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.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
(Genesis 1:26-27)
Of all God’s creation, humanity is uniquely made in the image of God. Readers of the Bible have long debated what exactly that means. It’s pretty easy to discard ideas like physical properties—God is Spirit, so we don’t resemble him in the eyes. So the discussion usually turns to capacities. What can we do that uniquely reflects something of the Triune God? Is it our capacity to reason? to imagine? to communicate with words? to create? to love? to live vicariously? These are all fascinating things to explore. But are these kinds of things of the essence of what it means to be created in the image of God?
What if being created in the image of God wasn’t strictly about things like our capacities? What if this is more relational language? The very next time the Bible uses this language is just a few chapters later, with explicit reference to the original creation of humanity:
When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.
(Genesis 5:1-3, emphasis added)
The father-son relationship between Adam and Seth is analogical to the relationship between God and humanity. This seems to suggest that sonship is a significant aspect of what it means to be created in the image of God. Male and female, humanity has been created uniquely to enjoy a Son’s relationship with God as our Father. Perhaps being created in God’s image is less about something intrinsic to our existence in-and-of ourselves, like capacities, and more about a special relationship that God declares to us for our faith.
When you consider the Triune nature of God, it makes sense that God uses the language of “image” and “likeness” to communicate the idea of this relationship. In himself, God is Father and Son in the loving communion of the Spirit. What it means for God to be God is for him to relate as Son to Father, and that is what it will look like for us to reflect his image. Of course, in our sin, we have rejected this relationship and ceased to reflect true divinity in our humanity. We need someone to restore the image of God and Sonship for us.
Jesus is the true Son of God, both in his eternal divinity as the second Person of the Trinity, and also as the perfect human being in right relationship with God the Father. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Whether male or female, “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Galatians 3:26-29). By God’s grace, you are being “conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he [Jesus] might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29).
“You sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father” (J. I. Packer). God is Son. Sonship is what it means for us to be created in the image of God. And Sonship is what we are being redeemed for, renewed in the image of Christ.
What do you make of the thought of enjoying the incarnate Son’s relationship with the Father? Why is it important that this Sonship is true of both male and female? In the Bible, a big part of Sonship has to do with inheritance (consider Gen. 1:26)—what is the inheritance of God’s Son (and therefore the inheritance of all those who are in Christ)? Can you think of some other Scripture passages that describe what it means to have God as our Father? Why might a discussion of “capacities” be insufficient to describe what constitutes the image of God in humanity? What else do you think it might mean to be created in the image of God?
