Day 6: The Vocation of the Image of God

I mentioned briefly last time that those two words were used in the Hebrew—“image” (צֶלֶם) and “likeness” (דְּמוּת)—and there is one more shade of meaning in the word(s): that of a royal representative or “vice-regent.” Richard Belcher explains this in his commentary:

“In some views in the ancient Near East only the king partakes of the divine image. For example, a statement to King Esardhaddon of Assyria asserts, ‘A (free) man is as a shadow of the god, the slave is as the shadow of a (free) man, but the king, he is like unto the (very) image of God.’ However, in the Scriptural account every human being is made in the image of God and thus takes on a royal, kingly function within creation.”1

Another commentator, Hart, takes this even further: “In the Ancient Near East it was widely believed that a god’s spirit lived in any statue or image of that god, with the result that the image could function as a kind of representative of or substitute for the god wherever it was placed.”2 The obvious difference here is that the true image of God was just that: a representative. No human being born to the race of Adam is to be worshiped.

• Have Dominion — or Subdue the Earth

• Have Babies — or Fill the Earth

Doctrine. The image of God is to cultivate God’s things and multiply more image-bearers for more of the same.   

Have Dominion — or Subdue the Earth.

The word DOMINION is used in the verb form, “rule” or “have dominion” (רָדָה) radah. Our English word comes more directly from the Latin domus, meaning “house,” and hence the words “domestic” and “domicile.” But it may be that we have trouble hearing that because we can’t get over how it sounds like “dominate” — Let him dominate! Let him exploit others! This is double-trouble because there’s actually a sense in which domination (that is, of impersonal obstructions) and exploitation (that is, of opportunities to apply energy to resources) are good things. So that’s our first hurdle to hearing, is that we’re often actually refusing to hear a good thing as anything but a bad thing.

But on the other extreme are those who talk about dominion in the most positive, “optimistic,” light, but tend to think of it as a kind of “state of success” for the church. I’ll have more to say about that, but the first thing to get is from the text itself. The command to ‘Let him have dominion’ or more literally ‘Let him rule over’ (v. 28), is a divine command for an individual human action—yes, it becomes a collective one as well. But is at least an action and a sphere of activity:

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecc. 9:10).

The second thing we have to get in our minds about what man is to do here, is what he is to do it with. Remember what we’ve already seen in Chapter 1. These resources are all God’s. And that means that this is a STEWARDSHIP. While the Latin word for house is domus, the Greek word that shows up in the New Testament is oikos, and the “law of the house” (oikonomia) comes into the Latin (oeconomia) and then into our English as economics—the study of the laws of the house, which is why Aristotle’s Politics begins with the household and then proceeds to the city-state.

Back to the New Testament Greek, the word frequently used by Paul is “steward” (oikonomos). So what’s a steward? I submit that this is the most basic key to understanding what dominion is. The steward was the house-servant that the dominus left in charge of the domus—the master leaves him in charge of his stuff, including his children. But this is the point to get: stewardship is the “law of the house.” When God gave “the earth … to the children of man. (Ps. 115:16), He gives small pieces to each man. He doesn’t give it universally; and He doesn’t give it indiscriminately. This has massive implications that we’ll see in Chapter 2 about the image of God having a division of labor and specific vocations, and the image of God being local.

If we combine this idea of stewardship with the idea of royal representation, what do we have? Note first that the things placed under man are of three basic kinds—all of the animal life (vv. 26, 28); all of plant life ‘for food’ (v. 29); and then also, more generally, it adds ‘over all the earth’ (v. 26). So, if we travel back up that chain of being, from the impersonal ground, to vegetation, to animals, we then rise to the throne and crown of creation. As one commentator says, mankind is “to rule the creation as benevolent kings.”3

One more word can throw us off: ‘subdue’ (כָּבַשׁ) chavash, which can even mean, “bring under subjection” or even “bondage.” The idea of “subduing” raises the question about what evil might be anticipated before the fall. We already hinted at this question with the separation of light and darkness. Is this subduing aspect of dominion anticipating the purpose of the sword? Along those lines, Waltke helpfully describes a

“twofold destiny: to procreate in spite of death and to rule in spite of enemies.”4

Both of those backdrops only make sense after the fall. Think of this on the simplest scale. As a child, your room is your Garden. When you’re room is messy, you have not been a good steward. When you do obey your parents and clean it, you are exercising dominion. That is, you are bringing order back from chaos. Or, if you are a homemaker, and provide both food on your table and discipline to your children, you are placing order into what was previously “unfilled and unformed” (1:2). You see why those stages and actors in the structure of Genesis 1 matter in the end? So dominion is a twofold ordering—filling and structuring into the void, but also rooting out the weeds, or fencing out the predator—recall that separating light and darkness (1:3). This is copying God (imaging forth God) in our dominion.

