This is a lightly edited transcript of what I actually said when I taught this session at Spring Creek Bible Church on November 8, 2015, as Part 5 of The Doctrines of Man and Sin class (the second of the two sessions on the image of God). It differs from what I planned to say; for the prepared text, see the manuscript.
This is part five of our series, and today we turn to part two of the image of God. We’ll cover four things: What is the image? Who is in the image? What does it look like? And how should it affect our lives? As I said last time, this is one of the most important doctrines for understanding who we are—if you focus on one thing to grasp anthropology, the image of God is probably it. It gets at the heart of why we exist and has profoundly practical implications for every area of life. Last week we saw that the image emphasizes how we’re like God; that the biblical terms for “image” and “likeness” largely correspond and are best viewed as two sides of the same coin (image tending to stress a visual representation, likeness the similarity between two things); and that a parent-child relationship and a picture are helpful analogies. We also surveyed the key passages, which fell into seven categories.
What Is the Image of God?
There have been many views across church history. Some sort them into two broad groups—structural (what we are) and functional (what we do). Others use three: the substantive or structural view (who and what we are), the relational view (how we relate to God and others), and the functional view (what we do as image-bearers, exercising dominion). Some add a fourth, the representative view (our status as God’s representatives). The substantive view locates the image in our spiritual or psychological nature—our intelligence, emotion, will, and moral capacity, how we differ from the animals—usually stressing intelligence. But since those abilities vary from person to person, it tends toward degrees of imaging (are smarter people more in God’s image?) and raises hard questions about the unborn or the disabled. The relational view (as Millard Erickson describes it, the image is “a matter of one’s relationship to God…something a human experiences”) rightly sees us as uniquely relational beings, but runs into the same problem: how well does an infant in the womb, or someone in a coma, exercise relational capacities? The functional view locates the image in something we do—chiefly dominion—but again, how much dominion does an infant exercise? Any view that grounds the image in an ability or activity reopens the question of who’s really in it, and to what degree.
The representative view holds that the image isn’t an ability but a status: we are God’s representatives on earth, and to be human is to image God. Its strength is that it doesn’t allow for degrees or loss—everyone has it equally, at every stage from conception to death. Its weakness is that it says too little about what the image is: if God simply assigned us the status of representative, could he have assigned it to monkeys or trees? Or is there something in us that fits us to be his image? I think there is. So I advocate a comprehensive view that takes the valid point in all four: the image includes our full human nature, our status as God’s representatives, how we relate to God and others, and the responsibilities God has given us. Remove any one and you lose part of what it means to be and function as God’s image.
It’s important to distinguish being the image of God from manifesting it. We are all the image to the same degree—that’s never gained or lost—because it involves a human nature like God’s and our status as his representatives, both unchanging and true of every human being. But we manifest the image in different ways and degrees, seen in what we do: how we relate to God and others, and how we subdue and rule the earth. Some do it better than others, and all of us do it better at some times than at others. Keeping that distinction clear resolves much of the confusion.
Do Our Bodies Image God?
Let me take a brief but interesting detour. Many theologians argue that since God is spirit and has no body, our bodies can’t in any sense be his image—there’s nothing physical to be like. Machen put it, “the image of God cannot well refer to man’s body, because God is a spirit; it must therefore refer to man’s soul.” I disagree, and here’s why. The Bible does teach that God is spirit (John 4:24), that spirits don’t have flesh and bones (Luke 24:39), and that God is invisible (Colossians 1:15; 1 Timothy 1:17; “he endured as seeing him who is invisible,” Hebrews 11:27). Don’t those together rule out any bodily imaging? Two considerations suggest not.
First, being spiritual doesn’t mean having no visible form. Angels are spirits (Hebrews 1:14), yet they’re seen throughout the Bible—and while they sometimes take human form, they often seem to appear in their own form, similar to but distinct from humans (which is why people are terrified when they see one). The spirits of the dead also correspond to their bodies: the rich man in Luke 16 has eyes and a tongue; Samuel, summoned at Endor, is recognizable as “an old man wrapped in a robe”; Moses and Elijah—long dead, their bodies disintegrated—stood and spoke with Jesus at the Transfiguration; and the disciples, seeing Jesus on the water, assumed a spirit could look like a person. So spirits, though immaterial, can have a visible form.
