The Image of God in Man | Summer in the Systematics: Anthropology (Part 2)

Transcript

JRS 79
IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN
6/7/2026
SELECTED SCRIPTURES
JESSE RANDOLPH

Jesse Ridgway, along with his wife, Ashley is a social media influencer. And a few days ago, after posting some happy videos and photos about their pregnancy journey in recent weeks, Jesse wrote a long-form post in which he gave this update. These are his words:

“This week, my wife and I made the very difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy due to Trisomy 21. The choice was not made lightly. We really appreciate all of the personal stories that you guys shared with us, especially the unconditional support we received from fans with no matter what we decided. I know some of you may be very disappointed to hear this news. We are devastated. This has been extremely traumatic for both of us, especially Ashley. She underwent the procedure earlier this week and is on the mend. Thankfully everything went smoothly, but emotionally we are on the mend. Trisomy 21, also known as Down Syndrome, is caused by an extra chromosome. It is caused by an error in cell division, like a glitch. The odds of a baby having it is 1 in 1000.”

“When I first confronted this news, I was shocked but optimistic. If they’re a little slow intellectually, then we’ll make it work. I signed on to be a parent, come what may. But I just didn’t fully understand what Down Syndrome entailed. Once we made it public, it became clear that MOST people don’t know what Down Syndrome entails (and no, it’s not the same as Autism) 50% of babies with Down Syndrome have heart defects. 75% will have hearing challenges. Over 50% will have vision problems. Impaired immune function, development disabilities, learning disabilities, delayed physical development, poor muscle tone, structural issues with face, decreased lifespan, etc. Sadly, the list is long, feel free to look it up. Down Syndrome isn’t a blessing, it is objectively [bad] from a health perspective.”

“I didn’t realize just how rough it is for the child, let alone the family. More often than not, they would be fully dependent on others for the rest of their life. The miscarriage risk is also close to 50%, which made matters worse. They may never see the light of day, and it puts Ashley further at risk. We spoke with doctors, friends, family and genetic counselors and learned that up to 90% of women terminate their pregnancy after learning the baby has Trisomy 21. This was WAY higher than I expected. I thought it would be lower given that I hear so many say they kept or would keep the baby. I believe that’s because most terminations happen privately. It feels shameful. A lot of judgment is being cast.”

“You never know you’d be in this type of situation until it happens to you and then things change. To all of my fans who have weighed in on this topic who have Autism, Down Syndrome, or any other conditions, we appreciate you. You matter a lot and we’re glad you’re here. I commend you and your families for having the strength and courage to push forward. As for us, we made a difficult decision that we believe in the long run will be beneficial for our family. Thankfully, we had a choice. It will take a little time to move on, but we are excited to try again in the future and hopefully have a better outcome. Love to you guys & thank you for understanding.”

Let’s not tiptoe, what happened here with Jesse and Ashley Ridgway. They made the decision to end a human life. God had begun knitting together a child in Ashley’s womb, forming the child’s inward parts, as David said in Psalm 139. Jesse and Ashley even recognized that this was a child, hence his use of word baby in his post, hence his use of the word they, a personal pronoun in this post, which points not only to the life of this child, but personhood for this child. But this husband-wife duo made the decision with the full backing of the law of the land that because of the difficulties they thought this child might have at some point in his or her life, and the difficulties this child might bring to the parents in their life, that it was best to terminate the pregnancy, to end the child’s life in utero while the child was still developing in the womb.

Now, as you can imagine in light of the depravity which pervades our world today, the Ridgeways, Jesse and Ashley, have been lauded and praised by many of their followers on social media. They are being commended by thousands if not tens of thousands for the bravery and courage that demonstrated in mercifully ending this child’s life. But there have been many vocal opponents as well, those who have called out the Ridgways not only for ending the life of their child and electing to put their child to death, but by posting about it on social media and gaining influence and followers and revenues for what ultimately is an act of murder.

Well because of its timeliness and because of the nature of the issues it raises, I thought it would be appropriate to raise this sad story about Jesse and Ashley Ridgway and their decision to end the life of their child which was diagnosed with Trisomy 21. I thought it would be a fitting way to get into our topic for tonight as we consider the topic of the image of God.

That is our topic this evening as we continue on in our study of Biblical Anthropology in the Summer in the Systematics series, the image of God in man. We’re going to be looking this evening as what it looks like to be made as humans, as mankind, in the image of God. That child that the Ridgways decided to abort, that child that the Ridgways decided to end the life of was made in the image of God. Just like every other human being, whether man or woman or child, every individual who has ever walked this earth, every individual who has ever occupied a womb, has been made in the image of God.

