Free Educational Resources for the Public from Grace Communion Seminary

In the beginning

When we look at the sky, when we think about the moon and stars, when we consider how big the universe is and the enormous energy in each star, we might wonder why God bothers with human beings. We are so small, so limited—like ants running back and forth inside a glass cage. Why should we think that God looks at this anthill called Earth, and why would he care about each individual ant?

Science has helped us understand how big the universe is, and how powerful each star is. In comparison to the universe, humans are no more important than a few randomly moving specks of dust—but so far as science has found, we are the only beings in the universe who ask questions about who we are and whether our life is important. Humans are the ones who developed the science of astronomy; we are the ones who explore the universe.

Our questions are not new. An ancient poet asked something similar:

When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their feet. (Psalm 8:3-6)

The poet saw that humans have power over nature. We have much more power today, although we don’t always use it in a good way. But that doesn’t answer the question – it just makes the question more important. So what if humans do have power? Why does God care about us? Does what we do make any difference to God?

Like animals

Humans are a strange mixture — sometimes evil, sometimes concerned about doing good. We have power over other living things, but we don’t always use it right. As far as we know, other creatures are not concerned about what is right and wrong. Monkeys do not have meetings to decide whether rape is right or wrong.

We are not God, and yet God crowns us “with glory and honor.”

Scientists call us Homo sapiens, a thinking human, part of the animal kingdom. Scripture calls us nephesh, a living being, a word that is also used for animals. We have spirit in us, just as animals have spirit in them. We are made of molecules, and when we die, we return to molecules, just as animals do. Our bodies are like that of an animal.

But Scripture says that we are more than animals. There is a spiritual aspect to human beings—and science cannot tell us about this spiritual part of life. Nor can philosophy; we cannot come up with reliable answers just by thinking about it. No, this part of our existence must be explained by revelation. Our Creator needs to tell us who we are, what we are supposed to do, and why he cares.

We find answers in Scripture.

Genesis 1 tells us that God created all things: light, land and sea, sun and moon and stars. Pagans worshipped these things as gods, but the true God is so powerful that he can make them appear just by speaking a command. They are totally under his control. Whether he did it in one day, six days, or six billion years is not nearly as important as the fact that he did it. He spoke a word, it was done, and it was good.

As part of his creation, God also created humans, and Genesis tells us that we were created on the same day as the animals. This suggests that we are similar to the animals. We can see that for ourselves.

The image of God

But the creation of humans is not described in the same way as everything else. The text does not say, “And God said…and it was so.” Instead, we read, “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule’” (Genesis 1:26). This is like the grand finale, the best part of creation.

Who is this “us”? The text does not explain, but it is clear that humans are a special creation, made in the “image of God.”

What is this “image”? Again, the text does not explain, but it is clear that humans are special. Many ideas have been suggested for what the image is:

·       Some people say it is intelligence, the power of thinking or speaking. But humans of limited intelligence are still humans, and God cares about us whether or not we know how to speak.

·       Some say the image is our rule over the earth and its creatures, that we are like God’s agents to them.[i] But humans who don’t have that kind of power are still humans, and God cares about babies, too. Power, by itself, is neither good nor bad – it depends on how it is used.

·       Some say it is our social nature, our ability to have relationships with one another and with God.[ii] But many other animals have social relationships, and angelic beings have relationships with God, too. Relationships can be good, and can be bad – the more important question is how they are used. To see the significance of the phrase “image of God,” we should look at the more important question.

·       Others suggest it is morality, the ability to make decisions that are good or evil. This is the crucial question we need to ask about how people use intelligence, power, and relationships. The way we make our decisions is important, but Genesis 1 says nothing about this.

We are not sure of what the first readers of Genesis would think about “the image of God.” Genesis does not explain it, but it seems to say that humans are in some way like God. There is a spiritual significance to who we are. Our importance is not in being like animals, but in being like God.  

Genesis does not tell us much more. We learn in Genesis 9:6 that each human is in God’s image even after humanity sinned. People don’t necessarily act like God, but yet they are still considered to be like God in some way.

The Old Testament does not mention “the image of God” again, but the New Testament gives more meaning to the phrase. There we learn that Jesus Christ, the perfect image of God, reveals what God is like. We’ll get to that a little later.

Genesis does say something about why God cares so much about people. After saying, “Let’s do it,” he did it: “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Women and men are both made in the image of God; they have equal spiritual potential. Our social roles do not change our spiritual value. And it does not matter how smart we are, or how much power we have. We are all made in the image and likeness of God, and all humans deserve love, honor and respect.

Genesis then tells us that God blessed the humans, telling them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (verse 28). God’s command is actually a blessing, which is what we would expect from a good God. In love, he gave humans the responsibility to rule the earth and its living things. The humans were taking care of his property.

