Adoption is a fictive way of creating family. We may want children as a hedge against our insecurity of our legacy and the later years of our life. But we also want children in our own image, partly because we think that we will understand them better as being physically part of us and being around us from infancy.

What did God really mean in Genesis 1:26-27 when He said He made man after His own image? And what does Genesis 5:3 mean when it says that Adam fathered Seth after his image? In Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6, it is clear that man was not made to be a physical replica of God. To be created in God’s image implies a deeper meaning, one that assumes that man was created not just with a body, but with a spirit and soul that are characteristics of God. These latter two qualities were to be the essence by which man and woman communed with God. After the fall, God sent Jesus in a bodily form so that man could see that He fully identified with them (Philippians 2:6-7). The image which had been tarnished by Adam and Eve’s sin was now fully restored in Jesus Christ.

But the image of Adam referred to in Genesis 5:3 meant that Adam saw a replica of himself in Seth. Not that Seth was his first child, since both Cain and Abel had been born already. Cain was alive during Seth’s birth, yet Cain was not described as being in Adam’s image. Cain had fallen by making the same choice Adam had, to try and make himself “like” God. Cain capitulated to the selfish impulses that his father Adam had transmitted to him. As Cain and Abel were growing up, did they not have conversations about this fateful decision around the campfire with their father? Abel seemed to understand the implications of the fall, but Cain wanted God to be pleased with his own sacrifices. Cain received, as condemnation for his murderous act, separation from his birth family, and his legacy became a defiant one against both the parents and the God who had given him life.

Seth did not do this. We do not know anything about the life of Seth other than that his firstborn son was named Enosh, and that he lived a total of 912 years. As a progenitor of the Messianic line, however, we assume that Seth attempted to follow God’s instructions in the same way that Abel did. We do not know if Abel had children before his death, but if he did, it would seem likely that Seth adopted these as his own. Seth, like Adam, recognized his sinful condition, and pursued reconciliation with God.

Seth, in the image of Adam (who was in the image of God), was both a physical and spiritual representation of his parents. Pregnancy is a reproductive miracle that allows children to be born in our “image” or likeness. Adoption (in the context of infertility) is an acknowledgement of our fallen and frail state, knowing we will never experience the joy of having a child born “in our image.” Nonetheless, we are assigned the awesome responsibility to rear these children in God’s image, and that is our hope.