The Image of God

The Image of God: Man’s Lost But God’s Solution

Genesis 1:26–27 KJV 1900

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.

Introduction:

Dr. Paul W. Brand, who co-wrote a book with Philip Yancey entitled, In His Image, relates a story that will help to lay a foundation for what I want to talk about today.

He tells about a time when he was working with ten medical interns at Christian Medical College Hospital in Vellore, India. Dr. Brand and his students were watching one of the interns as he made his diagnosis. He was half-kneeling, in the posture I had taught him, with his warm hand slipping under the sheet and resting on the patient’s bare abdomen. While his fingers probed gently for telltale signs of distress, he continued a line of questioning that showed he was weighing the possibility of appendicitis. Dr. Brand recalls:

Suddenly something caught my eye – a slight twitch of movement on the intern’s face. Was it the eyebrow arching upward? A vague memory stirred in my mind, but one I could not fully recall. His questions were leading into a delicate area. The intern’s facial muscles contracted into an expression combining sympathy, inquisitiveness, and disarming warmth as he looked straight into the patient’s face and asked the questions. His very countenance coaxed the woman to relax, put aside the awkwardness, and tell us the truth.

At that moment my memory snapped into place. Of course!

The left eyebrow cocked up with the right one trailing down, the wry, enticing smile, the head tilted to one side, the twinkling eyes-these were unmistakably the features of my dear old chief surgeon in London, Professor Robin Pilcher. I sucked in my breath sharply and exclaimed. The students looked up, startled by my reaction. I could not help it; it seemed as if the intern had studied Professor Pilcher’s face for an acting audition and was now drawing from his repertoire to impress me.

Answering their questioning looks, I explained myself. ‘That is the face of my old chief! What a coincidence – you have the same expression, yet you’ve never been to England and Pilcher certainly has never visited India.’

At first, the students stared at me in confused silence. Finally, two or three of them grinned. ‘We don’t know any Professor Pilcher,’ one said. ‘But Dr. Brand, that was your expression he was wearing.’

Later that evening, Dr. Brand thought back to the incident. He had thought he was learning techniques of surgery and diagnostic procedures. Along with these things, his old professor had imprinted his instincts, his expression, and his very smile so that they, too, would be passed down from generation to generation in an unbroken human chain. It was a kind smile, perfect for cutting through the fog of embarrassment to encourage a patient’s honesty. What textbook or computer program could have charted out the facial expression needed at that exact moment within the curtain? Because of his learning, Dr. Brand was passing on the image of his professor (Brand & Yancey, 1997, pp. 17-18).

A man was designed to bear the image of God. Being a steward of God means that we bear his image. We were not just created in the image of God, but there is a purpose for that design. What is that design?

The Design for Man Being Created in the Image of God.

What Is the Image of God?

We have lost much of the word image in our modern times and its true meaning. The meaning of this word is likeness. Strong says it means a resemblance. It carries the idea of an idol. We interpret it to mean appearance.

As Brand & Yancey (1997) explains:

How can visible human beings express the image of God? We certainly cannot look like Him, sharing characteristic features of eyebrow or earlobe, for God is invisible spirit. Philosophers and theologians have long speculated on all that could be contained within the mystery of that single phrase.

Among all God’s creatures, only humanity receives the image of God, and that quality separates us from all else. We possess what no other animal does; we are linked in our essence to God. Killing an animal means one thing; killing a fellow human is an entirely different matter, “for in the image of God has God made man” (9:6). (pp. 20-21)

This idea that man is made in the image of God means that mankind is different from every other created being. According to David Guzik (Meyers, 2021), this is “because He has a created consistency with God.” This is explained by four concepts:

i. This means there is an unbridgeable gap between human life and animal life.

ii. This means there is also an unbridgeable gap between human life and angelic life.

iii. This means the incarnation was truly possible.

iv. This means human life has intrinsic value, quite apart from the “quality of life” experienced by any individual, because human life is made in the image of God.

