs and used it to make the woman. Therefore, when she was presented to the man, Adam could say: “This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” He called her Woman, ʼish·shahʹ, “because from man this one was taken.” (Ge 2:21-23) Adam later gave her the name Eve (meaning “Living One”).​—Ge 3:20.