What does it mean that man is made “in the image of God”? This is a very elusive topic, and one the the Bible doesn’t have an abundance of information on. What does “image” mean?

I’ll let you know from the start that I don’t have all the answers. But that’s okay – really. We don’t have to have all the answers.

The main idea here is that all of humanity is created in God’s image, and to some degree, even after the Fall, we all still bear that mark. Why is this important? Because it gives us significance. If our worth were merely that of all the other animals on the planet, then our lives really would not be worth anything. There would really be no significance to my identity or worth as a human being. Kill me, don’t kill me. It wouldn’t matter either way.

This way of thinking is really a by-product of the Enlightenment and Humanist thought. I was reading some quotes the other day by Jean-Paul Sarte, a 20th Century philosopher and atheist. If you want to feel incredibly depressed and lose all sense of life and hope, go read his works. In his book Existentialism and Human Emotions, he said this:

“Man is nothing else than what he makes himself.”

What a depressing thought. Humanism states that all things that can be achieved, can be achieved by man alone, without any Divine intervention. I would argue the exact opposite. Why? Because only through belief in God will you find identity and worth in this world. Don’t believe me? Let’s see what the Bible has to say about this topic.

There are 3 passages in the Old Testament that explicitly state that man is made in God’s image (all Biblical quotes are in the ESV unless otherwise noted):

Genesis 1:26-27:

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Genesis 5:2:

2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.

Genesis 9:6:

6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.

That’s it…those are the 3 explicit passages that refer to human beings as being created in the image of God in the Old Testament. Not a lot of description about what that means, so we will have to do some textual digging.

First, let’s look at the order of Creation back in chapter 1. There are 6 days of creation:
Day 1 – separation of light from dark
Day 2 – waters and expanse
Day 3 – dry land and vegetation – all forms of plants
Day 4 – greater light and lesser light (sun and moon)
Day 5 – fish and birds
Day 6 – all land animals, with mankind being last

There is significance in being last. When you are a creator, the thing you make best is the thing you do last. Mankind is called the pinnacle of creation, not only because we were last, but because God also gave us distinction of being made in His image as well as giving us dominion over the earth. There is intentionality in being the last. It means, at the very least, that we are not *just* an animal; we are something more.

Ok, you say, perhaps at the beginning man was created as something “more”, but what about the fall? I would say, what about it? Take a look at Genesis 5: God reiterates – even after the fall – that mankind was created in God’s image. If the fall had really marred the whole image thing, why would it be mentioned just 4 more chapters down? Perhaps the image is no longer perfect, I will give you that, but it is not gone in its entirety.

Even in chapter 9 the language is still there. Chapter 9 is about after the flood and Noah and his sons were to take possession of the Earth again. God gave him this edict of “no one shall kill another man or he himself will be killed.” Why? Because man is made in God’s image. That’s how important “fallen” humanity is to God. So important that we are mandated not to kill another human being lest our life be also in peril. If that doesn’t give you a sense of dignity and purpose, then I don’t know that much of anything else could give you dignity and purpose you seek.

I’m going to leave this post here and continue on with the next segment – Christ as the Image of God – in the next post. But I will leave you with this quote from C.S. Lewis, an excerpt from his book of lectures, The Weight of Glory:

There are no ordinary [emphasis CS Lewis] people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact the merriest of kind) which exists between people who have, form the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses [emphasis mine]. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latata – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.