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We come to a text today that most of us know well. If you have had any time as a Christian, you’ve come across significant texts of the Bible. That’s what we’re preaching this semester, and this is definitely one of them. You may have memorized this in Sunday school or been part of Bible drills. If some of you have even done that, you have talked about this and discussed it. I know in our worlds—I was talking to Dr. Gilbert about this at some point—like, every single conference that we’ve gone to in the last 10 years, at some point brings up the concept of the imago dei. That’s the Latin form of the image of God, and we talk about this a good bit. We want to make sure we understand this from the basis of the Old Testament into the New Testament, from systematic theology, especially in ethics. We want to hone in on the idea of the image of God, especially as we see it from this pivotal text that’s important for us all. This is good. This is right. This is this is what we’ve done. But I can’t help but wonder with all of that memorization, with all that discussion about this text, why do we still get it so wrong?
Why don’t we understand who we are as humans and relate well to other humans and to our God? It weighs heavy on me when I see fellow humans, fellow image bearers, not address one another in the way that God has intended us to relate to one another, and it makes it even more difficult when I see this happen in Christian circles in the name of Christ, appealing to biblical witness to do things that I don’t find in this text, that is really just coming from the sin of who we are as humans and whatever emotions are drawing us not to reach out to others and seeing them also as someone created in the image of God. So, Southwestern. I’m not giving a lecture here on the nature of humanity. We have wonderful systematic theology classes that can do that. Go see Dr. Yarnell. Go see Dr. Bingham. Spend some time with Derek Bledsoe. I know you all love him. They will go deeper into this concept. I want us just to spend some time this morning making sure that we’re reading this text well, and then encourage you guys to have the courage in this culture to live this text well. That’s all I want to do this morning.
So let’s just be reminded of this just one more time, in Genesis 1:26, and 27: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.’ So, God created man in His own image. He created him in the image of God. He created them male and female.” I have to say, as much as I memorized that, even when I read this in the CSB, it reads a little bit differently than how it came to me. So it feels off, right? And so with those of you who have memorized it in a different ways. It’s not as poetic as some of the elements that we had or some of the translations we had growing up.
But there’s a lot into this text, a lot into this text that we don’t want to read into it, but there’s a lot that we need to read out of it and understand it well. So put it in its context. We have here the sixth day of creation. God has given us His creative activity through these days that are numerated here in Genesis chapter one. And when we get to day six, at the end of day six, we find this pinnacle of creation and the creation of humanity that is somehow setting us apart from the rest of creation, and that’s what he’s trying to demonstrate to us through this text. And so we can go word by word here and try and parse out how each one of these ideas work. We can go into doctrine and just kind of present to you the doctrine of humanity that this is a part of, but I want to approach this just from a point of biblical theology, especially seen through the idea of image, and then tracing that out through the rest of the Bible, for us to understand how we as humans are created in the image of God, and what that means for us as image bearers, but let’s go to the Lord again to help us through this process.
Most gracious Heavenly Father, we pray and ask that you would have your inspired Word penetrate our hearts to teach us truth, to be transformed by your truth, so that we can live that truth out in this world, and point people to who you are, in your name we pray, Amen.
So, as you look at this, I just want to see four elements that are going to undergird what it means to understand these two verses, what it means to understand humanity, and as you read through this, as you think through this, I want you to think about your own humanity and asking the question: Who am I? Who am I in relationship to all the world around me? Who am I in relationship to God, and who am I in relationship to others? I mean, these are the main questions. We look internally, we look upward and we look outward, and we want to understand who we are as humans, and we have to answer that well. When we miss that, we miss so much of the Gospel message, and we miss so much of our relationship with God.
And so we start here really simply saying, “Then God said.” This is a creative activity of our Lord of God, and that seems very basic. But there are times that we forget this because we think that we are the creators of our own world, what’s around us, that we are the masters of it and the creators of it, and we have to recognize we are not. You are not. Whether that’s you arrogantly thinking that you have some type of dominion over your world that you don’t have, or maybe it’s because of your insecurities, that don’t recognize that you don’t have to try and be God. God has created you in a very unique way, in a limited way. He is God. You are not. He is Creator. You are creature. He is limitless. You are limited, and that’s okay, because that’s how God created you. And some of you right now are trying to do things that are beyond your capacity and trying to fill in the void of God in your life, and you’re trying to do this on your own, and you just need to be reminded: God did not create you to be that way. You have 24 hours in the day, just like any of the rest of us, and you should probably be sleeping seven to eight of those hours to restore your body to do the rest of the work. Talking to you, TBC students, after studying, go to sleep. It’s not time to go to Waffle House until five in the morning. See, I I know. I was there. We’re limited. God’s created us this way, and He said that we’re very good in this way. So let God be God and live out a life that He’s created for you.