Some people say that Christianity is anti-environmental. Does this command to “subdue” the earth and to “rule” the animals give humans permission to destroy the ecosystem? Of course not. Humans are to use their God-given power to serve, not destroy. They are to rule in the way that God does.

The fact that some humans misuse this power, and misuse this scripture, does not change the fact that God wants us to use creation well. God told Adam to work “and take care of” the garden (Genesis 2:15). He could eat the plants, but he was not to use up or destroy the garden.

Life in the garden

Genesis 1 ends by says that everything was “very good.” Humanity was the best part of creation. This was the way God wanted it to be—but we all know that something is now terribly wrong with humanity.

What went wrong? Genesis 2 and 3 explain how an originally perfect creation became messed up. Some Christians take this story as a simple history; others view it more as a parable. We will not go into that controversy right now. No matter what, the theological message is the same.

Genesis tells us that the first human was named Adam (Genesis 2:20; 5:2), the common Hebrew word for “human.” The name Eve is similar to the Hebrew word for living— “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living” (3:20). The names Adam and Eve, to use modern terms, mean Human and Everyone’s Mother.

Genesis 2 sets the scene: a perfect garden. God is no longer described as being in outer space, giving commands to the entire universe. Instead, he is like someone who walks in a garden, plants trees, shapes a person out of the ground, and breathes into his nostrils to give him life.

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (verse 15). He gave Adam instructions about the garden, asked him to name the animals, and then created a woman to be with Adam. Again, God became personally involved, physically active in creating the woman.

Eve was a “helper” for Adam, but that word does not mean that she was less important. The Hebrew word for “helper” is most often used for God himself, who helps humans in our needs. Eve was not invented to do the work Adam didn’t want to do—Eve was created to do something that Adam could not do on his own. When Adam saw her, he recognized that she was basically the same as he was, a God-given companion (verse 23).

Chapter 2 ends with a note of equality: “A man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (verses 24-25). This is the way that God meant it to be, the way it was before sin entered the picture. Sex was a divine gift, nothing to be ashamed of.

Where did we go wrong?

In Genesis 3, the serpent enters the story. Eve was tempted to do something God had forbidden. She was invited to follow her emotions, to please herself, instead of trusting what God said. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (Genesis 3:6).

What the humans did in Genesis 3 is what humanity as a whole has done; the story tells us why humanity is in a bad situation. All humans do what Adam and Eve did—we ignore what God says and do what we want, making up excuses as we go. Humanity lives in rebellion against its Creator, and that is why sin and death affect all human societies.

We can blame it on the devil, but the sin is still within us. We want to be like God, knowing good and evil, but we are not willing to be the way he actually is. We want our own definitions of good and evil.

What did the tree represent? Genesis says only that it’s “the knowledge of good and evil.” It was forbidden, and the people ate it. They rebelled against their Creator, they chose to go their own way. They were no longer fit for the garden, no longer fit for “the tree of life.”

The first result of their sin was that they saw themselves in a new way—they saw something wrong with being naked (verse 7). Even after covering up, they were afraid of being seen by God (verse 10).

God explained what would happen because of their sin: Eve would have children, which was part of the original plan, but it would be painful. Adam would work the ground, which was part of the plan, but it would be more difficult.

And they would die. “When you eat from it you will certainly die” (2:17). They were spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1), no longer responding to God, the Author of Life. They had a physical existence, like the animals, and it would eventually come to an end. It was far less than what God wanted for them. God had a plan. Their sin did not surprise him, and he knew how to fix the problem.

There would be struggle between the woman and the man: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). People who take matters into their own hands instead of following instructions are likely to have conflict. They will have different ideas of what is right and wrong.

Despite human sinfulness, humans continue to be in God’s image—dirty and dented, perhaps, but the fact remains that God made us in his image (Genesis 9:6). Even though humans have gone far astray from what God wants them to do, he still considers them according to his original purpose – that they were made in the image of God. If someone disrespects that image by killing another human, then they are showing contempt for the owner of that image, which is God himself. The humans may not act much like God, but still, their purpose is to be like God.

Although Adam and Eve tried to define themselves on their own terms, independent of God, God still defines us according to what he wants to do.

The Old Testament has space for kings, battles, prophets and miracles, but it doesn’t say anything more about the image of God. Maybe it was like a promise that seemed so far off that nobody thought it would ever happen.

Many years later, the Jewish people were looking for a Messiah who was a national leader, a man who would lead the Jewish people into greatness again. But God had something bigger in mind – he was providing a Messiah who would restore not just the nation, but the entire human race, back into the purpose for which God had made them – “the image of God.”

