In Genesis 1, the very first chapter of the Bible, the creation of the human race is described in this way:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to 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”
(Genesis 1:26-28).
Let’s dig a little deeper into the statement, “So God created mankind in his own image.” Throughout the history of the church, there have been disagreements about what, exactly, is meant by this. I don’t expect that I’m going to be the one who will resolve the issue to everyone’s satisfaction, but what I want to do in this article is explore the implications of the reading that I, personally, find to be the most convincing. I want to be clear up front that the view I’m expressing in this article is not the only way to understand this passage, or any of the other Scriptures that I will discuss in this article. Some very intelligent, highly educated experts agree with me (although it’s more accurate to say I agree with them). And some very intelligent, highly educated experts disagree. So if you disagree with me, that’s okay. You might even be right.
To set the stage for the rest of this article, I need to begin with a brief explanation of two kinds of scholars who study God’s word; Bible scholars and theologians. Bible scholars, sometimes called exegetes, are people who study the actual text of the Bible. They are specialists in ancient languages and cultures, and their task is to try and determine what the Scriptures actually are saying, and how they would have been understood by the people who first read them. Without Bible scholars most of us (including me) would be unable to study the Bible at all because we would not have any good English translations of the Scriptures.
Theologians, on the other hand, use logic and philosophy to better understand who God is, by working out the deeper implications of what his word says. For example, the understanding that God is a Trinity – one God eternally existing as three distinct persons – comes from early Christian theologians. There is no place in Scripture that says exactly that, but if we accept that all of the Bible is God’s word, the Trinity is the only way to resolve what would otherwise be an impossible contradiction.
The reason this matters is that, on the question of what exactly it means to have been created in God’s image, Bible scholars and theologians tend to come to different conclusions. Theologians often – although not always – interpret God’s image as some quality or trait humans have that makes us in some way like God; intelligence, moral sense, creativity, etc. Bible scholars often – although not always – think in terms of humans representing God, as his agents.
I’m neither a Bible scholar nor a theologian. I don’t know enough to be able to offer anything meaningful to the discussion from either perspective. Rather, I am an archaeologist. And as an archaeologist, I do know a little something about how to understand past cultures. I have also read (in translation) a good number of ancient Near Eastern documents. My own sense is that thinking in terms of human qualities or traits that are Godlike, the approach of many theologians, seems more like ancient Greek thinking than ancient Near Eastern.
Now, Greek philosophy did eventually make it to Israel, and much of the New Testament was clearly written by, and for, people who had been influenced by Greek thinking. But that was many centuries after the time when Moses wrote Genesis. Neither Moses nor the people he was writing for would have been thinking like Greeks; they would have been thinking like the other peoples in the ancient Near East. And it’s that cultural context that the Holy Spirit directed his message toward. That’s why I find the view that God’s image in Genesis 1 refers to humans being created as God’s representatives to be more plausible.
On this subject, Carmen Joy Imes (2023:30-31) writes:
Ancient culture can help because the Hebrew word tselem (“image” in English) has a sister word in other ancient languages. In those languages it is clear that a tselem is something concrete. It refers to the idol or statue of a god in its temple.
At the time Genesis was written, every temple in the Near East had an image of the god or gods that were worshiped there. This was not just decoration; the image represented the actual presence of the god in the temple. Sacrifices and prayers were directed toward the image, and it was specifically the image that the god was thought to inhabit. Whenever a new image was dedicated, certain rituals had to be performed so that the god could enter into it. This is how an Israelite at the time of Moses would most likely have understood God’s image; the gods of the other nations have statues as their images, but for our God, we ourselves, living human beings, are his representatives, his images.
This means that human beings, all of us, don’t just resemble God in some way, we actually represent him. We are his agents. And I can’t help noticing that the commission to “rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground” in Genesis 1:26 is a direct consequences of being made in God’s image.
This concept, that we are created in God’s image, is not one that is stressed in very many places in the Scriptures, but if we read further in Genesis, we do find that it appears again at the end of the story of the flood. God says:
“Whoever sheds human blood,
by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.”
(Genesis 9:6).
There are two different aspects of bearing God’s image that we see in this verse. First, because humans represent God, it is forbidden to murder them. Second, because humans represent God, they have the responsibility to punish murder. Applied more broadly, the implication is that we are the ones responsible for establishing justice on the earth. A responsibility that our own sin, obviously, interferes with. And yet, nowhere do we see that responsibility being either taken away or nullified.