Second, “invisible” doesn’t necessarily mean “having no visible appearance.” The Greek aoratos simply means “unseen,” and something can be unseen in several ways: because we lack the ability to see it (a blind person, a dark room); because it’s too small or far (bacteria, a distant galaxy—which still have a visible appearance); because something blocks our access (the sun at night, stars by day); or because it truly has no visible attribute (air). People often assume God is invisible in that last sense—there’s simply nothing to see—but we’ve seen that spirits can be seen, and invisibility isn’t a necessary attribute of being spirit. Even immaterial things like light can be seen—and, interestingly, light is the most common way Scripture describes encountering God (unapproachable light, the shining at the Transfiguration, Moses’ face glowing). And the Bible does speak of seeing God: Jacob saw God “face to face” (Genesis 32:30); Moses and the elders “saw the God of Israel” (Exodus 24); God let Moses see his back but not his face, “for man shall not see me and live” (Exodus 33)—implying a face to be seen; Moses beheld “the form of the LORD” (Numbers 12); Job hoped to see God in his flesh (Job 19:26); the pure in heart “shall see God” (Matthew 5:8); the angels “always see the face of my Father” (Matthew 18:10); and we “will see his face” (Revelation 22:4). Alongside these stand “no one has ever seen God” (John 1:18) and “you have never…seen his form” (John 5:37). Some of these may be theophanies or Christophanies, but many refer explicitly to the Father.
I think we must affirm all the Bible says: God is spirit, in some sense invisible, yet in another sense visible—Jesus has seen him, the angels continually see his face, and no one can see him and live (which implies there’s something to see), and one day we’re promised we’ll see his face. However we understand God’s spiritual nature and invisibility, I don’t think the Bible disconnects our physical nature from being like him in some important way. We shouldn’t picture God as having a body, but neither must we conclude there’s nothing visible about him. A host of theologians have held that our bodies are, in some sense, in God’s image—Irenaeus (“our fleshly nature was molded after the image of God”), Calvin (“there is no part of man, not even the body itself, in which some sparks do not glow”), Bavinck, Berkouwer, and Hoekema among them. If our physical form were irrelevant to the image, God could have made us any way at all; that he formed us as he did seems not arbitrary but reflective of him in some way. We can affirm God’s nature as spirit and still allow some correspondence between God and our physical nature.
Who Is in the Image of God?
Four questions come up here. First, is fallen man still the image? Many theologians say the image was lost at the fall, struggling to see totally depraved man displaying God’s character. But that confuses being the image with manifesting it. Being in God’s image is part of our nature as humans; we don’t cease to be human at the fall, nor do we cease to be God’s image. Take our two analogies. My son is my image—like me in nature, carrying my name, representing me—and that’s unchanging no matter how he lives; how he manifests it may vary, but he can’t cease to be my image. Or an old photograph lost in a dusty attic: wipe away the dust and it’s faded, hard to make out, but it doesn’t cease to be a picture of that person—it’s just not picturing them clearly. So sin, like dust, obscures the image we are and keeps it from shining forth, without changing the fact that we remain his image. Understood broadly—our nature, our status, our responsibility—the image remains even in the most sinful of humans, which is exactly why Genesis 9:6 and James 3:9 forbid killing or cursing others: they are made in God’s image.
Second, some say fallen man retains the “image” but lost the “likeness.” But we saw last time that these are two sides of the same coin and shouldn’t be separated; keeping one and losing the other doesn’t fit the biblical data. Third, are men and women equally the image? Aquinas, commenting on 1 Corinthians 11:7 (“man…is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man”), said the image is found in man in a fuller sense than in woman. But that’s not Paul’s point. As John Frame explains, Paul isn’t saying woman doesn’t image God; he’s saying that, in addition to imaging God, she also honors man—and her subordinate role no more detracts from her imaging God than man’s own subordination detracts from his. So a biblical doctrine has all human beings in God’s image equally, from conception on: the unborn child, the elderly person with dementia, the child with disabilities—none is less the image than a healthy adult. We manifest the image to different degrees; we’re not in it to different degrees.