Objection: “This was only before the fall. If dominion is an aspect of the image, man lost the image; therefore he forfeited dominion.” On the contrary, as the Psalmist said long after the fall—

“You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet” (Ps. 8:6).

Furthermore, when the creation mandates are repeated to Noah in Genesis 9, dominion is divided into its constituent parts—(i.) the fear of the animals under them; (ii.) food, both animals and plants, given to them;5 (iii.) and the subduing of violence by a just use of force. Dominion is inseparable from human nature. A man without dominion is like a man without his masculinity, without his brain, without his spine, without meaning and purpose, without motion. What I just said is true of men and women—but as we’ll see in Chapter 2, it’s actually very crucial for both men and women to hear that about the man in particular first.

Have Babies — or Fill the Earth.

‘And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’ (v. 28). I heard a pastor qualify this one time by saying, “This is a blessing—not a command.” This flies in the face of the text, because God is depicted as speaking TO THEM to be and to do. That is an imperative, any way you slice it! But I had to ask myself: What error or abuse is he reacting to? It wasn’t hard to figure out. A legalistic view of the “fruitful and multiply” mandate does what all legalism tends to do—One size fits all; no room for God’s sovereign, particular dealings with real individuals. In the Bible, righteous Hannah was barren (1 Sam. 1:2). Was she disobedient? No.

But then what do we do? We swing the pendulum all the way over and begin to blame the wrong things. Let me just suggest the main point of this mandate. In the bearing of children, God’s glory and man’s vocation come together as one. Start with the Psalmist:

“Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate” (Ps. 127:3-5).

A few quick observations: First, it is called a “heritage” and “reward,” reaffirming the pronouncement of Genesis 1, that it was good. Second, this heritage and reward is not intrinsic, but extrinsic. In other words, the bearing of children is not ultimately about the man’s line considered as an end in itself or about the children’s happiness considered as an end in itself. They are compared to arrows, which are for shooting outward in battle, and to a kind of honor in society—i.e., “in the gate.” Third, the full quiver is treated as a blessing on top of the blessing, so that having many children is considered an intensification of the same good.

Even when the Bible addresses the distortion of something He designs, God always has a way of pointing our attention back to the design. So when He, through the prophet Malachi, chastised the husbands of Judah for their divorce,

“Because the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring” (Mal. 2:14-15).

If we read back into Genesis 1:28 through the “distorted lens” of Malachi 2:14-15, what can we see? First, the Lord makes all marriages, as Jesus teaches in Matthew 19:4-5 also pointing back to Genesis; and this Malachi text points to a link between the social design of the image of God and each of those marriages. That’s what he means by a “portion of the Spirit,” as man has God’s “spirit” or “wind” (ruach) breathed into him. So it is not simply that man and woman, as atomistic individuals, are the image of God, but God designed this image also for each other. That communion is an aspect of the image. Let me put that in one more way—The image of God, or that in humanity which glorifies God, which says something about God, is not only the individual image of God, but also the community of souls says something about God. And then the second thing this Malachi text sheds light on is the “product” purpose—namely, he says, “a godly offspring.” Remember the fig tree just outside of Jerusalem which Jesus cursed? Well as the man is an image in his way, the woman is an image in her way—and here, what is in view is the fruit of children.

“Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table” (Ps. 128:3).

Child-bearing and child-rearing are produce unto God. This is a hard teaching today. But we can trust God that it is good. Why is it good? What is ultimately being multiplied? What is really the fruit of this vine?

Think of it in terms of a prophecy of the new covenant that, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). There are two senses in which mankind must be the instrument of the fulfillment of this promise.