Now last Sunday night as we kicked off this study of Biblical Anthropology, and as a reminder, here’s our definition of anthropology. It’s the doctrine of man and specifically, man’s relation to God and the world in which God has placed him. Last week as we launched into this study of anthropology, we looked at the topic of the origin of man or the origin of mankind. And as we did so, we considered a number of unbiblical theories of man’s origins. We considered the views of atheistic evolution and theistic evolution and progressive creationism and then the gap theory among others. Then we also did a very high-level survey of the truth of man’s origin. That truth being what’s known as literal creationism, meaning that man was created by God on the sixth day of creation, some 6,000 perhaps 7,000 years ago, with the first male Adam being formed out of the dust and the first woman being fashioned from the rib that was taken out of the man’s side. That’s the position of course that gets people these days laughed out of academic discussions and it’s a position which leads one to being mocked and ridiculed by those who fancy themselves the intellectual types. But that’s OK. It’s a view that is expressly stated in God’s Word and we’re never on safer ground, than when we simply go with what God’s Word actually says.

So, the Bible teaches that God made Adam out of dust? Well then that’s what happened. That must be true. The Bible teaches that God fashioned Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs? Well then that’s what happened, that’s true. The Bible teaches through the various genealogical records given in Scripture that mankind and this planet is mere thousands of years old, not millions or billions of years old? Then so be it, that is truth.

So that was last week as we looked at the Origin of Man. And this week again as we move into this second week of the study of Biblical Anthropology, we’re going to move into a topic that is a natural outflow of last week’s topic again THE IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. God made man. We see that in Psalm 24:1, “The earth is Yahweh’s, as well as its fullness, the world, and those who dwell in it.” And even more directly, Genesis 1:27 teaches us that “God created man.” So, Adam and Eve were created by God. But not only that, we’re told later in Genesis 1:27 that “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.”

That’s what we are going to look at tonight. What it means to be made in the image of God. As we go through this, I have four points for you which correspond to the four blanks on your worksheet. The first point will be DEFINITIONS. The second point will be DISTINCTIONS. The third point will be RAMIFICATIONS, and then the fourth point will be LIMITATIONS.

So, DEFINITIONS. What does it mean to be made in the image of God. DISTINCTIONS, that’s going to be a distinction drawn between the fact that Christ is the image of God and we are made in the image of God and the distinction between the two. RAMIFICATIONS will be what are some of the prideful outworkings of what it means to be made in the image of God. And then LIMITATIONS will be what can we not mean when we’re saying that we were made in the image of God and who is excluded from this category of image bearers.

So that’s our basic outline for tonight. We’ll start with DEFINITIONS. What does it mean that God created man in His own image? What does it mean that in the image of God He created him? What is the image of God or to use the old Latin expression, the imago Dei?

Well, as you can imagine, there are a number of different definitions that are out there and have been offered, a number of different assertions that have been made throughout the centuries over what it means to be made in the image of God. For some to be created in the image of God means simply to be a living being. To have life. Those who take that position will point to Paul’s words at Mars Hill here in Acts 17:28-29 as he says to those who were gathered around him at the Areopagus. He says, “for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His offspring.’ Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to suppose that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the craft and thought of man.”

Now in context here Paul was actually making a different argument. He was refuting the notion that inanimate objects or idols could represent the living God. Instead, he was arguing that since mankind is the offspring of God and since human beings are living beings, that God Himself must also be a living being. Now notably this text does not tie being made in the image of God exclusively to being a living being and that sort of view wouldn’t make sense ultimately anyway. Because if being a living being were the only standard by which someone is made in the image of God, well then plankton in the ocean or raccoons in trashcans or earthworms in the dirt would all be made in the image of God because they are living. They are living beings. They’d all be considered equal image bearers like humans. And we know from the record of Scripture as we’ll get into later, that is simply not the case.

Others have made the argument that being made in the image of God is tied directly to the fact that mankind is said in Scripture to have dominion over the earth, rulership over the earth, and its subjects. Now it is true that after what is said in Genesis 1:26-27, where it is said that man was made in God’s image, that these words come. Genesis 1:28, “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 sky and over every living thing that creeps on the earth.’” And further, the testimony of Scripture is that man has been given dominion over the earth. Psalm 8:6-8, “You make him to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, (this is speaking of man) all sheep and oxen, and also the animals of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas.” While I think it’s certainly fair to say that having dominion over the earth is an aspect of what it means to be made in the image of God, it would be an overstatement to say that being made in the image of God is tied exclusively to the fact that mankind has dominion over the earth. We’ll get into that more later.

Others have said that being made in the image of God ties back to how God originally designed man before the Fall; to be able to make moral decisions, decisions rooted in righteousness and holiness like we see in a couple of these passages in the New Testament. Paul in Ephesians 4:24 says “put on the new man, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Colossians 3:9-10, “Do not lie to one another, since you put off the old man with its evil practices, and have put on the new man who is being renewed to a full knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.”

Others have connected being made in the image of God to the fact that man has intellect, and emotion, and will, just as God has intellect, and emotion, and will as we see in some of these passages. Isaiah 1:18, “‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ says Yahweh.” That demonstrates the intellect of God. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world.” That demonstrates the emotion of God. Ephesians 1:11, “In Him, we also have been made an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.” That demonstrates the will of God.

