Dear friends,

One of the great statements of the Bible that is most often quoted or alluded to in public Christian debate is the ‘image of God’. But what does it refer to, and to whom does it refer? In this episode we continue to look at the New Testament understanding of the early chapters of Genesis. And here we find there are more references to the image of God than in the Old Testament. For there is a great surprise in store for those who read Genesis 1.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Hello again from Two Ways News.

We are talking about this famous phrase, “the image of God”. People are beginning to see how fundamental that phrase is to Western civilisation. That is where we gain the concept that all humanity is one and that all humans are the same at the most fundamental and important point. We are not like the animals. We are all in the image of God. But when you look at the New Testament, God's understanding of God's word is much greater than we may have expected just from the Old Testament. But before we get to the New Testament, Peter, how does the Old Testament treat the idea of the image of God?

Peter Jensen: It is rarely mentioned. You could say that there is a reference in Genesis 5:3, but it's not a direct reference, talking about Adam's children. “When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.” Reading it in the context, you will see, “in his image”, i.e., Seth is also an image bearer of God, as are all the descendants of Adam. But that's reading a little more into it than is specific in the text.

Phillip: It is giving us some indication of the meaning of the phrase. You are like your father, but it's more than that. You share in the inheritance of your father.

Peter: A very important point, particularly if you're going to understand how the Bible unfolds with both the doctrine of sin and also the doctrine of the significance of every single human being. A point is also made in Genesis 9:6, where there is a specific reference, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image." The importance of this lies particularly in that it is post-the-fall, it is setting out the significance of every single human life, and it is saying the reason is that we remain the image bearers.

Phillip: This is outside the garden. This is after sin has entered the world and entered our hearts. We're still in the image of God. We don't lose that image.

Peter: The idea of being the image of God, in a sense, although not often specifically mentioned, is fundamental to virtually every page of the unfolding story of the Old Testament. Because what we have is an anthropology, an idea of human beings as, first, very precious, retaining their significance as human beings in the sight of God and therefore of one another.

Human beings have a special role within the created order, a role of being the image bearers, in other words, having dominion. But following the disastrous choice of Adam and Eve, that dominion is now exercised only with extreme difficulty, for the whole world groans, and things have gone badly wrong. And worse than that, the dominion of human beings is exercised with sin dwelling in our hearts. What you could say then is that the image of God remains, but the image of God has been terribly distorted. We don't show forth God in the way that Adam and Eve may be said to show forth God. We tarnish what we touch. So, the image is distorted by the original desire to have the knowledge of good and evil. And so, the corruption of the image bearer is virtually on every page of the Bible as sin and evil stalk the world.

Are there other mentions of ‘image'?

Phillip: Creation is assumed through it all, but you get a psalm like Psalm 8: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” When you come to the creation issues, or the non-Jew issues in particular, the image is there in contrast to the idol worshippers, because the word ‘image’ is used most commonly of idols, the metal idols, the carved golden images, but they're the images of their gods, and the failure is, of course, these gods do not rule anything. The images are the images of man's imagination rather than us being the image of God. Idolatry fails us in so many ways because God speaks, God moves, God has power, God hears and God creates. Statues do not move, do not speak, do not hear, nor do they create. All images of God or gods that humans create are always misrepresentations of God. And so the actual phrase ‘image of God’ is only used on those two or three occasions you've mentioned in the early chapters of Genesis, the contrast of the false images of God occurs throughout the Old Testament. But come to the New Testament, because that's where the image language picks up again.

Peter: Before we do, Psalm 8 is also crucial. I know you mentioned it and asked the question, but if you look at the answer to the question, you'll see that the answer depends very much on Genesis 1.

What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet

It's very important. It's an exposition, if you like, of image-bearing, but it's important also because it turns up in the New Testament at a crucial moment.

Phillip: The image is a concept of ruling, of the inheritance, of the ownership of the world, that God owns the heavens and has given the world to mankind, as the psalmist says. In the New Testament, do we still have the image of God?

Peter: Occasionally, verbally, but I think it's fundamental to the thinking. It says, for example, in James 3:9, speaking of the restless evil of the tongue, “With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.” So the image and likeness of God, that phrase from Genesis 1, is in play there. James is endorsing what we already read from Genesis 9, that we are still image bearers. Likewise, we could refer to 1 Corinthians 11:7, which calls upon the same idea. And there's an interesting phrase in Mark 12.

Phillip: Yes, Jesus is challenged about paying taxes to Caesar, and he's caught on the horns of a dilemma, because if he says, 'Yes, we pay taxes to Caesar,' the Jews would say, 'You're being unpatriotic.' And if he says, 'We don't pay taxes to Caesar,' then they'd hand him over to Caesar as punishment for not paying taxes. But he gives the clever answer.

Peter: He asks them to produce a coin, a denarius, and they brought one, and he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”

Phillip: 'Image' would be a better translation than 'likeness'. There are two words, ‘image’ and ‘likeness’, and they're being used synonymously, from Genesis 1. Although used synonymously, you lose the connection when the translators don't give you the same little indicator. So “Whose likeness is that?” changed to “Whose image is that?” And immediately the Bible reader thinks, ‘Oh yes, idolatry, oh yes, humans in the image of God.’

Peter: Also very important is what he then says in Mark 12:16-17

“Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

And who are the image bearers of this God?

Phillip: The punchline is very simple. Caesar owns the coin, so give it to him. It's his. God owns us, so give him what he owns! We, who are in his image.

Peter: That's a little survey of some of the more explicit references in the New Testament, but there is an even more profound application of the concept. Let’s now turn to that.

Phillip: Colossians 1 speaks of Jesus and of being transferred out of the kingdom of the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of God's beloved Son. Then it tells us who this beloved Son is, the one in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the Son. He is the image of God, and it goes one step further. He is the image of the invisible. The very language of image is one of visibility, but Jesus is the image of the invisible God, and then it explains in a sense what that means: the firstborn of all creation.

But in the age of inheritances, where the firstborn inherited everything, the second born was put in the navy, the thirdborn was sent into the colonies, and the fifth or sixth born was sent into the clergy. Charles inherited the Kingdom of Great Britain and Australia, I understand also, but his brothers and his sister – no, they're not the firstborn, so they don't inherit. It's not so much being born first as being the heir, the heir of all things. That's what's meant by the image. When God created humans in his image, he gave us his world. He created us to rule over the world his way, not our way, but we were the ones whom he placed all things under our feet, as it says there in Psalm 8. Jesus is the one for whom, as the passage goes on to say, the world was created because he is the image of God.

This has incredible implications, for example, in the incarnation. How can God become man? Because man is created in the image of God, and God the Son is the image of God. While there is this massive gap betwe