What the Image of God is Not

qThis image of God concept does not mean that God has a physical or human body.

God is Spirit as Jesus declared to the Samaritan Woman at the well: God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth(John 4:24). Even though God does not have a physical body, in creating mankind, He gave to man many of the things that God can do such as seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, speaking, thinking, planning, and so forth.

qIt would be wrong to say that the human bodies given to Adam and Eve are in the image of God.

God is Spirit, so the actual form of the human body does not describe the image of God. It is the fittest receptacle for the man’s spirit that bears the image of God.

qHowever, we cannot say that the human body of Jesus was the exact image of God.

Why? Because God is Spirit and does not have a body.

Most of this confusion is due to the understanding of the words image and likeness. “The terms for image and likeness are slightly different. Image has more to do with appearance, and likeness has more to do with an abstract similarity” (Meyers, 2021). There are three aspects that we are made in the image of God:

• It means humans possess personality: knowledge, feelings, and a will. This sets man apart from all animals and plants.

• It means humans possess morality: we can make moral judgments and have a conscience.

• It means humans possess spirituality: man is made for communion with God. It is on the level of spirit we communicate with God.

The Image of God as Seen Within Man.

When Jesus came as the Supreme Sacrifice for all mankind, He came in a bodily form. In so doing, He revealed to us this concept of the image of God. R. Scott Rodin (2010) explains:

We begin with a central tenet of the Christian faith: you and I were created in the image of the God we know in Jesus Christ, who has revealed himself to us as the triune God of grace. That may be the most profound statement human ears have ever heard. The implications are enormous, pervasive, and unequivocal. (p. 30)

When we truly grasp this truth, we completely understand the purpose of our existence. “This certainty leads us to a life that has meaning as we live out that purpose, bearing God’s image in the community. It is an invitation to a new kind of life, to contentment, to real joy, and freedom” (Rodin, 2010, p. 30). It is through Jesus Christ, not his human body, that we learn what it is to be made in the image of God.

The Image Created—Meaning and Purpose.

We were created to have meaning and purpose in our existence as image-bearers of God. In the first three chapters of Genesis, we find that we were created to be stewards of all that God created. This stewardship is reflected in four levels of relationship: our relationship with God, with ourselves, with our neighbor, and with creation.

Mankind did not stay true to God’s calling. God created man to be a steward. He was to tend the garden and care for the creation of God. Being made in the image of God enabled mankind to accomplish this task effectively.

We come to the third chapter of Genesis and see an awful destruction of that image. The image of God was marred in mankind when Satan put the idea that man could be like God. Satan put a question mark in the mind of Eve about what God had meant by not eating the forbidden tree. Listening to the enemy, Eve succumbed to temptation. She took the bait and bit the fruit. The bite marred the image of God within mankind.

The Image Lost—Brokenness and Deceit.

We know that when sin entered the world, it had a devastating impact on our relationship with God. However, too often we have thought the effects of the Fall apply only to our relationship with God.

q In the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, our relationship with God was fatally disrupted.

q We also experienced the loss of relationship with ourselves. Adam and Eve lost their primary purpose in life—tending the garden, loving one another, and fellowshipping freely with God as his beloved creation.

The impact of this loss cannot be overstated. When we lose this guiding sense of purpose, we are untethered from our moorings and float through life seeking some other place where we can find security and refuge.

The Fall cost the first couple this sense of self-identity. Brokenness with God leads to a distorted self-image. This marred image gives rise to the self as the center of life, which in turn uses people and creation in its futile quest for meaning and satisfaction. It is a desperate state, but God did not leave us here.

The image was restored.

Praise be to God that the restoration Christ accomplished through his blood was even more holistic than the effect of the Fall. And we are assured that, while sin brought condemnation on the one man, so the blood of Christ brings redemption for all humanity (see Romans 5:12-15). In short, all that was lost in the Fall was fully and completely restored in Christ! Just as sin brought brokenness on all four levels, so Christ’s redemption brought healing and reconciliation on all four levels.

Simply put, we are stewards in God’s kingdom. This new kingdom that has come among us in the work of Christ is complete, yet also transitional. It is complete in that it is the kingdom of the Son, whose work to restore all things is complete. It is transitional in that it has come into this sinful world, which does not know that restoration has been made for it at every level.

The kingdom of this world celebrates the self as king. In seeking to be its god and thirsting for the control of Eden, the self-reenacts the Fall and chooses evil over good again and again. It rebels against grace and therefore chooses destruction over life. It still plays the owner and therefore chooses manipulation, exploitation, and abuse over the work of the Christian.

We see Jesus! In a world that sees everything apart from Christ’s control, people still can see Jesus in the lives of the workers of his kingdom. The evidence of this new kingdom is found in the lives of the people of the kingdom who live as Christian stewards in a world of owners.

The Rise of the Second Kingdom

Unfortunately, few of us would claim to be complete, committed, holistic, one-kingdom people. Despite our desire to be totally and solely committed to Jesus Christ and to give everything to him, we hold back parts of our lives from God. As we do, we build a second kingdom.

Jesus rejected this temptation, but if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we all build second kingdoms over which we serve as lord. They consist of the things over which we seek to maintain control, such as time, possessions, relationships, reputation, and future. At each of the four levels is a temptation to carve out a place where we can play the owner and ruler over some aspect of it. And so, we build our earthly kingdoms and rely on them to ascribe to us a large measure of our self-worth, satisfaction, and security.

The last thing in the world that the enemy wants is for you and me to be completely committed to Jesus Christ. This gives rise to the battle and hopefully a surrender of the Second Kingdom.

The Battle and Surrender of the Second Kingdom

In the sharpest possible distinction, the call to live for Christ is a call to give up all things in our earthly kingdom. God has asked us to lay aside those things that are not of His kingdom. German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer proclaimed it clearly: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” So, if you have come to Christ, God has called you to step off the throne and come into his kingdom fully, completely, and unreservedly.

When we become Christians, the enemy works in us to shift our allegiance to anything but the lordship of Christ. On the other, the Holy Spirit wants to work in us a transformation that empowers us to reject our kingdoms, surrender them to God, submit to the ownership and Kingship of God, and live as one-kingdom people. This process of dismantling and disowning for the sake of trusting and obeying is at the heart of a surrendered steward Christian. When a person puts everything under the one lordship of Jesus Christ, he or she gives up that control. The call to one-kingdom living is a call to the daily exercise of dying to self and rising to righteousness, of taking up our cross and following him. It is affirming with Paul that “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

Conclusion

“When a soldier bows to his general, or a scholar to his teacher, he is yielding his will—his life—he gives himself to the rule and mastery and the power of another. Christ did that. He said He came not to do His own will but to do His Father’s will. In Gethsemane, He said, ‘Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will’ (Mark 14:36). On the cross He suffered what had been settled in Gethsemane. He yielded His life to God and thereby taught us that the only thing worth living for is a life yielded to God, even unto death. If you are controlling your life and spending it on yourself, even partly, you are abusing it and taking it away from God’s original purpose. Learn from Christ that the beauty and purpose of having a life is so that you can surrender it to God and then allow Him to fill it with His glory” (Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender [Bloomington, MN: Bethany House, 2003], 45).

We cannot pursue both God’s will and our own independent will. We must empty ourselves of one to fully embrace the other. When our hearts are surrendered and trusting God, our desires will align with God’s and our joy will be made full!

Bibliography:

Brand, P. W., & Yancey, P. (1997). In his image.

Zondervan.

Meyers, R. (2021). David Guzik’s enduring word

commentary (Version 13.0.0). e-Sword

Rodin, R. S. (2010). The steward leader: Transforming

people, organizations, and communities. IVP

Academic