Fourth, are humans the only creatures in God’s image? Most theologians have said man alone is—all creation reflects God’s glory, but man uniquely as his image. As Bavinck put it, “among all creatures, only man is the image of God.” Yet some argue angels are too. Aquinas affirmed it (even saying angels are more in the image, being more perfectly intellectual), and Calvin agreed. The Reformed biblical theologian Meredith Kline—of the line of Geerhardus Vos at Westminster—argued from “let us make man in our image” that the plural addresses the heavenly council, so that “the lines of likeness connect not only God and man, but God and angels, and man and angels.” Michael Heiser argues similarly: the plural in Genesis 1:26 refers not to the Trinity alone but to the triune God and his heavenly host—God speaking on behalf of the Trinity and the angels who share the image, though God alone does the creating. The word Elohim usually means the one true God but can refer to heavenly beings (as in “you shall be like God/the heavenly beings, knowing good and evil,” Genesis 3:5, 22; “a little lower than the Elohim,” Psalm 8:5, rendered “angels” in the Greek and quoted in Hebrews 2; the divine council of Psalm 82). The angelic host, too, are called “the sons of God” (Job 1:6; 38:7; Psalm 29; 89; Daniel 3:25), the same sonship language used to describe our imaging of God. On this view, the angels were God’s first created family and we his second, both made in his image—they representing him in the heavenly realm, we on earth. I’m hesitant to take a firm position on this newer interpretation, but I do think a case can be made that angels are, in some sense, in God’s image.
What Does the Image Look Like?
We’ve said our whole nature is in God’s image and that we hold the status of representing him—true of everyone—and that the image is displayed in our relationships: under God, alongside others in community, and over creation in exercising dominion. There’s a very simple idea at the center of this: as the image of God, we’re like God—so if we want to know how to image him better, we look at God himself. We can’t be like him in his incommunicable attributes (eternity, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience), but many of his attributes—truthfulness, kindness, love, mercy, grace—we’re meant to imitate. Scripture reinforces this: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48—which, read alongside Luke 6:36, is a call to complete love toward neighbor and even enemy, not sinless perfection); “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24); “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32); and, simply, “be imitators of God” (Ephesians 5:1)—like a child mimicking a parent.
We get even greater clarity by looking at Jesus, who took on human flesh and gave us a pattern for how to live. “Walk in love, as Christ loved us” (Ephesians 5:2); forgive “as the Lord has forgiven you” (Colossians 3:13); Christ “left you an example, so that you might follow in his steps…he committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth…when he was reviled, he did not revile in return” (1 Peter 2:21–23); “whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6). As Hoekema says, Christ is “the image of God par excellence….If, therefore, we wish to know what the image of God in man is really like, we must first look at Christ”—which means that what’s central to the image is not so much reason or intelligence as love, since love stands out above all in the life of Christ. We can also look at other imagers—Paul repeatedly says, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1; Philippians 3:17; 4:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:6)—inviting us to watch the pattern of godliness in one another, since different aspects shine more clearly in different lives.
