Day 6: The Essence of the Image of God

In his commentary, Waltke explains three ways in which Genesis 1 drives toward the creation of man as if driving to the center of the story:

“[first] The impersonal ‘let there be’ (or its equivalents) of the seven preceding creative acts is replaced by the personal ‘let us.’ [second] Only in the creation of humanity is the divine intent announced beforehand. [third] The formula ‘and so it was’ is replaced by a threefold blessing. In these ways, the narrator places humankind closer to God than the rest of creation.”1

The other surface exegetical matter is to note that the two words used for “image” (צֶלֶם) and “likeness” (דְּמוּת), being different, has led to various theories as to the significance. Is it a means of intensification of one idea? Or are these two distinct dimensions?2

• The image of God is theological

• The image of God is personal

• The image of God is from the invisible to visible

• The image of God is gender-specific

Everything about human nature is what it is because of what it says about God.   

The Image of God is Theological.

These are the important words: ‘Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ (v. 26a). The majority position among the orthodox is that this is at least a prefiguring of the Trinity. It is one thing to argue that the Hebrew word Elohim represents the “plural of majesty” or “honorific plural,” but it is another thing to do this when the words US and OUR are stacked up on top. Here, as Calvin says, God is “apparently deliberating.”3

Another reply that has often been given to the orthodox is that this is an address to the council of angels.4 But this suffers under two surface problems: first, having to do with God’s decrees; the second with God’s nature in itself. One passage touches upon both problems.

“For who in the skies can be compared to the LORD? Who among the heavenly beings is like the LORD, a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him?” (Ps. 89:6-7).

Of the angels as well as men, we might ask Paul’s question: “who has been his counselor?” (Rom. 11:36)

But there are two deeper problems than other texts of angels. The action of this passage—signified by the Actors called “US”—God in the act of creating man. And the object is still the image of God, not of angels; and to equate the latter with the former isn’t just heresy. It’s blasphemy! He says, “My glory I will not give to another” (Isa. 48:11). So even if there is an angelic council to speak with here, it still wouldn’t make sense to make them the object of US and OUR. I think those who dabble in the angelic council view get so caught up in how much sense that makes of other passages, that they flat out forget what the text is talking about here.

That being the case, God had something very theological in view with man.

Herman Bavinck put it in this way:

“The entire world is a revelation of God, a mirror of his virtues and perfections; every creature is in his own way and according to his own measure an embodiment of a divine thought. But among all creatures only man is the image of God, the highest and richest revelation of God, and therefore head and crown of the entire creation.”5

The Image of God is Personal.

The use of US and OUR in verse 26 also calls attention to the self-sufficiency of the triune God. And yet that very fact—that God did not need to create man in order to fulfill any deficiency in the divine personal life—nevertheless this implies that man was made for personal relationship with God and with each other. Nothing could be more privileged about man that this. Human beings alone have the capacity to commune with God.

But personhood is a deep concept. One thing we can say for sure is that personhood cannot be reduced to matter in motion anymore than we have already seen about information. Henry observes that, on the one hand, “Man was made the same day that the beasts were, because his body was made of the same earth with theirs,” and yet, “the method of creation was to advance from that which was less perfect to that which was more so.”6 On the one hand, man is shown to be a creature here, utterly dependent—“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4), and yet we are also told of the Word being present at creation, “rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man” (Prov. 8:31). So man is both the creature and the pinnacle.

To be a person is to have a spiritual dimension called the soul. People can over-analyze what the soul is “made of,” or whether we can talk about “parts” at all. To stay simple, let’s just call the mind (or intellect) the thinking power of the soul, the will (or inclination) the choosing power, and, to borrow from Jonathan Edwards, the affections are “the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.”7 So when we talk about the soul of man we are speaking about man as a thinking, feeling, acting person; and each of these, when they’re functioning rightly, is a magnifying glass toward God. The words of Paul—“whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31)—are not an empty cliche.