But secondly, we see here is this concept of image and likeness. These are two different words in the Hebrew text. You can take your Hebrew classes in the Old Testament and go deeper into what those mean. There have been people who have commented on this all throughout history, wanting to see the differences between image and likeness here. I’m not interested in getting into those distinctions. I just want us to be reminded here, there is a concept of how we are created different from the rest of creation, in the image of God. So no, we’re not God, but we’re also different from the rest of creation, and that difference is found here in the concept of image or likeness. That’s who you are.
In trying to answer the question of who you are internally, who you are to God, and who you are outwardly, we come to this concept of image of likeness. There’s a similarity we have with God. We are not Him, but we are similar to Him. And what that means has great implications for who we are as humans and how we relate as Christians in this world that needs the love of Jesus Christ, and we engage in a way that is according to the image God has given to us.
Thirdly, we see here that humans created in the image of God also have dominion. That’s the word I want us to look at here. We have dominion over the rest of creation. You say, “Well, Madison, it doesn’t say that there. Where does it say that?” It kind of does. And this is just a little bit of reading. Well, you find this here: hey will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth,” using the exact language that is a summary of all of the creative activities, or most of the creative activities that have happened in the previous days that you’ve just read in Genesis chapter one. Here’s all the creation. Here’s all the world. Here’s all these wonderful things. The land comes up, and these animals come out of it, and different types of animals, livestock, even these creepy crawly things that we say, “God, why did you create those things?” I don’t understand it because, well, we’ll get to Genesis three and understand why it’s good and right to hate snakes.
So we have dominion over all of these things. That’s what God has given to us. Now this is not a dominion in the sense that we get to rule over. It’s not like, “Ha ha, we’re in charge here!” It is a stewardship of a creation that is good, and the stewards are those he has called very good, and he’s made us very good in his image. So we come to this text as those that are created, limited creations, created in the image of God to have dominion over this world, but lastly, I think it’s really important here, really important for us to conceive of this, that image is a singular whole, but there’s a distinction that’s made here in male and female.
In our culture today, we like to talk about humanity in a singular whole. We’re all humans, and that’s true. We are all humans. There is a commonality of what it means to be human, especially as we’re thinking that we’re different than elephants and cockroaches and trees and things like that. There are people that are confused about that sense. We are over those things, but we are distinct in maleness and femaleness, and all of that is very good. And both are in the image of God. In a world that is confused about gender ideology, we have it defined for us in the text. There are two: males and females. And here at Southwestern, we understand this through the concept of complementarity. If you want to know more about that—some of you missed the excellent book talk that Mr. Darling and our president had last week in his book Complementarity. I say, get that book, read it, understand the issues that are in complementarianism, but understand this: that we see this because God has created us in the image of God, male and female.
This is the basic text that we have before us, and when we get these things wrong, we run into problems in the world around us, one way or the other, because we have misunderstood who we are internally, who we are to God, and who we are to one another. So we must get this right, and these are the issues we find in this text. But it doesn’t just stay here. It comes into a larger concept of how relationality really works, and those three movements are important for us.
That you have an ability to have relationality with God, and what I mean by that is that you can know God, you can know Him not just intellectually, but you can know him personally. As Christians, we are called to be his children. We can call him Abba, Father. This is the sense of relationality that we’re talking about here. He’s created us with the composition that has the capacity to know him in such a way. However, we can see with that from our from our brains to our souls. However, we want to talk about that. See Dr. Jennings’ class. He can tell you all the philosophical components of what it means to be a human. But however we conceive of that, we have the ability to know God. Adam walked with God. He spoke with God. God wants to have that relationality with us. So we were created with that.
We’re created with the ability to have dominion over the earth and relate to the earth in a certain way and steward it in a certain way. And we’re created with the ability to relate to one another, to know one another. We see this in this in Genesis two as the creation account goes forward, as how there was no one in creation that could relate to Adam, so Eve was created. We see a fuller picture of how this gender works and how that relationality really comes together. It’s important to recognize who we are as humans in these ways: upward to God, downward to the create order, and outward to one another, because it’s when we get to Genesis three; those are the three cursings that we have. God brings them up again. Like our relationality with God is broken through the fall. Our sin breaks our ability to know God. Our sin breaks our ability to really steward the earth well. It’s cursed as well because of it, and our sin breaks our ability to know and relate to one another.
And so, there’s a question throughout history of, well, if we’re created in this image, does this image then persist after this fall? Is this fall so bad that we kind of lost this? And that’s a question that’s out there. Have we lost it? Is it just majorly fractured? And I fall into the camp to say it’s just majorly fractured. And I want to show you why I believe that that we’re still created in this. Whether you’re a believer or not, you’re created with the image of God, with the capacity to know God. Romans one highlights this, but I want us to see this in other areas as well. It is not lost upon us, but in every movement of humanity that we have, especially in Genesis one through 11, God again and again comes back to this idea of image. So in Genesis one, that we read here, he constitutes us in his image. Then the fall happens. What do we do with that? Well, just flip over to Genesis chapter five. In Genesis chapter five, it says this: “This is the document containing the family records of Adam on the day that God created man. He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female. When they were created, He blessed them and called them mankind. And Adam was 130 years old when he fathered a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.” And so here we have, after the fall, a reaffirmation that humans are created in the image f God. And so Seth, are you going to lead humanity into what your parents couldn’t do? No, He’s created the image of Adam, and as we read through the story, they go forward, and that doesn’t happen, and humanity becomes so corrupt that God says, “I need to destroy them, but I will save them through one man, and that one man is Noah.”
We know this story well, and so Noah is called to build an ark. He builds it, and animals come two by two. They get inside of it, and he’s closed up, and the waters fell, and that ark floats, and then the waters recede, and when they come out of the ark, God again shows us the image of God. Look at Genesis chapter nine, if you have it: “God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the vestiges—‘” back to Genesis one, that same mandate he’s given to humanity there. “The fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are placed under your authority.” See, there’s that dominion again that’s given again. “Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you, as I gave the green plants. I’ve given you everything. However, you must not eat meat with life, with its life blood in it. And I require a penalty for your lifeblood. I require it from any animal and from any human. If someone murders a fellow human, I require that person’s life. Whoever sheds human blood by humans, his blood will be shed.” Notice this: “for God made humans in His image.” The image is not lost. The image persists onward.
It is very good that we are created in God’s image. So we have to live according to the image that God has given to us. But humanity couldn’t do that. Noah didn’t. He builds a vineyard. It’s a vestige back to looking at Eden, another garden that comes out, and he sins out of that vineyard. And then Abraham’s called out as be the one man for his people, and he can’t do it. The people of God can’t do it through Israel, but the image is never lost.
But then we come to a time when the image is actually regained, where we see it reconstituted, where we see redemption actually come to us, and so this image is persistent in humanity because it completed when, in the fullness of time, God sent His Son, and Christ comes as the true image of God.
Now, notice this: oftentimes, when we look at who Christ is as being the image of God, we look at Colossians one, we look at Hebrews one. We find these texts to help us understand that Jesus truly is fully divine, and that’s such an important aspect of understanding our Christology that we have a Savior who is fully God and fully man. But I want us to recognize here that the image of God has now become, and has assumed humanity, so that image comes back to us again. The image that’s marred in us can look to Christ, who is the true image, and give us an example of what true humanity should look like in mirroring that image to the rest of the world. We find this in Christ.
We also see this really deeply in Romans chapter eight, when we understand how our salvation comes into being, we see this: “So we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. For those He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.” There’s a biblical theology of the image of God that is placed upon humanity that we are tracing from all of the Bible. We were given to it before the fall. After the fall, it remains because we have a constitution that finds salvation in the one who truly images God for us, and that’s in Jesus Christ, and we need to recognize that we’re called to be conformed to His image. We’re called to have His mind and to walk according to His ways, not just because of some ethical command or legal code that’s out there, but because He is the true human. He is the example of how we live our lives. So when you fail at walking according to what God’s called you to do, you look to Christ as the example, the completer, the finisher of our faith, and you can see Him as the one that we are supposed to image to others all around us.
This is all throughout the New Testament. This is what Paul is talking about. This is why we need union with Christ, because what we see in the Old Testament that sets up for us this example that sets up for us what we couldn’t do, that Jesus has done. We read through the law, “You should be imaging God. You have the capacity within you.” Romans one talks about this that you should know God. But we, as humans, rejected God. But then Jesus comes, and in knowing Him, we have the ability and the capacity and the constitution of our humanity to actually come into the presence of God again because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. His humanity, the image of God, assuming humanity, is the way in which that we can reimage our true image through God to ourselves, to this world, to Him, and to each other.
We have to conceive of this, but we don’t do so. We don’t do so. We forget. We accept the benefits of the image of Christ, but then we forget how to live out the implications of being image bearers in this world around us. So as we come to a close, I want to talk about some of these implications, and where I think that we’re just really failing—not just as Christians or the world around us, but I just want to have a word for us as Southwesterners that we, as this community, can do better at imaging the image of God, all across this campus, to one another.
This week I saw a news article that was talking about some Christians that were rereading biblical texts. They’re trying to look at biblical texts and rethinking them in terms of how they could look at other people as less than people: “The Bible talks about slavery, so it’s okay to own a person.” Christian pastors saying the Bible talks about love, so if someone identifies as a gender that we don’t find here, so we should just accept them. Christians are saying this. Well, you can look not too far back in even Southern Baptist history, where Christians were saying abortion was okay. That these humans in utero, humans created in the image of God, that we have the ability to control their lives.
