The image of God

Made to reflect God

At the high point of creation God says, "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness" (Genesis 1:26).

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27

The Hebrew word for image, tselem (צֶלֶם), often means a visible figure or statue; likeness, demut (דְּמוּת), means resemblance. God has no body, so the point is not that we look like him. Ancient kings set up statues of themselves in the lands they ruled. God placed human beings in his world as his living images, to show what he is like and to tend his creatures under him (see creation). Man and woman bear the image equally.

Even after the fall, Scripture still speaks of people as made in God's image. After the flood God forbids murder, "for in His own image God has made mankind" (Genesis 9:6), and James rebukes those who bless God and then curse "men, who have been made in God’s likeness" (James 3:9). That is why every human life, the unborn, the disabled, the old, the poor, carries the same worth. Yet through original sin the image has been badly marred. Matthew Henry laments, "But how is this image of God upon man defaced! May the Lord renew it upon our souls by his grace!" Matthew Henry

Christ, the true image

The New Testament shows us the original. The Son is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15); the Greek word is eikōn (εἰκών). Where Adam's children reflect God dimly, Christ reflects him perfectly, and salvation remakes the defaced image after him. Believers "have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator" (Colossians 3:10), a self "created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). God predestined his people "to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Romans 8:29), and the Spirit is even now transforming us "into His image with intensifying glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Drawing on these texts, the Westminster Shorter Catechism describes what Adam was made to be:

God created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.

Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 10

Ways of understanding the image

Scripture never defines the image in a single sentence, and the church has seen several sides of it, often holding them together. Many Fathers and medieval teachers located it in reason, will and moral nature; Augustine thought it shines brightest when the mind remembers, knows and loves God Augustine, On the Trinity. Karl Barth and others stressed relationship: God addressing us, and man and woman facing each other Barth, Church Dogmatics. Many Old Testament scholars stress the royal calling to rule creation as God's stewards.

Traditions also relate ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ differently. Irenaeus distinguished them Irenaeus, Against Heresies, and John of Damascus placed the image in mind and free will and the likeness in growing like God in virtue John of Damascus, Exact Exposition. The Orthodox churches teach accordingly that the image remains in everyone, while the likeness is the goal of a life drawn by the Spirit into God's own life (theosis). The Catholic Church teaches that sinful humanity remains in God's image but has lost his glory, the likeness, which Christ restores by giving the Spirit again Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Calvin took the two words as Hebrew repetition of one idea Calvin, Institutes 1.15. Many Reformed theologians distinguish the image in a broad sense, our rational, moral and personal being, which remains though corrupted, from a narrow sense, knowledge, righteousness and holiness, which were lost and are restored in Christ. The Lutheran confessions use the word chiefly in that narrow sense of original righteousness, and so say the image was lost. All agree that fallen people are still God's creatures and precious to him. See the lesson The image of God and What is a human being?