Because I am a Christian I believe that human beings are precious to God on account of the fact that they have been specially created in his image. Humanity is, for me as a Christian, not merely the summit of some random evolutionary pyramid, but the result of the careful and intentional plan of God. What is more, I believe God’s plan was to create us in his very own image: “God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like ourselves.’ . . . So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Ge 1:26-27) However God created us, he did it intentionally, and he did it so that we, in some significant way, would be like himself.
But what does this mean, that we are created in the image God? Well, it doesn’t mean our physical bodies are something that looks like his physical body because, as Jesus says, “God is spirit,” (Jn 4:24) and simply doesn’t have a physical body for us to look like. I also don’t think that we have gone far enough if we just take the things that make us different from the other animals—say, rationality, creativity, and authority over the rest of creation—and say that these traits are the image of God in us. They are an important part of the image of God, but not the most fundamental one.
The most fundamental part of being created in God’s image—in the likeness of the God who is love in his very being—is that we are creatures that can love: can receive the love of God and respond with real love of our own. Love is the way that we most resemble God, because God himself is love.
The image of God (sometimes referred to by its Latin translation imago Dei) cannot therefore be equated with our physical bodies, or limited by the collection of attributes that separate us from the animals, even if those traits are traits that God himself possesses in a higher or nobler degree. We don’t learn about the image of God by looking at the animals, we learn about it by looking at God. Remember: the reason God created is because he loves us and because he wants to share his love with us. So he created us to be lovers, like himself. That is why humans are so special to God, not because we are the only animals that wear clothes, but because we are the only ones that have the capacity to love in the same sort of way that God loves, and to really understand and experience what it means to be loved by a heavenly Father.
Why, then, is it “not good for the man to be alone,” as Genesis records? Why does God say, “I will make a helper who is just right for him"? (2:18) Surely not because Adam had too many chores in the garden of Eden. Rather, it was because he had been created to have a love that would overflow every day, just like God, first to Eve and then to the rest of his family. It was ‘not good’ for Adam to be alone because he was created in the image of God. He was created to love.
And you are created in God’s image too. Bernard of Clairvaux, the twelfth century French monk, wrote that the highest level of love, higher even than loving God for God’s own sake, was learning to love yourself, not out of selfishness, but because you yourself are someone that God loves. The highest love is loving yourself on account of the fact that God loves you. (On Loving God, book 10) Because I am a Christian, I believe that people are extremely precious in the eyes of God—every one of us, even myself—because he created us in his own image, to love and to receive his love.
But also, because I am a Christian, I believe that this image is broken. Like an ancient statue with the face chipped off, there is a remnant and a suggestion of some features, but the original is well and truly gone. A smashed off face can no longer be reconstructed; it needs to be replaced. Because of our sin, everything is broken: the planet, us, our relationships, everything. But even so, this brokenness is not the end of the story, because in Jesus Christ the true image of God is once again seen in humanity. It is seen in Jesus, and it is seen the life of us Christians. Being a Christian does not merely mean being called by the name of Christ and merely having Jesus for an example, but actually having Christ himself dwell in us through his Spirit. “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2Co 5:17)
Christ is our new face. Christ in us is our new humanity.
And so, because I am a Christian, and because I believe that humanity has been ‘re-faced’ with God’s image on account of Christ, I believe that God—and God’s life—is the best pattern for me to understand who I am, and how I ought to live my life.
For example, understanding that I am created in the image of God changes the way that I understand my marriage. God’s love looks like this: The Father shares his life with a Son who is fully his own person and who has a different role in the Godhead, if we can even use the word ‘role’ in reference to God. The Son is never the Sender, and the Father is never the Sent One (this is essentially the heresy of Patripassianism). The Father is called the head, and yet in every instance, Father and Son are always equal, and always one. All the more, the love of these two always overflows to include the Holy Spirit. This is the way that I have been created to love; this is the model for how I have been designed to function within my family. And so, whatever ‘head’ means, it never means ‘boss’ or ‘master’; whatever ‘role’ means, it never means a difference in value; whatever ‘one flesh’ means, it never means that the identity of one is swallowed up in the other. Marriage in the image of God means loving by giving yourself away to the other, and letting your spouse be the person who makes you who you are; it means being willing to share one another—and the love and time that one another has—with other people and other things: children, single friends, family, favorite hobbies, work, ministry, play, imagination, even in-laws. Loving in a marriage means learning to love in a way that overflows, rather than in a selfish or self-promoting way. I don’t know everything about what it takes to be a family like God planned it, far from it, but I know for certain that I am a better dad and assuredly a better husband when I remember to think about my place in the family as somebody who has been created to love like God loves. Being created in God’s image makes—should make—our Christian marriages different.
I think it makes everything different. I care about the planet because people have to live on it, and I care about them and their situation. Although it is sometimes difficult, I begin to learn how to see others as God’s special creation, and to love them for his sake. I don’t hog my love, sharing it only with the people I enjoy the most and who really love me back: I try to find ways to become the kind of person whose love overflows. I enjoy and explore the world God put me in, receiving it as the gift of a Father who wants to give good things to his children.
When it comes to my humanity, being a Christian changes everything: it is a new understanding, a new life, and a new pattern and ability for living. It is all these things because Christ has come to live within me by his Holy Spirit, and has remade the broken image of God in my life, giving me the ability to truly love and to receive the love of my heavenly Father. Christ, you see, has become my new face. And so both the way I look at the world and the way the world sees me have begun to reflect the fact that I am a special treasure in the sight of God, someone who bears his very own image.
If I was preparing for accreditation I would . . .
• Make sure that I could explain what it means that humanity is created in the image of God
• Be aware of the term imago Dei
• Memorize Genesis 1:27 and 2 Corinthians 5:17
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