Mirrors of God

Introduction

This morning, we embark on a journey. 66 books, 1,189 chapters, 31,102 verses, 52 weeks, 365 days, 1 unified story. About God, humanity, and the world. Written over 1,500 years, it weaves countless threads, all tied together by the most significant person in history: Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus, the hero of this story, invites you to see your own story—your successes, struggles, conflicts, and comforts—in light of His. Through His life, death, and resurrection, He unites heaven and earth, offering abundant life to all who follow Him.

Over the next year, as you read through the entire Bible alongside your church family, we’ll explore one key passage each Sunday that highlights God’s grand narrative. This won’t be easy—each week contains rich narratives, poems, and teachings that reveal powerful truths about God. But we trust the Spirit to guide us to what is most meaningful, that you might see yourself in God’s story and experience His love, guidance, freedom, and peace.

PRAY

This week, we began with the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Before we dive in, I’d love to hear what stood out to you during your reading.

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This morning, we’re starting at the very beginning. These verses lay the foundation for all of Scripture, introducing humanity’s identity, purpose, and relationship with God. As we explore this passage, I invite you to reflect on one question:

What does it mean to be human?

What is our purpose in a world that often feels chaotic and disconnected?

The answer is found right here, at the start of it all.

The Image of God (v. 26-27)

Genesis 1:26–27 CSB

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.” So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.

Our story starts in the book of Genesis, a Greek word that means origin or birth. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, takes the first Hebrew word of the book, bereshith (In the Beginning), and translates it as geneseōs.

The scene opens to darkness, a watery chaos. Over the surface of the depths, the Spirit of God hovers like a breath. Then God begins His creative work with an incarnating word: Light, exist! And light existed. This is the pattern of God’s work throughout Genesis 1: “Let there be,” and there was. In a world that was tohu va bohu—formless and empty, wild and wasteland—God gives form, and He fills it.

Genesis 1 reveals a beautiful structure of creation, pairing days of forming and filling:

Day 1: Light/Darkness | Day 4: Sun, Moon, Stars to rule themDay 2: Skies/Waters | Day 5: Birds to rule the skies, Fish to rule the seasDay 3: Land/Vegetation | Day 6: Animals to rule the land, Humans to rule it allDay 7: Rest

God forms and fills His kingdom with a specific purpose in mind: to bring about goodness, life, and beauty. Seven times, God calls His creation “good.” But on the sixth day, God creates something unique. He says (my translation), Let us make humankind in our image, modeled according to our shape, to represent us. They will rule the fish, birds, livestock, the whole earth, and everything.

Unlike every other creature, humans are created in God’s image. In ancient times, kings would conquer lands and set up statues of themselves to declare who ruled the region. Similarly, humanity is God’s image—His living statue—declaring His presence and authority over the earth. But unlike lifeless statues (the Bible uses the word idol), we are living, breathing reflections of His personhood.

This identity defines what it means to be human: you are created to image God. It is not just something you do—it is who you are. Your presence on earth, your creativity, your work, your relationships, your pursuit of justice, beauty, and goodness—all of this reflects the gracious, compassionate, faithful, and kind Creator who made you.

To image God is to embody and reflect His character to the world. As N.T. Wright puts it, Humans are an angled mirror, reflecting God’s wise order into the world and reflecting the praises of all creation back to the Creator. You, and every other person on this earth, have inherent worth and value, regardless of status, race, or ability.

John Calvin writes: We are not to look to what men in themselves deserve but to attend to the image of God which exists in all and to which we owe all honor and love.

Application:

So what does this mean for us today?

First, recognize your worth: You are made in the image of God, not as an accident or afterthought but as a deliberate reflection of His glory. No matter your circumstances or struggles, this is your core identity.

Second, see the worth in others: Every person, even those you struggle to love, bears this image. Treat them with dignity and honor, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done.

Finally, reflect God in all you do: Your work, creativity, relationships, and pursuit of justice are ways to mirror God’s goodness. Let your life point others to His character and rule.

That is who you are: Angled Mirrors of God. Now, How does this mirror work? Let’s move on to verse 28

Commissioned with a Purpose (v. 28)

Genesis 1:28 CSB

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”

God blesses humankind. As you read Genesis, you are going to find this word, bless, and it’s antithesis, curse, many times throughout. To bless in Hebrew means to clear the path, to enable fruitfulness, to be able to do exactly what you were intended to do. God clears the path for humankind, male and female, to carry out his vision for the world in this way: Bear fruit, multiply, fill the earth, and rule it well. Carry out God’s design for what is good throughout the world.