So imaging God includes several things. It includes exercising dominion—ruling over creation under God, as Adam and Eve were meant to. It’s relational—God is a relational being, eternally Father, Son, and Spirit, and he made us relational (male and female together, though singleness is no less fully in the image; marriage is one expression of our relational nature, not the only one). It’s tied to procreation and creativity—God invited us into his creative work, so when we bring new life into the world or create in other ways, we image our creative God. And it includes dependence on God and responsibility to obey him—in Genesis, God gave commands and special responsibilities to man alone. Renewing the image, then, is the work of sanctification: as we behold the pattern—God, Christ, and those imitating them—the Spirit progressively restores our imaging through the Word. “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image” (2 Corinthians 3:18); “our inner self is being renewed day by day” (4:16); we are “renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Ephesians 4:23) and “renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10); “transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
How the Doctrine Applies
Let me summarize the implications in eight points. First, we belong to God. In Mark 12:13–17, Jesus notes that the coin bearing Caesar’s image belongs to Caesar—and in the same way, what bears God’s image belongs to God. We have his mark on us; so do our spouses, children, neighbors, even our enemies. Second, we exist for God. As his image we’re designed to display him as the rest of creation cannot; our very purpose is to be like him, point to him, and reflect his glory—not only at church or in Bible reading, but in all of life. Third, we mustn’t mistreat God’s image. We should care for our own bodies and honor and love the billions of images around us—young and old, of every color, male and female, strong and weak, healthy and sick. All human life is precious and sacred because it’s in God’s image, which eradicates discrimination based on race, gender, age, intelligence, or ability. Fourth, we must follow our model—Jesus, the perfect image, after whose pattern God is restoring us; so we keep our eyes fixed on him, soaking in the gospel and studying his life in the Gospels.
Fifth, we must rule over creation. As God’s representatives we were meant to rule in his place—stewarding his world responsibly, improving it, creating, innovating, and living out the fullness of the image in every domain. A robust view of the image yields a high view of work, business, culture, art, science, technology, and more; these are good ways we subdue the earth and model God’s creative glory. Imaging God isn’t just doing “spiritual” things—all of life is his domain, and all vocations used for him are sacred. As Hoekema says, “the process of sanctification affects every aspect of life….The restoration of the image…involves the redirection of all of life.” Sixth, we should delight in God’s image in others. Even in fallen man there are glimpses of God’s glory; hearing a masterfully composed and performed orchestral piece, streamed at the click of a button, is an occasion to marvel at God’s creative genius in designing the universe and us—something I’ve done for hours while preparing these lessons. Seventh, we must live in community. God didn’t create Adam alone but Adam and Eve, relational and complementary, to fill the earth; and Christ, the image of God, is the head of the body—we image God most fully together, united in him. And eighth, we must live in hope. None of us images God as designed; through sin and its effects we’re each only a flicker of the light we were meant to be. But God’s purpose will succeed, and one day we’ll be completely free from sin and its effects on our minds, bodies, relationships, and ruling. Whatever disease or pain now keeps you from fully imaging God, one day he will set all things right.
As I’ve studied the image of God these last weeks, three themes have stood out. It’s a broad, sweeping, pervasive doctrine, reaching from eternity past into eternity future and running through the whole of Scripture and God’s work of redemption. It’s intimately tied to the theme of God’s glory, which is at the heart of the whole Bible—God’s pursuit of his glory has his own image at its center. And it’s thoroughly Trinitarian, with all three persons involved in man as God’s image. To draw it together: God existed from all eternity in perfect community as Father, Son, and Spirit, delighting in his own glory; he planned to create us as his image and conform us to the image of his Son; he made the heavenly host in his image as his first sons, and then us in his image, for his glory—to be like him, live in communion with him and community with others, fill and rule the earth, and display his glory. In sin we rebelled and stopped imaging him fully; sin is fundamentally the veiling of God’s image and glory. Jesus is the perfect image and glory of God, and he became the image of man in order to restore man to God’s image—his cross work all about restoring us. Through regeneration the Spirit began that restoration; through sanctification he continues it as our minds are renewed beholding Christ in the Word; and in glorification he will perfectly restore his image in us, making us copies of his Son, with Christ preeminent among his brothers and sisters. For all eternity we will radiate God’s glory as we perfectly image him in the new heavens and new earth. Marriage, parenting, missions, discipleship, teaching, preaching, working, playing, loving—indeed all of life—aim at helping people see and delight in their purpose in this grand plan of the triune God to magnify his glory through his imagers forever.
Let’s close in prayer. Father, thank you for this study on the image of God, and for creating us in your image. What an honor and privilege it is to be in your image. Help us to gaze at you and your Son and to look at one another, and by your Spirit continue to restore your image in us, that we might glorify you through our lives as we ought. In Jesus’ name, amen.