Similarly, because we are God’s representatives, James objects to the ironic fact that:
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness (James 3:9).
Okay, but so what? How does the fact that we were all created to represent God, as his agents in the world, affect my life today? I mean, I already knew I have the authority to speak and act in Jesus’ name (Colossians 3:17). Understanding that I also bear God’s image doesn’t really change anything. Or does it? Having the authority to act in Jesus’ name is clearly a different thing than bearing God’s image, since one is only for believers while the other true of everyone. Nor does one responsibility erase the other. Rather, because I am in Christ, I have hope that the Spirit of God living within me will transform me until I can begin to genuinely carry out my responsibility as God’s image bearer.
And there’s another consideration. Knowing that I was created in God’s image is one thing, but what about everyone else? Every human being alive, every one who has ever lived, bears God’s image. And that has a profound affect, or it should, anyway, on the way I interact with them. And the first effect, since I already mentioned it with respect to murder, is justice. Justice is a major theme in both the Old and the New Testaments, and for good reason: if all people were created to represent God, then all people have both the right to be treated justly, and the responsibility to act justly, just as we saw in Genesis 9:6.
Those of us who follow Christ can’t reasonably expect others, who don’t know him, to live according to what Jesus taught (1 Corinthians 5:12-13). That includes many government leaders. But if we can’t expect Christian morality from non-believers, we can still call them to establish justice. The command in Genesis 9, after all, was given long before the time of Christ. One of our tasks as believers, then, is to remind those who are in government that they bear God’s image. They have a responsibility from God to act justly, and everyone they govern has a right, as a bearer of God’s image, to be treated justly.
A second consequence of this understanding of Genesis 1 is to recognize that the worth of the people around me isn’t based simply on resembling God in some way – that, in itself, wouldn’t necessarily make anybody valuable. A photo of me, after all, resembles me in some ways, but that by itself doesn’t necessarily make it worth anything, even to me. Rather, the worth of other human beings is based on the fact that they are God’s representatives. Everybody I meet bears God’s image, regardless of whether they believe in Jesus or not. Even if some (or most) of them don’t do a very good job of representing God, that doesn’t change their status. To mistreat anyone, or simply to stand by and allow someone to be mistreated, is an offense against God’s representative. Which makes it an offense against God Because the people around me bear God’s image, I have a duty to honor them, and to protect them, even if they have done nothing to deserve it.
And a third consequence is that a proper understanding of what it means to be created in God’s image transforms the way I view sin. To associate myself, as God’s image bearer, with sin, is to associate God with sin. Sin, in anyone who bears God’s image, lies about God. Idolatry is, clearly, the worst example; for someone representing God to bow down and worship anything else is utter blasphemy. But all sin defiles God’s image bearer and implies something about God that isn’t true. Now it’s fairly easy to get angry at sin. (At least, it’s easy to get angry at the sins of other people. At my own sins, not so much.) But I think that a more appropriate response might be grief. If I genuinely love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:28-30), then my heart should break to see his image defiled.
I’m afraid that with this last point I might have stepped on a few toes. Actually grieving over sin, especially our own, is a hard sell, even for genuine believers in Jesus. I know that I can’t make myself feel on command, and I’m not sure what it would mean to grieve without feeling grief. So what I challenge you to do instead of feeling, is pray with me. Specifically, pray that we will be able to view sin the same way God does. But when you pray that, be prepared for a struggle. I speak from experience here; it turns out that there’s a part of me that’s afraid a correct view of sin might impinge on some things it doesn’t want to give up.
And that’s where love comes in. There have been plenty of times I’ve done things I didn’t want to do out of love for my wife. Why should it be any different with God? But I learned many years ago that it’s quite possible to admit I don’t want something and then ask God to do it anyway. And if the selfish part of my brain tries to say I’m being a hypocrite, I remind myself that Jesus prayed that way too (Matthew 26:39, 42).
All of this comes from remembering that everyone around me was created in the image of God, as his earthly representative, just as I was. To dishonor God’s representative, whether that be my neighbor or myself, is to dishonor God. My duty is rather to honor and protect the people around me, not because of who they are, but because of whose image they are, who they represent. And also because of who I represent.
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them
(Genesis 1:26).
References Cited
Imes, Carmen Joy
2023 Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove.