In my devotional time with my 12-year-old son this past week, we talked about what it meant for God to say that we were created in his image. Genesis 1:26 says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” After our sovereign God created the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the cattle and every living thing that creeps on the earth, he created the man and woman in his image. What does that mean to you? How do you understand what just happened?
For centuries, theologians have debated what it means in the Bible that we were created in the image of God. There are those who believe it does not mean at all that we bear the physical likeness of God, and I think that is my view. In John 4:24, when Jesus encountered a woman who thought it was necessary to be at a certain location in order to worship God, his response was, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” If I am right, when Jesus said God is spirit, he meant that God the Father did not have a human body. God the Son did when he came in the form of man in a manger, but not God the Father. Many Christians, and some who have been Christians for a long time, continue to believe that God physically looks something like us, but that is not my view. The word, “image,” in Genesis 1:26 certainly does not help. As soon as that word flashes in front of our eyes, our minds start to think about physical resemblance. We think of how an image is a picture or representation of something or someone. The renowned Mona Lisa painting is an image of a woman who lived in the 1600s named Lisa del Giocondo.
If being created in the image of God does not mean we bear the physical likeness of God, then what does it mean? Somewhere sometime, my Sunday school teacher taught me how to read the Bible in context. “Context is King,” he said to me. We may use concordances and interlinear Bibles, we may learn to read and understand the Bible in the original languages, we may purchase costly Bible software, but we really don’t have to do any of those things for Bible literacy because we may already have the most powerful tool in our hands. We may not know Hebrew or Greek, but we know English. There is plenty we can do with English, if we just take the time to learn how to understand the Bible in context.
After God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness,” in Genesis 1:26, he said this:
“...and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Did you catch that? After God said that we were created in his image, he went straight to talking about you and me ruling over the living things on the earth. He didn’t talk about our emotions, our intelligence, our creativity, our physical features, or anything else. Then a few verses later, he did it again.
Genesis 1:27–28
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Does this mean that God had in mind our role to rule the living things of this earth when he said we were created in his image? Do we bear the image of God when we rule like our God also rules? I think so. Twice God said we were created in his image, and twice he talked about our rule over the living things of this world. We must understand, first and foremost, that created in God’s image has something to do with having dominion over every other creation in his name.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that being created in God’s image is only about our role to rule over the living things of the earth. There is more. Much more. Just look at these passages in the Bible that talk about how we were made in God’s image.
Genesis 5:1–3
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In 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 Man in the day when they were created. When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
Genesis 9:6
“Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed,
For in the image of God
He made man."
James 3:9
With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God...
There is much more to being created in God’s image than simply the role he gave us to rule over the living things of the earth. There is much more work for us to do. But it is a good place to start. Let’s start there. Meditate on this. Pray to God and ask him to direct where our minds should really go.
Lastly, consider the Son of God, who is the perfect and complete image of God (Billy would be so very proud of me right now). Colossians 1:15 says,
He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God.
Second Corinthians 4:3–4 says,
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
And so this Christmas, we come by the manger, and give thanks to the little babe who was born to take away our sins. All God’s people, each created in his image, gather and worship the image of the invisible God. For unto us a child is born. Unto us a Son is given. Hallelujah! What a Savior!