The Image of God

Image of God is one of the more common phrases used throughout Christian and Jewish history to describe human beings. The concept is spoken of three different times in the book of Genesis alone, as well as in the New Testament. But what does it really mean?

To answer that question, we must first look at how the Bible speaks of the concept. Image of God language appears first in Genesis 1:26-27, which reads in the New American Standard Bible, "Then God said, 'Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.' So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

The second mention of the concept comes in Genesis 5:1-3, which reads, "This is the book of the generations of Adam. On the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them “mankind” on the day when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth."

The final presentation of Image of God language appears in Genesis 9:6, which states, "Whoever sheds human blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made mankind."

From these passages, there are a few observations we can make. Namely, the image of God is gender neutral, the phrase applies only to humans, there is no indication that the image develops over time or is ever present in any partial measure, humanity is somehow like God. humanity is the steward of creation and the reverse is not the case. Lastly, the image vocabulary is linked to childbearing. Humans after Adam and Eve are still recognized as in God's image despite not being directly created by Him.

What, exactly, is meant by image of God language is an issue that has been long debated and answered in many ways. The image of God has been described as everything from some physical attribute of humans to our external, visible form to the immaterial nature of humanity, spiritual abilities or the soul. For most of my life, that last option was the one I thought made the most sense and therefore, was how I liked to define the phrase.

As I've studied the subject more deeply, however, I've come to realize all of those options fail in their own ways. For the sake of brevity, I won't get into those reasons here, but further reading on the subject of the image of God and what does and doesn't work to define it can be found here.

So, what is the image of God, then? To make that determination, one must examine the Hebrew syntax with respect to the prepositional phrase "betselem," which is translated into English as "in the image of." The preposition "in" is most appropriately understood as "in the capacity of," or "as," in this context. What that means is, essentially, humans are more accurately described as having been created as the image of God, rather than simply in it. In other words, we are the imagers of God, functioning in the capacity of His representatives on Earth. This interpretation lends much more clarity to other concepts such as the dominion mandate that immediately follows the creation of humanity in Genesis 1 and the mandate for capital punishment for murder in Genesis 9:6. Not only that, but this view brings more clarity to the second likeness reference in Genesis 5 as it describes Seth as simply like Adam's physical shape. Seth did resemble Adam, but he wasn't created as Adam's representative on Earth since Adam was always right there with Seth on Earth until his death, thus the prepositional variant present in verse 3, distinguishing its meaning from Genesis 1.

This concept of representation of God on Earth can be compared to the way pagans have historically viewed idols. In most pagan religions, an idol is understood to be a literal representation of the god for which it was created, thus making the idol just as sacred as the god. In this case, humans ourselves are the direct representation of the one true God. The destruction or mistreatment of fellow humans is tantamount to the destruction or mistreatment of God himself.

Not only does this place a tremendous amount of responsibility on humans for the preservation of ourselves and each other, but it also means that every human endeavor carries a spiritual meaning. Any task performed to steward creation, to

harness its power for God’s glory and the benefit of fellow imagers, and to aid in the productivity of others is imaging God. Yes, that means your vocation, no matter how mundane it may seem in its day to day workings, is a form of worship.

Not only that, but this understanding brings even more clarity to New Testament imaging theology in that the New Testament writers explicitly portray Jesus as the direct image of God. As Jesus imaged God, we must image Jesus, and in doing so, we fulfill the rationale for our own creation.

This may seem like a tall task and maybe, even an unreasonable expectation, but every believer is instilled with the ability to achieve it through the process of sanctification by the Holy Spirit. There will always be moments, due to the fallen nature of mankind, when we fail to properly portray the image we were created to be, but my sincere hope is that we all will take this mandate as seriously as God intended it at the moment of creation. Are you showing the world the true image of our great and holy God?