The Image of God, Imago Dei

 This is my life group lesson for tomorrow, the first Sunday of Advent, I believe. (I checked, it is, according to all-knowing Google.) That's a good reason to decorate on this weekend, so I suppose I'll be getting them out today. This lesson is on the meaning of the Image of God in humankind. It is Scripture heavy.

 “Man is the measure of all things.”  Sophocles, ancient Greek playwright

“The unexamined life is not worth living. The unlived life is not worth examining.” (Socrates, some modern wise guy named Adam Philips, a British psychoanalyst)

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason,
how infinite in faculties, in form and moving,
how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension,
how like a god!”  (Shakespeare, Hamlet).

 

Along with having a correct view of God, we have to have a correct view of humankind. We have to see the balance between our absolute need of Christ because of sin and our basic existence as the image of God. Both are humbling; humankind has no place for pride or self-reliance spiritually.

 

Throughout history (hu)mankind has been fascinated with (hu)mankind.  What does God say?

 

“What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest (care for) him? You have made him a little lower than God and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You have made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet.” Psalm 8:4-6

 

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over ^[g]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 1:26-27)

 

Image: cut, as on a coin. Representative of God on earth (context of dominion over animals, who DO NOT have the image of God and are not presented in the Bible as anything but animals. Our humanlike views of animals and nature are romanticized.)  We are the image of God, so there is no need for other idols, and they are forbidden.

 

Some interpret image as having souls and spirits, and as being like God in His “communicable” attributes. We are not omniscient, omnipresent, or ominipotent (ll knowing, all present, or all powerful) but we do have other attributes like wisdom, love, reason, etc. 

 

Psalm 139 (You are fearfully wonderful is an alternate translation).

 

Because of sin, the image of God in humankind is marred, but not gone.

The image of God is why we do not murder or hurt others, and why we must respect each other despite cultural, political, and other differences.

 

 

 

So where are we in the New Testament? To the extent that the original creation of man was in God’s likeness, image, the release from the curse of sin transforms not just back into that likeness, in process and finally at death, but into the image of Christ.

“It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But there is a place where someone has testified: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little[a] lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet.” In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”
–Hebrews 2:5-9

“Jesus, who is like his brothers and sisters in every way (2:17), is the “ultimate human” because everything really is under his authority. The lofty status of humanity as God’s royal image-bearers, however true, is not fully realized in humanity as a whole. It is fully realized in Jesus as, paradoxically, the crucified and resurrected Son of God.” Peter Enns

It is now the image of Christ we are changed to, not the original Adam. https://biologos.org/articles/what-does-image-of-god-mean

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be (keep on being) transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Romans 12:2

 

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” I Corinthians 3:18.  This is a reference to Moses coming down from Mount Sinai.

 

“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of ^[a]God! Therefore the world does not know ^[b]us, because it did not know Him. ² Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. ³ And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” I John 3: 1-3.

 

1.     The presence of the Holy Spirit transforms us into the image of Christ (more than the original creation).

2.     The worship of God transforms us.

3.     The reality of the return of Christ and eternity with Him transforms us.

4.     Focus on the world does not transform us.

5.     Transformation will probably put us at odds with the world, to some level.