These are just some examples of how we have forgotten what it means to be image bearers and to look at others as image bearers as well. So, Southwestern community, we’ve got to look internally and say, “How am I understanding what Christ has done for me and done for others, and loving them as they need to be loved? How am I not looking at the person across the aisle in the image that God has created them, and more than that, in the redemption that Christ has given them?”
These are hard questions because they confront us in some of our deepest parts of our hearts because we are sinful, prideful people, and it really takes the love of Jesus Christ for us to forgive ourselves and to forgive others, and then to break out of that and to show the love of Christ to others. And so we can talk about evangelical witness, and we can talk about the right way to preach, and we can talk about the right way to exposit a sermon, but we really need to talk about how we are loving our neighbor. You need to talk about how you are loving your neighbor. I find that those that love missions want to go around the globe to take the gospel of Jesus Christ, but they won’t go across the street. “I don’t like my neighbor. I don’t like how they put out their garbage. I don’t like how they park their car in front of my house. I don’t like the food that they cook. I don’t like that.” And we rationalize it and say that’s okay, and then we forget those are humans created in the image of God.
We’re supposed to be conformed to the image of Christ and show the love of Christ to all people, and so we have some really strong elements that are in front of us that we have to confront the issues of seeing the other as being less than us. And this is where issues like classism, sexism, ageism, racism, whatever “-ism” you want to add there, comes into the way in which that we look at one another, and we have to say, “Are we going to allow that sin to persist in our community, in in our lives, or are we going to say that has been defeated by Christ?” The image that I have from Christ does not relate to the image that I’m projecting out there and seeing others as being less than what God has intended them to be.
So we have to look at those things and say, “No, those are sins. I repent of those sins.” And I look at other people and say, “You’re created like I am. You’re redeemed as I am. And I’m going to love you as Christ loves you.” And we look again at Christ’s own example as He walked this earth, and He was counterculture to the world around him. If you’re looking for examples of this, of how he would eat with tax collectors, how he met with Samaritans, how he met with women in ways that their culture is saying, “Why are you doing this? Should a teacher of law engage in these type of things?” He’s saying, “You have created a law that is not the law I’ve given. You’ve forgotten the law that I’ve given to you.”
Read the Sermon on the Mount, just to go deeper into that, and understand that Jesus is bringing us the and completing the fullness of the law, so that when we can’t do what God’s called us to do, we just appeal to Jesus, who’s done that for us, but we don’t just accept that and live how we want to live, as if there is no law. We accept that and then live out our lives, seeking to follow Him every day, looking at other people as the as image bearers as well, and we have to make sure that we’re taking up the courage to do so, because friends, it is courageous to see someone say something about another human that’s creating the image of God, and say, “No, that is wrong. We as Christians don’t say those things, we don’t act in those ways, and we love the people that God has given to us.”
And we do live in a world that does not engage courageously. We live in a world that says, “Oh, that’s just wrong, but I’m not going to say anything about it. I don’t have the courage to to step up and bring those things forward.” Trust me, I know. I wrestled with a lot about talking about this topic from this place to this community today. It takes courage to try and address these things. It would have been a lot easier just to go through the biblical theology and all the neat connections how the image of God goes throughout the Bible. But then we have to address this. This is a sermon; it’s not a lecture. We have to address this issue and come to the hearts of who we are as a community and say, “We are going to be transformed into the image of Christ and then image Christ to others, and that that starts with repentance of our own hearts and encouraging others to live according to Christ as a community.” When we do that, we thrive, we flourish. Others thrive and flourish according to the text of scriptures.
But it takes courage to do that. Takes courage to stand up in the group of your friends and say, “This is wrong. I’m going to do what’s right.” To stand up in your church and say, “I don’t know that what we’re preaching is correct,” or “I don’t know that we’re preaching enough on this on this issue, following the text of Scripture,” or pastors coming into your church and saying, “Okay, I know that culturally we have been this way before, but this is wrong, and we’re going to start acting this way now.” You may lose your job, you may lose status in society, but truth is truth, and we have to follow it. And God has called us to love one another because each other are created in the image of God.
So, in closing, let’s turn to Ephesians. There are a lot of passages we could look at, but Ephesians chapter four, in verse 20, this image comes back to us in a different type of way. Paul says this, “But that is not how you came to know Christ. Assuming you heard about Him and were taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness, God’s image, in righteousness and purity of the truth.”
So, positively, let us remember that all are created in the image of God. That there is no one not created in the image of God, and let’s search our hearts, actions, and make sure that we’re approaching every human being with the dignity and worth that God created them, and the constitution that allows them to be redeemed by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