You were made to be an idol/image, not to be worshiped or sacrificed to, but to serve as a co-regent of God on the earth, to represent his goodness and his purity and he gentleness on the earth. At a time where other nations believed the task of ruling over creation belonged to a few, God says that he gave this task to all mankind. You were created to rule. God made humans for his kingdom space to partner with them and to work alongside them in spreading the beauty and goodness and life of his kingdom throughout the earth. Now, how does this play out? How does our role as co-regents of God work?

Stewards of God’s Creation (v. 29-30)

Genesis 1:29–30 CSB

God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you, for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth—everything having the breath of life in it—I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.

The image of God in Genesis reveals that ruling over the earth means cultivating it—harnessing its raw potential to move creation forward. Like the birds, fish, and animals, humans are called to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, but we are also given a unique role: to subdue it and have dominion over it. Humanity is invited to rule God’s kingdom with Him and for Him.

God says, “I am giving you seeds for food—plant, create, eat, enjoy, be fruitful.” The first picture of humans ruling in God’s kingdom is gardening. While it may seem strange that our first job as rulers is to tend a garden, this tells us so much about the kind of king God is and the kind of kingdom He invites us into.

A garden takes work, effort, and time, but its fruit is life and sustenance. A garden brings order to chaos, turning the wild into something beautiful and useful. Gardens are also inherently communal—they grow in neighborhoods and cities, signifying humanity’s role in developing creation and moving it forward together.

This means that ruling over creation doesn’t mean exploiting it for personal gain. Our role is to care for God’s creation, stewarding it thoughtfully and lovingly.

Craig Bartholomew describes it this way: “God himself is revealed or ‘imaged’ in his creation precisely as we are busy within the creation, developing its hidden potentials… in ways that honor God. As we take God’s creative commands of ‘Let there be…’ and develop the potentials in them, we continue to spread the fragrance of his presence throughout the world.”

Wherever God has placed you—whether you are parenting, working, creating, or serving—you are called to cultivate and expand the beauty of God’s kingdom. And here’s the incredible truth: the King Himself is also cultivating and expanding His kingdom in you. God is working to create something beautiful and good in your life, declaring it “good” just as He did in the beginning.

Living in God’s Goodness (v. 31)

Genesis 1:31 CSB

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. Evening came and then morning: the sixth day.

On the seventh day, God rested. After forming and filling His creation, declaring it “very good,” He ceased from His work. This wasn’t because He was tired—God doesn’t grow weary—but because His work was complete. God’s rest signifies satisfaction in His creation, a joyful pause to delight in its beauty and goodness.

You are created to reflect God’s goodness to the world and reflect praise back to him. You are commissioned to work, to cultivate more goodness and beauty, to spread God’s vision for life across the whole earth, and to set up his standards for justice and right relationships everywhere go. But you are also invited to rest.

When we are diligent to bring order to our corner of the world, those around us have space in which to flourish. God has given us good work to do, and that work brings satisfaction, but ultimately our value is not tied to what we can produce. Our work does not define us, and it should not consume us.

In setting aside space to rest, God decrees that your identity is not tied solely to what you produce, but to the love and purpose He has already declared over you.

When you work, you point to God’s good work. But when you rest, you point to God’s work that surpasses anything we could ever do. You point to the fact that God himself rests and enjoys the goodness of his creation, the value his has imbued, the life that he has infused in all of it. Whether you work, or whether you rest, you invite the world to see God’s work in you.

Restoring the Image Through Christ

Now, all this sounds amazing, but most of you would probably look at your own life, and then out at the world around you, and this goodness and beauty and life thing isn’t very clear.

How quickly the image is bent, distorted. What ought to have been a beautiful reflection of God’s glory and beauty became a horror house of mirrors—squeezed, squashed, smudged, and stretched into something completely unrecognizable and inhuman.

The first man and woman take for themselves a forbidden fruit that will enable them to surpass their status and define what is good for themselves. They break trust with God, they break trust with each other, and they are driven from God’s sacred space.

Cain murders his brother Abel out of jealousy, a comparison of their sacrifices to God. He is driven away from his family and builds a city for himself.

Lamech takes multiple wives for himself, and brags about violent vengeance. He twists the story of his ancestor Cain to justify his murders.

As each generation passes, the good work of God to bring order out of disorder is undone, as man rebells against his place in the order of creation and seeks to rule for himself, culminating in this strange passage where sons of God mate with daughters of men and produce giant hero kings. YHWH looks at this and sees that man is nothing but evil all the time. He is grieved that he had made man at all and sends a great flood to wipe out all but one faithful family.