Putting together our first two concepts here, man is designed to be active analogy of God, a moving picture: a display of His glory. In our thinking, feeling, and doing, we reflect the greatness of God our Creator.

The Image of God is from the Invisible to the Visible.

The word OVER—used four times in verse 26 and three times in verse 28—shows a place of man that is superior to the natural world as such. Man is a part of nature and yet also a part of the immaterial realm. But we want to insist that these are not two equal opposites. This is monotheism 101. If God is God at all, then all things flow from the invisible to the visible. Yes, all things also, in the end, flow back “to God” (Rom. 11:36), but even that is still talking about things that could have ever originated from the divine mind and will.

It is not different with human beings. It is the immaterial dimension of man that is superior to the material dimension. By “superior” here I don’t mean something like the superior having dignity and importance to the exclusion of the inferior. Rather, it is simply that God’s design has the immaterial soul in the lead position. Think about why that is, purely in terms of the image of God. It makes good sense that what is most like God in man is more of what is meant by this “image.”

Now granting the excellency of the soul over the body, the body is still designed by God, it is good, and it will be renewed with the soul on the Last Day. Furthermore the whole Christ is the image of God that Paul says we are informed by (Col. 3:10), and John says that “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2). That means the whole body-soul unity glorified. Although even here, about Jesus, you will notice that we are directed through His incarnation to that same invisible-to-visible flow. In the Upper Room, when the disciples were struggling with where He was going and wanted to “see” the Father, how does Jesus reply? He says,

“Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (Jn. 14:9)

This is a remarkable statement. Here, the second kind of “seeing” cannot mean a seeing with the physical eyes. Why is that? The divine essence—whether of the Father or the Son—cannot be seen (cf. Jn. 1:18; 1 Tim. 6:16).

What then does this teach us—I mean that body and soul are a unity, but that the soul animates the body by rational reflection upon God’s character and commands. What does that imply? It teaches us many things. Too many to list here! However, just start with the implications about reason and morality.

(i.) The revolt against reason is a devolution into animalism.

(ii.) On the flip side, any pretension of reason that exalts material objects or material analysis to the level of immaterial objects or analysis is such a revolt against reason, and so will make us more like animals.

(iii.) Any attempt to understand of a universal (e.g., justice, truth, goodness, beauty, oneness [including catholicity]) by one of its material particulars is yet another revolt against reason that descends down into animalism.

(iv.) Ethics must begin in an immaterial law, not in external human behavior, as that would not separate us from the animals.8

This aspect of the image of God flies in the face of all worldviews that see truth and justice as something that must be arrived at off in the future. Whether it was Rousseau who believed that man was the “noble savage,” born free, but everywhere in chains because of the evil effects of civilization, or else Hegel who believed that the original state was bad and that humans must progress by a conflict that arrives finally an the Absolute. But if Adam was made full image of God from the start, then he was a whole moral being from the start. Thomas Boston spoke of Adam in that first state as having “perfect knowledge of the law,” not in the sense of “all knowledge,”9 but knowing God’s will sufficiently for his task. His job was to progress and to not lose that.

The Image of God is Gender-Specific.

In the repetition of verse 27 it ends out with more specificity: ‘male and female he created them.’ He could have waited until Chapter 2 to introduce this. I take it that the precursor to male and female is so important to everything that follows, that it is as important of a fact as that human beings are superior to animals. You cannot have a gospel story, a meaningful life, or even eternal life without this feature. It isn’t going anywhere. Jesus said, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female” (Mat. 19:4). Well, have you? God not only made men and women men and women, but He tells you all about it on page 1. To relegate this to some minor detail, insignificant to the great cosmic struggle between Christ and Satan, or even to the proper functioning of your own life is completely irrational.

But why in this place? How is the man / woman distinction related to the image of God?

Anthony Hoekema starts us with some process of elimination.

