Prayer
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens. Worthy are you, O Lord and God, to receive the glory that is due unto your name from the sons of men. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? What am I? Nothing and less than nothing. But you are my light and my salvation. One thing I ask of you, Lord, that I may gaze on your beauty Lord. Be merciful to me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity, and cleanse me from all my sin. Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew an upright spirit within me. Open my eyes that I may see, wonderful things from your law. I am unworthy of the least of your mercies, and deserve only your judgment O Lord. Yet you have sustained my life. My hope is in you, and in your Son the Lord Jesus Christ. I am yours, save me. Amen.
Reading
Gen 1:24-31.
“And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 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.
28. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29. And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
Meditation
The stories we believe determine the shape of who we are. A man who believes that the universe is an endless cycle of reincarnation will spend his life searching for the spiritual detachment of nirvana. Another man who lives a tribal life believing in animal spirits will live a life spent in fear of those spirits, seeking both to avoid them and control them. Still another man believes that there is no spiritual aspect to existence, and he pursues whatever pleasure he can find in the here and now. What he can see is all that he believes to exist, and man is nothing more than an animal. Over time and perhaps generations, this man and his sons behave more and more like animals.
On a more personal level, one person might be born to cruel and unloving parents, and when they are grown they come to believe that they are destined to be the same kind of person. Someone else may be born into wealth and privilege, and that privilege comes to shape their expectations about who they are and what their life ought to be. The stories we believe determine the shape of who we are. With that in mind, let’s begin with a pointed question for ourselves: Who do you think you are?
It’s very important that we have the correct answer to that question. Who do you think that you are? As we come to day six in the creation account, this day gives us the definitive answer. Who are you? You are an image of God. Contrary to the dogma of evolution, we are not animals, nor did we come from animals – though in many ways we are like them. We are not in a universe that had no beginning, nor are we existing in an endless cycle of reincarnation, searching for nirvana. We are not in a world of chaotic animal spirits. This world was made by God, and we were made in his image. According to Genesis 1:26-27, this is simply a fact.
Now this idea of mankind being created in the Image of God is pretty familiar, and yet also somewhat unknown. We can ask the question: What exactly does it mean to say that we were created in the image of God? I expect most of us do not have a precise answer to that question, and certainly across church history there have been many different answers. The Church Father Irenaus said that the image of God was primarily about our physical bodies as a reflection in some way of the divine being. Augustine emphasised our intellectual abilities as being the main part of our image bearing nature. Others have emphasised still different theories. So the question is here for us: What does this actually mean? And what are the implications for our lives today?
I think that there are a number of aspects to this, and we will explore them in coming studies, but I want to start with the big picture for now. Here is what I believe to be the big picture of man’s basic nature as an image of God, this is the central principle that I believe we need to grasp first: man reflects God’s glory. Now before we can talk about how man reflects God’s glory, and the merits of that statement, a more basic question we need to ask is: What is the glory of God?
Here is my definition of the glory of God: God’s glory is the sum-total of his excellence. To say God is glorious is to give a summary statement of who he is. When you look at a sunset and say: “That is glorious!” You’re not giving a commentary on some aspect of that sunset. No, when we call a sunset glorious, we are speaking to the effect of the whole. As we drink in the sight of golden edged clouds; the pinks melding into purple and deep blue; the interplay of light and shadow; the sheer scope and size of it all, we are not highlighting any one aspect in our statement. To say that a sunset is glorious is to comment on the sum-total of it’s excellence, and so too it is with God. God’s glory is the sum-total of his excellence, the complete resplendent picture of his beauty, majesty, goodness, and truth – in short: we consider and comment on all his many and various perfections in that one comment: “He is glorious!”
Now building on this, I’ve said that man is a reflection of God’s glory. Now why do I say that? Firstly I say it because we are made in God’s likeness. To be made in the image of God is to be a reflection of God, and by definition that means we are and must be a reflection of his glory. In 1 Corinthians 11:7 we see this very clearly as Paul says that “man is the image and glory of God”, so too in his comment to the Romans that we have all sinned and thus fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). For that statement to be true, it must likewise be true that we were originally designed to reflect the glory of God. There’s a link between man as an image of God and man as a reflection of his glory, the two come hand in hand. I believe that this is the best summary way of explaining the image of God in man: man reflects God’s glory.
If we accept this premise, and we should, by good and necessary consequence we need to see that a further principle follows on from it: that man is a total reflection of God. Now what do I mean by that? And why add the word “total”? In theological discussion about the image of God, as mentioned previously, many theologians have emphasised different aspects of what it means for us to be images of God. The problem with tying the image of God in man to some specific aspect of our nature (e.g. our intellect) is that it only deals with part of the picture.
A number of reformed theologians, and I think rightly, have pointed out that man is not a partial reflection of God. It is not as though some parts of us are like God, or are a reflection of God, and some parts of us aren’t. Man is a reflection of God. He is not an image-bearer, he is an image. This image or reflection of God in us is the sum-total of our being. There is then a totality to being created in the image of God. Every part of us is, in some way, a reflection of who he is. In the words of Herman Bavinck “the image is in agreement with the original in all parts”. God does not have a body, of course, and in that sense he’s the spiritual original and we are both physical and spiritual images of that spiritual original.
This brings out an important side-note: that our physical bodies are analogies or images of spiritual realities. The Lord “sees” all things: “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good” (Prov 15:3). Some theologians describe passages like these as “anthropomorphisms”, meaning that God is described by analogy using human faculties. I believe that this gets it the wrong way around, and agree with James Jordan who flips this on its head and calls our faculties “theomorphisms”. Our eyes, for example, are theomorphic reflections of God’s faculty of sight that have been physically imprinted on a creaturely level. I believe that the principle applies to our bodies as a whole, and that our entire bodies are analogies of the spiritual original that we find in God. In this sense, Irenaeus was on to something.