That idea, which was silent throughout most of the Old Testament, is revived in the New Testament, and it is given a wonderful meaning for us today.

God becomes his own image

The Gospel of John tells us that “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). This God-Word became a flesh-and-blood human: “The Word became flesh” (1:14). He became a human being named Jesus. And he was perfect. He never sinned. He was the perfect image of God.

In John 14:8, Philip asked Jesus, “Show us the Father.” And Jesus responded, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”

It’s not that God looks like a Jewish carpenter – Jesus is not concerned about shape or color – he is concerned about the way a person lives. If we have seen the way that Jesus lives, in his attitudes and actions, then we have seen what we most need to know about God. When we see the love and compassion of Jesus, then we see that God is love and compassion.

The New Testament tells us that Jesus Christ is the image of God. Colossians 1:15-16 talks about Jesus and says,

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

Jesus shows us in a visible way what God is like in the invisible, spiritual world. He can show us what God is like because he is fully divine. As verse 19 says, “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.” This “image” is not just a representative – he is God in the flesh.

Hebrews 1:3 tells us something similar: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” But Jesus is not just a three-dimensional representation of God – he is God, sustaining the universe. He is God in three-dimensional form.

When we see Jesus, we see what the Father is like. However, Jesus is not only fully divine, he is also fully human. He is a perfect human. He shows us what a human being ought to be like, the way that human beings should have been.

It doesn’t matter how tall he was or what color his hair was. The image of God is not in the physical form of a person. Rather, Jesus shows us what God is like in terms of his thoughts and his actions, and this shows us what humans should be like in our thoughts and actions. This is the way that we should be like God.

When Jesus saw a lame man and had compassion on him, that helps us see what God is, and what he wants us to be. When Jesus came here not to do his own will, but the Father’s will, that shows us what God is, and what we are to do.

When Jesus gave his life to save us, even when we were his enemies, he shows us what God is like, and that we are also supposed to love our enemies, and be willing to make sacrifices in order to help others. Jesus images God to us, showing us what God is like. But humans didn’t like it.

Humanity rejects the divine image

Jews and Romans worked together to kill Jesus. The best religion of the day, and the best judicial system of the day, planned together to kill a perfectly innocent man. Most Jews were looking for a Messiah, a leader sent from God to lead the Jewish nation, but they forgot that God is interested not just in the Jewish people, but in all peoples. He wants to make them all great.

When Jesus came doing the work of God, most Jews didn’t recognize it, because they wanted God to do their will. The best religion of the time had a distorted idea of how God wanted to work with humanity.

We know what God is going to do, they said, and Jesus is not doing it. We know what God is like, and this man doesn’t look like that. That’s not what we want the Messiah to be. Jesus claims to be like God, but we don’t want to look like Jesus.

So they killed him, and God raised him from the dead. This was justice, correcting a wrong that had been done to an innocent man. This was good news for Jesus, because he was alive again; he was restored to his place in heaven.

But it’s also good news for us, because our future is linked to Jesus; that is one reason that Jesus became a human being, so he could represent God to us, and represent humanity to God. As our representative, he gave God the perfect response that humanity had failed to give.

The apostle Paul tells us that when Jesus died, we died, and when he was raised, we were, too (Romans 6:1-10; Ephesians 2:5-6). Jesus joined himself to humanity so two things are done: 1) he takes our sins upon himself, and 2) he gives his righteousness to us. This is sometimes called “the great exchange” – he gets our sin, removes it from our record, and we are given his righteousness and the rewards that come with it.

This is not just a change in words, that we are called righteous even though we are not. No, God is a Creator, and he is creating in us what we are supposed to be. He is creating righteousness within us, changing us on the inside. He is still working on that image.

Restoring the image

Paul tells us that we are supposed to become more like Jesus. 2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us, “We…are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory.” We are being changed to be more like Jesus – and this is not from yourselves, Paul might say, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8).

We can’t do this on our own. It has to be him living in us, changing our hearts to be more like he is. Just as God breathed life into Adam and Eve, so also he breathes new life into his people. He gives us the Holy Spirit to change us from the inside out.

How does this work? We don’t know exactly, but here’s an illustration: The Holy Spirit joins our thoughts. One thought says, I want to get as much as I can for myself. Another thought says, It’s better to give than to take. Where did that thought come from? It came from God in us. We need to say yes to the godly thought, and no to the selfish thought.

The conversation in our brain may go a step further. One thought says, I did the right thing. I hope somebody notices what a good person I am. Another thought says, If it was up to me, I would have done the wrong thing. So whatever good that I did, the credit should go to the Holy Spirit in me, and if anybody notices, I hope that they give God the credit. We need to decide which is the godly thought, and which is the selfish thought, and we need to go with the godly thought.