First, the waters are the given side of the analogy, while the earth is the stage on which the unfamiliar thing will become familiar. But what on the earth is scheduled to spread and which gives God the most glory? The answer is clearly the image of God. Second, the prophet does not only say that this glory will spread across the world in this way, but specifically the knowledge of this glory. Thus the instrument of this glory must be a knowing being.

Pay special attention to this stamp on the whole of chapter 1, in verse 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.’ Whereas before it had said “good,” here now it adds the word in Hebrew for ‘very.’ But the word I want to highlight especially is the word EVERYTHING. This cannot just mean the physical resources and the creatures they are for; but it must also include the social arrangement, the means and methods by which all of it functions. God designed those.

The Puritan, Thomas Manton, summarized the whole of our text well:

“Man was made last, as most excellent; his palace furnished with all things necessary, and then like a prince he is sent into the world to rule and to reign … all things are wonderfully made.”6

Practical Use of this Doctrine

Use 1. Correction. The “dominion mandate” is often dismissed by pietists in our day, whether because they fear either Theonomy or Postmillennialism or any kind of Christian “transformationalist” ethic. Oddly some of these thinkers will acknowledge that dominion is something essential to the image of God itself and so applies to all individuals, and yet when the question of its civic implications comes up, then dominion gets talked about as if were only referring to kings again, whether in theocracies or regular monarchies. Very odd indeed.

I often think that behind that “ism” that refer to as “pietism” is a more inexcusable ism that we call “fatalism.” This is the view that whatever will be will be, so nothing matters. “We do not actually change anything.”

Francis Schaeffer wrote about this,

“Since God has made man in his own image, man is not caught in the wheels of determinism. Rather man is so great that he can influence history for himself and for others, for this life and the life to come.”7

And again, what is the point of praying the petition in the Lord’s Prayer,

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mat. 6:10),

if no such manifestation of God’s kingdom and will is to be patterned in the here and now?

Use 2. Admonition. A warning to all societies. Think of the implications of BE FRUITFUL and MULTIPLY. A grape vine is for producing grapes. An apple tree is for producing apples. Human procreative capacities are for producing children. For millennia, people understood this. They understood that to multiply for two, that meant four or more or you’ll be no more. But about a hundred years ago in the West, we decided that this was oppressive and there’s an overpopulation problem.

Surprise, surprise: The West is now facing an under-population problem; and since we have spread our modern materialist lies to the rest of the world, so are they. Except for those who carried on as normal—the Muslims and the Eastern Christians. When the creation mandate is disobeyed by a people, that people will be literally wiped off of the face of the earth. So there is a warning against deviating from God’s design.

Use 3. Consolation. In Christ, God has redeemed and is, even now, restoring dominion. Hebrews 2:5-9 is really the fulfillment of Psalm 8, which really makes it the fulfillment of Genesis 1:26-31. One of the ways that the New Testament describes the work of Christ is as being the only ultimately faithful Steward, but as more than that:

“Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope” (Heb. 3:5-6).

Jesus has made His own people the Garden, the Temple, and the City that comes down as the New Creation. Above all things He’s working on, He’s working on us.

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1. Richard Belcher, Genesis: The Beginning of God’s Plan of Salvation (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 2012), 57.

2. I. Hart, “Genesis 1:1-2:3 As a Prologue to the Books of Genesis,” TynBul 46 (1995), 318.

3. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 67.

4. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 67.

5. Calvin’s comments about the emphasis given to animals under man’s dominion brings up things that are very interesting and useful, yet exceed the limitations of a sermon. He said, “He appointed man, it is true, lord of the world; but he expressly subjects the animals to him, because they, having an inclination or instinct of their own, seem to be less under authority from without” (Commentaries, I:96), that is, less than other created things like plants or rocks, etc. We might take the ancients to be simpletons to “need to be told this,” but we must remember two things: first, most false religions featured the worship of some spirit under the guise of this or that beast; second, many wild animals were to be feared in their own right, superstitions aside. Hence the usefulness of man being told that God has placed him above the beasts.

6. Thomas Manton, “Sermons Upon Hebrews XI,” in The Complete Works of Thomas Manton (London: 1873), XIII:388.

7. Schaeffer, Death in the City (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1969), 80.