“Since God is spirit (John 4:24), we may not conclude that the resemblance to God in this instance is found in the physical difference between men and women. Rather, the resemblance must be found in the fact that man needs the companionship of woman, that the human person is a social being, that woman complements man and the man complements woman. In this way human beings reflect God, who exists not as a solitary being but as a being in fellowship—a fellowship that is described at a later stage of divine revelation as that between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”10

Now, in an emasculated age, it may be admitted that men and women are “different” in some way, but a very shallow logic infers that if they have equal dignity before God, then they must have the same natures in all except, perhaps, the surface of their physiology. Next time on the vocation of man and woman, and then the close-up lens in Chapter 2 will start to bring correction to that.

Practical Use of this Doctrine

Use 1. Correction. In every age of church history, there is a basic doctrine that is under attack. In the first three centuries of the church, it was both the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of Christ in particular. In the fifth century and again in the sixteenth, it was the doctrine of salvation. In the early modern period, it was the doctrine of Scripture and, really, supernaturalism in general that were under fire. As we head further into the twenty-first century it is becoming pretty clear that it is the biblical doctrine of man (anthropology) that requires the church to defend. Anthropology is a word that was co-opted in the modern Western university. But it is simply the study of man (anthropos). Early modernism made man a purely material organism. Late modernity gives us post-humanism where everything about human nature is scheduled for eradication.

Use 2. Consolation. “What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him?” (Job 7:17)11 When Job said this, it was a lament. He felt like God was hunting him down. Many do not accept the biblical view of God and man because they do not want to be bothered—literally. They have grown to feel as though they were dropped into this world, perhaps not measuring up, and so this aspect of God’s word is troubling to them. They have seen themselves as a prey and a fugitive, like Cain, somewhere along the line having murdered not their brother, but that image that is nearer to them, in themselves. The newest generations have a whole lingo for these who are alienated from other persons.

The language of “Incels” (INvoluntary CELibates) dominates how a whole generation now processes everything—an intersection of sexuality, evolutionary theory, and politics. Take enough red pills and you will be awakened. Take too many and you will see that hopeless future opened up.

There is not even a mortgage waiting for a young man like a ball and chain. If there was, no one would want it, and no member of the opposite sex will move down the evolutionary chain to settle for anything less than what social media has decided is a 10.

They can see nothing outside of this virtual reality. Being a whole man or a whole woman in this new world has been made a most unattractive proposition. It is beyond meaningless. That would be too sterile. This is a full lashing out against one’s whole identity. This is what is meant by the black pill. And it ends in either suicide or else transgenderism, which becomes a slower suicide. 

Know that the Son of God took on human flesh in your place—and not a human nature in luxury, but one under constant trial and suffering and alienation. Jesus took the ultimate black pill, and He took it in your place.

He was broken to put you back together again. It isn’t too late for God’s power to restore you into the image of God.

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1. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 64.

2. Anthony Hoekema argues from the absence of a conjunction in the Hebrew and the fact that only the word for “image” is used in verse 27 and 9:6 and only the word for “likeness” is used in 5:1. He concludes that, “there is no essential difference between the two” — Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 13.

3. Calvin, Commentaries, I:91.

4. The confidence with which this view is expressed is usually accompanied by “unanimous” support from the Old Testament (Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 64-66) and later Hebrew tradition (Wenham, Genesis 1-15, 27), which presents perfectly true evidence, but of only one kind—begging the whole question as to why this would be the relevant concept to review.

5. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:566

6. Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 6.

7. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Volume One (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2009), 237.

8. Bavinck, for instance, rightly says, “Ethics in the true sense of the word does not exist within a Darwinian framework. Every view of human beings starts with an axiom, a point of departure, a proposition of faith or hypothesis. This is the case with Darwin as well: his proposition of faith is that a human being is an evolved animal: Reformed Ethics, I:35.

9. Thomas Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1989), 40.

10. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 14.

11. cf. Psalm 8:4; 114:3.