Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26-7)
You have made us, O God, and we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Praise You!
Have you ever worked those puzzles that are mazes? You know, the ones where you have to draw a line from the start to the finish, but in between are all sorts of false paths. In order to solve those mazes, you must know two things: your destination and your current position. Traveling is like this. If a pilot wants to fly to Tokyo, he must know the coordinates for Tokyo, but he must also know where he is right now.
Walking with Jesus is the same way. To walk with Him we obviously must know about God, but we also need to know ourselves. Who are we? What are we like? Why are we here? What is our current situation? The answers to these questions are essential in order to determine the direction of our lives. In fact, the good news of Jesus makes little sense unless we first understand what the Bible says about ourselves. And the Bible has a lot to say. Over the next few months, we will be talking about God’s view of the human race.
Today we will begin that discussion with an amazing claim. Scripture says that when God created the human race, He created us in His image. That statement, by itself, is wondrous, crammed full with meaning, and we need to unpack that meaning a bit.
Let’s start by talking about what God’s image does not mean. When God made Adam and Eve in His image, He did not make new gods. Even when Adam was in a sinless state, the human race was finite, weak, dependent, and created. The Bible is clear that being created in the image of God does not make us divine, part of the divine, or able to become divine. In God’s view, a Grand Canyon exists between humans and God. God is separate from us, wholly unlike us in many ways, and He will be so forever. This means that Christianity cannot share beds with philosophies that talk as if people were part of God or can grow into gods. This eliminates such belief systems as Emerson’s transcendentalism (which has influenced modern Unitarianism) or contemporary Mormonism, which says that as God is, so shall we be (if we follow all the Mormon practices). These philosophies are not Biblical. They misunderstand what it means to be created in God’s image. We are not God and we never will be.
So what, then, does it mean to be created in God’s image? That’s not an easy question to answer, and I don’t pretend to fully understand all of the ramifications of being God’s image bearer, but an image gives a picture of something. This means that you and I, in some way, have the potential to reflect God. In addition, Genesis ties God’s image with God’s likeness. In some ways, we are like God. We share with God certain abilities, and these abilities help us know God and relate to Him. Scholars may debate the details of what God’s image means, but at a minimum, it means this: God created humans with the ability to know Him. You and I are not just smart apes. We are qualitatively distinct, and we have some astounding capacities for knowledge, all of which help us know and reflect God.
We can see, hear and touch; we can think, feel and intuit. We can reason abstractly; we have a sense of right and wrong; we believe life has purpose; we have a desire for fulfillment and do not find anything on earth that meets the desire; we have a sense of the Holy and of beauty; we can love, and we desire intimacy. We are born with the necessary software for processing certain information. Some of that information is physical, some is abstract, some emotional, some aesthetic, some is personal, and some spiritual.
Concerning our abilities to observe through our senses and to reason, I need not write. But I ought to speak briefly about other abilities we have — like our sense of morality or our desire for purpose — for these abilities are part of God’s image. They point us to God and help us understand and reflect Him in ways that a monkey never could. Therefore, for the next several weeks we will look at different capacities that come with the package called “the image of God.”
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