Image Bearers - Fruitfulness and Blood

Genesis 9:1-7 

1 So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. 2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. 4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man's brother I will require the life of man. 

    6 “Whoever sheds man's blood,
    By man his blood shall be shed;
    For in the image of God
    He made man.
    7 And as for you, be fruitful and multiply;
    Bring forth abundantly in the earth
    And multiply in it.”

After God’s covenant promise with Noah and the remaining mankind of his family, God reaffirmed His command to Adam to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth.  This time, however, He also put fear of man into the animals who would be eaten as well as sacrificed.  Everything alive was now fair game to be eaten until later restrictions were added in the Law through Moses.  The only caveat was not to eat the lifeblood of the animals, a command repeated later also (Acts 15:20).  God equates the blood with life; certainty we know by scientific examination of God’s design that blood carries oxygen to sustain life, and we see the physical life in blood.  But He also was speaking of life given in shedding blood for remission of sin in sacrifices, a picture carried from the skins covering Adam and Eve’s sin through sacrifice until the Son of God and Man, Jesus Christ’s sacrifice.  Therefore the sin of taking a man’s life as Cain with Abel is repeated and emphasized here to Noah, giving the consequences of shedding another man’s blood in murder.  We are image bearers of God our Maker, and by attacking His creation we take the life He gave, thus offending God Himself.  Only God has the right to sacrifice for us in Christ, allowing only animal sacrifices until He sacrificed His own Son.  We do not sacrifice or kill other people bearing His image.  What we were commanded in the physical realm is to be fruitful in multiplying; spiritually, we are to do the same in Christ, making disciples and filling the Kingdom with new life in Him.