“Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• People are naturally compelled to ask questions of identity. To properly answer all these questions, we need to look all the way back to the beginning—to our creation—and see that all people are made in the image of God.
• Having a well-rounded view of the imago Dei will help us better understand ourselves, God, and the restoring work of salvation that comes to us through Jesus Christ. We can understand what God intended the imago Dei to be, how sin corrupted it, and how Jesus restores it through the power of the cross and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
• Today, specifically, we want to understand that by creating human beings in His image, God has made each person with an inherent dignity which demands respect.
Genesis 1:26-28
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
• While there are lots of ways that people can disagree about Genesis 1 (age of the earth, big bang, etc.), it is incompatible with the biblical narrative to believe in the modern theory of evolution as the origin of humanity.
• Genesis 2 is not a separate account of the creation of humanity, but a zoomed in explanation of how the events of Genesis 1:26 happened. Read Genesis 2:7, 18-23.
• “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” What does this mean?
• According to theologian Wayne Grudem:
The nature of man such that he is like God and represents God. Both the Hebrew word for “image” (tselem) and the Hebrew word for “likeness” (demût) refer to something that is similar but not identical to the thing it represents or is an “image” of….a full understanding of man’s likeness to God would require a full understanding of who God is in his being and in his actions and a full understanding of who man is and what he does. The more we know about God and man the more similarities we will recognize, and the more fully we will understand what Scripture means when it says that man is in the image of God.
Different aspects of God’s image (Grudem)
• Moral Aspects >> we are accountable to God and He has given us a moral compass that is distinct from the rest of creation.
• Spiritual Aspects >> we are not just physical creatures, but there is an immaterial or spiritual part of us that is meant to relate to God.
• Mental Aspects >> we are creatures of reason, logic, language, and communication to a greater degree than the rest of Creation. Unlike other creatures, we think of the future. We create art, music, literature, and technological innovations. We are filled with complex emotions.
• Relational Aspects >> we are made to relate to God, but we are also made to relate to other human beings in deeper community than is see throughout the rest of creation. The gift of marriage reflects the nature of God. As we relate to Creation itself, we image forth the character of God as stewards, having dominion and authority over creation.
• Physical Aspects >> while God is Spirit (John 4:24), our physical bodies are meant to be an important part of the way that we reflect the image of God.