Genesis 1: 26 – 27: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
The creation of Adam was firstly theophany as “a” pillar of fire (the pre-incarnate Adam) in Genesis 1: 27 before God put him into a body of flesh in Genesis 2: 7 (Please read: From thought to flesh, bypassing the Word). This is the exact same pattern of how God expressed Himself from invisible Spirit (John 4: 24), to “the” Pillar of Fire (the pre-incarnate Jesus), to the man Jesus in a body of flesh and blood. God is first and foremost Spirit, and when He created Man, He fashioned him in the same form that God would take when He too materialized Himself into flesh.
God’s actual physical form was never an animal, bird, or fish, but was always that of a man. In Matthew 3: 16, the Holy Spirit did appear in the form of a Dove as a sign to the prophet John (John 1: 32 – 33), but a Dove is not how God materialized Himself in flesh. Although the essence of God is Spirit, yet He does not fill all Time and Space with His presence, but rather, He fills all Time and Space by His omniscience (His knowing of all things). Israel did not want God to speak to them as the great Pillar of Fire that thundered from the mountain, but wanted Moses to speak to them on God’s behalf (Exodus 20: 18 – 19) Because of this, God promised that He would take on the form of a Prophet-Shepherd and speak to them in the same visage as the people (Deuteronomy 18: 15: The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;). This was fulfilled in Jesus.
When God made Himself visible to Moses, he saw the back part of a man (Exodus 33: 20 – 23); later Joshua saw the entire visage of God as a man standing before Him with a drawn Sword in His hand (Joshua 5: 13 – 15). Moses saw the back part of a man whilst Joshua saw His face, and that man told Joshua to remove his shoes, for the place whereon he stood was holy ground. These were the same words God spoke to Moses when He appeared as the Pillar of Fire in a burning bush, showing that God had changed form from being the Light to becoming a man (Exodus 3: 5).
Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and seventy of Israel’s elders saw the feet of God (Exodus 24: 10), whilst Belshazzar of Babylon saw the hand of God write on the wall of the palace (Daniel 5: 5). God is seen as Melchizedek (Genesis 14), as a man with dust on His garments (Genesis 18), and as the Angel of the LORD. The Bible speaks extensively of God as having human-like emotions and the same anatomical qualities as us, so that we can comprehend Him as we would one another. From His nostrils (Exodus 15: 8), to His eyes (2 Chronicles 16: 9), His repentance (Genesis 6: 6; Exodus 32: 14), His anger (Exodus 32: 11), His being grieved (Genesis 6: 6), and so forth. So many human characteristics are attributed to God, not just to help us understand how He feels and thinks, but to show us that His actual visible and eternal representation will be in the form of a man.
When Jesus came to the earth, this was God showing to the world the human form He will visibly have to us for the ceaseless ages of Eternity. It was Jehovah of the Old Testament en morphe into Jesus of the New Testament. The corporal body of Jesus in Heaven is and will always be the visible expression of the invisible Spirit of God. This is why when God made a man in His own image, the man was made with the same anatomical makeup as Jesus, because Jesus was the beginning of the creation of God (Revelation 3: 14); in other words, He was a God-man, the first of and the head of the new race of God-men (the sons and daughters of God) that would come into expression after Him.