Then that family gets into a bit of a pickle when Noah gets drunk, naked, and, well, the children’s story rarely tells the whole bit.

Generations later, mankind gathers to build a monument to their own greatness, to assert their dominance over God himself. They are scattered and driven to the farthest corners of the earth.

In each sense, the image of God is distorted by something we call sin. In Genesis, sin is described as a spiritual beast, an inner appetite to get more, have more, be more than you were made to. It crouches at your door, God says in Genesis 4, waiting to consume you, to rule over your desires.

Sin is disordered love. It is the movement of the heart to bend the image of God so that it no longer reflects God’s goodness and redirects praise. Instead, it turns all praise back upon the self, and echoes the destructive longings of our selves and society, infinitely into oblivion. Sin is that inward desire that tries to redefine what it means to be human in an attempt to be more than what we are, and the outcome is that, inevitably, tragically, we become far less. The relentless pursuit to become superhuman always results in a subhuman existence. The Bible traces from Genesis 3 onward a law of human social dynamics—the more we take for ourselves, the more we lose what makes us human in the first place.

The more we take, the more we lose.

But here’s the profound truth: though our sin distorts the image of God in us, it cannot destroy it. Our selfishness and rebellion can damage our relationship with God, others, and creation, but it cannot erase the fact that we were made in His image. Even at humanity’s worst—when Cain murders Abel, when Lamech boasts of his vengeance, or when people build towers to glorify themselves—God still sees His image in us. Though bent and broken, it remains.

Carmen Imes: God bestows dignity on humans that does not depend on ability and is not lost due to sin. We can no more lose our identity as God’s image than a child can lose his or her identity as a son or a daughter. We can fail to live well as God’s image, but we never stop being God’s image. Because the essence of God’s image is a claim about our identity rather than a capability or function, we cannot lose it.

This is why God grieves over sin, not out of frustration, but out of love. He longs to restore what has been distorted. And that restoration comes through Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God.

Paul writes in Colossians 1:15 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” Jesus is everything we were made to be but failed to become. He lived the life of perfect love, justice, and obedience that humanity could not. Through His life, death, and resurrection, He restores what sin has broken.

In Jesus, the image of God is not just repaired—it is renewed. Paul also writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” Through faith in Jesus, we are invited into a restored relationship with our Creator. We are forgiven, freed, and empowered to live as image-bearers once again.

No matter how far you’ve fallen or how distorted your life feels, the image of God in you remains. Through Jesus, God takes the broken mirror and remakes it, so you can reflect His goodness, love, and beauty into the world. And this is where the story turns: from brokenness to redemption, from distortion to restoration, from death to life.

Finding Our Purpose in God’s Story

So, what does it mean to be human? This question, which we’ve explored from Genesis to Jesus, finds its answer in the image of God. To be human is to reflect God’s glory, to steward His creation with love and care, and to live in joyful relationship with Him. It’s not just what we do—it’s who we are.

Yet, as we’ve seen, sin distorts this image. It bends our purpose, turns us inward, and breaks our relationship with God, others, and the world. The good news, however, is that God’s story doesn’t end there. Through Jesus, the perfect image of God, our brokenness is restored, our identity renewed, and our purpose redeemed.

Jesus invites us into this restoration. Through His life, death, and resurrection, He calls us to live as renewed image-bearers, reflecting His love, grace, and justice in the world. In Him, we are empowered to partner with God once again in cultivating His kingdom—to bring beauty from chaos, life from brokenness, and hope to the hopeless.

Application:

Rest in Your Identity: No matter how far you’ve fallen, the image of God in you remains. In Christ, you are a new creation, fully known and deeply loved. Let that truth shape how you see yourself.

See the Image in Others: Recognize the inherent worth of every person, even those you struggle to love. Treat them with the same grace and dignity God shows you.

Reflect God’s Glory: In your work, relationships, and daily life, point others to the goodness of God. Let your actions and words reveal His presence and purpose.

As we embark on this 365 journey, remember: you are part of God’s story. He has called you, created you, and redeemed you to reflect His image in a world longing for His light. Let’s live out that calling, trusting in His power to restore and renew all things.

PRAY: "Father, thank You for creating us in Your image and calling us to reflect Your glory. Help us to live as renewed image-bearers in Christ, trusting in Your grace and walking in Your purpose. Use us to bring Your light and love into a world in need. Amen."