This is like what Paul describes in Colossians 3, verses 8 through 10:

You must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

There’s the terminology of “image” again. Being made in the image of God, being transformed into the image of Christ, is not a completely passive process in which God does all the work for us. No, we have a role in it, too; there is something we need to do. We have choices to make.

The “image of God” says something about the way we think, what we do, and what we live for. By learning what is right and wrong in God’s eyes, we are in a process of getting rid of the wrong, and letting God build in us a new person. Thought by thought, we are being transformed into the image of Christ.

Sometimes it seems like we are not making any progress. Perhaps that’s because Jesus gets all the credit and we get all the blame. Whenever it was wrong, we did it, and we don’t seem to make much progress. “We” are just as bad as we were before.

But the transformation comes in that “we” operate on our own less and less, and we stop worrying about the scorecard and who is getting the credit, and we simply trust God to do his job in us whether or not we can see the results. He is transforming us to be more like he is, whether we see it or not. We can say, like Jesus did, “The Father who dwells in me does his works” (John 14:10).

Be of good cheer, Jesus seems to say. Your sins are forgiven – every one of them. Don’t be paralyzed by your sins – just get up and move forward. Romans 8:1 tells us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. He is on our side, and if God himself is for us, who can be against us? No one.

Whatever it is that we have to give up, Jesus says he will replace it with something 100 times better. And usually, whenever we give something up, it doesn’t take us long to figure out that the old stuff really wasn’t worth much anyway. We are holding on to rags, when Jesus wants to give us robes of royalty. He wants to transform us into the image that we were originally meant to be.

In Galatians 4:19, Paul said that he was working for the believers “until Christ is formed in you.” That’s the goal that he wanted, that the people would be more like Christ.

In Ephesians 4:11, he says that this is the purpose of leaders in the church. He says that God appoints leaders: “Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers…” Then he explains their purpose: “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (verses 12-13).

That’s what maturity is like, that’s the goal of the process, that we are like Christ. Part of the process is that we need to grow “in the knowledge of the Son of God.” When we are in a right relationship with God, we grow in our knowledge of what is right, and that changes our relationships with other people. We put away anger and lies; we choose love and truth more often.

2 Peter 1:3-4 also describes the transformation we are involved in:

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

We participate in the divine nature. The Holy Spirit is working in us so that our nature is being changed to be more like he is in the way we think and live.

The image gets even better

We are in a process of being changed in the inner person, in our thoughts and attitudes and behavior. But a time is coming when we will be transformed into God’s image in additional ways, too. We will share in the glory of Jesus Christ. At the resurrection, we will be in the likeness of his resurrection.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul describes the resurrection, and he says in verse 49, “just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.” We will have the image of Christ in a more glorious way. If we are like him in this life, we will be like him in the next life, too.

1 John 3:1-2 gives us a similar picture:

What great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

We will be even more fully made in his image. All humanity has been created in the image of God, made for this very purpose. We are already his children, already “in his image” in one sense, but there is more to come. As we are transformed into his image in this life in the way we live and think, we will be transformed more completely into his image when we are resurrected into glory and given immortality and incorruptibility. This is the glorious future God has prepared for us. It is better than Adam and Eve had.

What conclusion does John draw from this wonderful promise? Verse 3: “All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” When we want to be like God is, then we want to be like him in thoughts and behavior, in his definitions of right and wrong. It’s the same package, the glory that God has designed for us.

There’s a lot more to eternal life than just living forever. A never-ending life of misery would be no good, and that is not what God wants us to have. Rather, he wants us to have a never-ending life of joy, of good relationships, of life not just with God, but life and relationships with millions and billions of other people who help one another and love one another.

The Greek word for “eternal” is aionios; it is related to the word for “age.” Eternal life is actually “age life,” meaning life that is appropriate for “the age to come.” That kind of life will last forever, but the stress is about quality, not quantity. John 6:47 says that people who believe in Jesus already have eternal life. We already have life that is like the age to come. We don’t have it completely, but it does start now. We live the way of the future, even now.

As images of God, we want our life to be like the age to come, like the life that God himself has. We are images of God and representatives of God, and we should want to live in the way that he does. This is the way we are supposed to be. In the age to come, we will forever be images of God, children of God, completely and perfectly.

When you look at others, what do you see? Do you see the image of God, the potential for greatness, the image of Christ being formed? Do you see the beauty of God’s plan at work in giving grace to sinners? Do you rejoice that he redeems a humanity who went astray? Do you rejoice at the majesty of the wonderful plan of God?

This is far more wonderful than the moon and the stars. It is a far more glorious creation. He speaks the word, and it gets done, and it is very good.

 

 

Endnotes

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