This fits in consistently with what we’ve seen at various points in our studies about heaven being the pattern after which the earth is created. “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10). Our bodies, as part of our total creation in the image of God, find their harmonious part in this bigger picture of heaven’s imprint upon the created order. So then, the impress of who God is is stamped upon us in the totality of our being. When you stand in front of a mirror, there is no part of you that is not an imprint. Mirrors do not take the liberty of getting original and adding details to the image! So it is between us and God. The image is not a part of man, or an added feature to his basic nature, it is his basic nature. To use more theological terms, God is the archetype and we are the echtype. To call God the archetype means that he is the original pattern, and to call man the echtype means that he is a copy or imitation of the original. Man is a total reflection of God. Our earlier discussion about the link between the image and God’s glory shows this, for if man was created to reflect God’s glory, if there were some part of us that didn’t reflect God, that part would not reflect God’s glory. And yet we were created in the image and glory of God.
Now I think that what I have been saying here is implied clearly enough in the very idea and language of an image or likeness, but if we need a further proof to seal this in our minds we need only consider the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ himself. When the divine Son of God took on flesh, the flesh that he took on had to be compatible with his divine personality. The Lord did not become incarnate as a dog, for that would have been a degradation. He did, however, become incarnate as a man, and while it was certainly a condescension, it was not a degradation, for man exists in the image of God. There is thus a consistency and harmony between the nature of God and mankind as created in the image of God. So here is the case we have made on this point: mankind is a total reflection of God’s glory.
Be ye doers of the word…
A basic implication of what we learn here is that we ought to treat other people with dignity and respect. Every time we look at another person, we are looking at the image of God. Their eyes, their face, their hands, their very souls have been formed and knit together in the womb by God Almighty himself and reflect, even in this broken world, his image. How we treat each other therefore reveals something about our esteem for God. This principle holds true in a fallen world just as much as it did in our state of innocence. In Genesis 9:6 we read: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” Arguing from the greater to the lesser, we find this principle clearly established. This verse shows us that we must not harm another person because of their intrinsic value as an image of God. In the most extreme form, murder is prohibited, how much more then the lesser forms of disrespect and harm that we may commit against each other? Positively too we are called to love one another. Why? Because each person is immensely precious, for they exist in the image of God.
There is something glorious about man. He is a light bearer, for the light and glory of God rests upon him. He is an image of the infinite and glorious God. There is something wonderful in a smile, there is something noble about us. There is something precious and valuable about people, for the preciousness, value, and blessedness of God himself is imprinted upon us. We must therefore treat every human with dignity and respect.
So how are we going? How do you treat the people in your life? How do I? Do we speak and act toward them with kindness, respect, and dignity? In James 3:8 we read that “no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.” They ought not to be so because the preciousness and worth of God belongs to each one of us, for his preciousness and worth is reflected in us. We must consider and be careful that we treat other people with dignity and respect.
Following on from this thought, and keeping constantly in mind that we are called to consider others to be more excellent than ourselves (Phil 2:3), another application follows – that we ought to treat ourselves with dignity and respect. God does call us to love, serve, and prefer one another, but that does not mean that we are called to despise ourselves. You are an image bearer of the Most High God. You are designed to be a reflection of his glory, and that is a most lofty calling. It means that we ought not to abuse ourselves, we ought not to misuse what God has entrusted to us. We ought to take care of ourselves, to respect our bodies and our souls, and to compose ourselves with dignity and honour. And to do that, we need also to look to God. He is the original, we are the pattern.
We might make one further application here along these lines, and it is especially needed at this point in history. The application is to treasure human life, and prayerfully labour against the evil of abortion. This is an important line to draw in our day, because when a society abandons God, as many western societies have, they tend more and more to devalue life and oppose God’s image. Abortion was rejected at large in our culture in years gone by, because you don’t kill the image of God – least of all in the womb. What is our attitude toward abortion? What are we doing to oppose this daily unfolding mass infanticide? Are we comfortable with it? Or are we appalled, disgusted, and grieved by it? People today are less and less inclined to have children, to multiply the image of God, because we are becoming more and more obsessed with ourselves. Abortion amounts to sacrificing our young on the altar of our own pleasure. As Christians, we ought to be passionately pro-life. Proverbs 8:36 says “all who hate wisdom love death”. We are seeing this love of death unfold before our eyes in ever more horrific proportions today. We must do what we can to oppose these tendencies, we must treasure human life, because human life is made in the image of God. SDG.
Prayer of Confession & Consecration
Lord I confess to you, far more often than not, I have given little consideration to those around me as being people created in the image of God, and because of this I have grievously sinned against you by disrespecting or mistreating them. I have harboured imaginations that would use them as tools for my own ends, or have spoken to them with words designed to pursue my own goals, or have acted towards them in ways that revolve around my own interests. I have been angry with and disrespectful toward your image bearers. O Lord, please forgive me for the magnitude of my sin. I ask, O Lord, for your help. Please give me eyes to see the preciousness of others, for they are your image. I pray especially for the help to renew my attitude toward those closest to me, that I may speak and act towards them with all dignity and respect, considering their needs above my own. O Lord, help me in this, for my heart is desperately bent upon selfishness and self-interest. Deliver my soul, and please fill me with the love of Christ. Please remake me into the image of Christ, that I may once again reflect your glories and excellence. I pray this, Lord, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
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