Since God possesses these and other attributes and demonstrates them perfectly, to the extent mankind mirrors those attributes, He showcases according to this view, that he has been made in God’s image. Here’s Rolland McCune on this topic. He says, “The image of God in man is man’s personal, spiritual and moral resemblance to God, including but not limited to, God’s communicable attributes (i.e., those perfections of the infinite God that can be possessed in a finite way by human beings).”

Others have said, here’s another view on what consists of, or what is made up in the image of God. Others like Karl Barth who was a neo-evangelical many many years ago. They link the idea to being made in the image of God by taking an exclusively Christological view on the subject. They’ll say the idea of the image of God should be viewed through a Christological lens. Meaning we have passages like these: Colossians 1:15, Christ “is the image of the invisible God.” Or II Corinthians 4:4 speaks of Christ, you see in the last part of that, who is the image of God. So, what they’ll say is because we have passages like this where Christ is the one who’s depicted as the image of God. Well, when we think of ourselves as being made in the image of God, we should look at it through that lens. That Christ is, they’ll say, the true man, the real man. His humanity is the original thing, the real thing and our humanity is only derivative or secondary of the true humanity that was demonstrated by Christ.

Well contrary to that position the Bible on its face, portrays Adam as being first man and Christ as being the second or last man. I Corinthians 15:45 says “The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” Or two verses later, I Corinthians 15:47, “The first man is from earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven.”

So, in light of passages like these and also other passages where Christ is described in His incarnation as becoming like us, like humanity when He entered this earth like in Philippians 2:7, He “emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men.” A better way to think about Christ being the image of God as we’ll get into a bit later, is that He is God. As Hebrews 1:3 says, He “is the exact representation, the exact imprint of His nature, God’s nature.”

Another view that some hold to is that being made in the image of God has something to do with our being made to resemble Him physically, to bear His physical characteristics. But we know this can’t be the case since after all, God does not have physical parts. God, John 4:24, is Spirit. So, to be made in the image of would not mean that man bears physical resemblance to a God who is not Himself physical.

But even as I say that I should say that I don’t think we can say that being created in the image of God has nothing to do with our bodies. What I mean by that is, and we’re going to get to this in a subsequent message a few weeks from now, that man, the Bible reveals is a unitary being. Meaning we are made up in one person as both body and soul. We have physical parts and physical aspects, and we have non-physical parts and non-physical aspects. All of it is wrapped into being made in the image of God. So, while we can’t say that being made in the image of God is exclusively related to how we appear physically, the fact that we are embodied, that we have these bodies is still an aspect of what it means to be made in the image of God. Now taking this question of what it means to be made in the image of God and boiling it down to the very basics, I don’t think anyone has said it better than Wayne Grudem who says it this way. “The fact that man is in the image of God means that man is like God and represents God.” I think that is the best definition I’ve found in preparing for tonight. It is simple. It’s clear.

Now, this resemblance to God which stems from being made in the image of God, it shows itself in a few different ways. First, man has a personal resemblance to God. Man like God, is a personal being. There is a sense in which God’s personhood is replicated and shown in us through things like our self-consciousness, our self-determination, our self-awareness, our intelligence, our emotion, our volition, our rationality. Each of those represents to some degree what it means to have be made in His image. Consider the level of entrustment and responsibility and capacity which is baked into a few these Scriptures I’m going to read to you now and what they say about the ability of mankind to think and to reason and to process in a way that no other part of God’s creation can.

First - man was directed to cultivate the garden and to keep it. Genesis 2:15, “Then Yahweh God took the man and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” God didn’t give that command to cows. He gave that command to man, right? Second, man was given dominion over the earth and all the creatures of the earth. Genesis 1:28, “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 sky and over every living thing that creeps on the earth.’” That privilege wasn’t given to ducks or to dolphins. It was given to man. Third, God gave man the ability to name each of the animals of the earth. Genesis 2:19, “He brought each to the man to see what he would call it; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.” It wasn’t the other way around with animals naming people. Now what each of those highlights is that mankind, as personal beings have a personal resemblance to God.

Second - man has a spiritual resemblance to God or you might call it a moral likeness to God. That includes the ability to have fellowship with God. It includes the ability to have the capacity to worship God, and it includes the ability to even possess eternal life, or you’re one day going to be in the presence of God. That man has such a likeness to God, a spiritual likeness to God is clear from the Scriptures. Look at Ephesians 4:24 again. It says, “put on the new man, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Now if in the process of salvation or if in the moment of salvation or regeneration, the new man is in the likeness of God now and has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. The inference that one could draw from that is that man originally before the Fall had these capacities. He had the capacity to be righteous, to do righteousness and to be holy as God had called him to be holy. In fact, that’s exactly what we see in the pre-Fall world of Genesis 1 and 2. In Genesis 1:31, God looks out at all that He’s created and there is that word all there. He sees all that He has created, and it says “behold, it was very good.” Well, that “all” must have included by definition man. So, man was created originally in that state of moral perfection capable of communing with his Maker, capable and actually communing with his Maker. That original state of righteousness and holiness to borrow from Ephesians 4 here, that distinguishes man from every other creature on this planet. So, this spiritual resemblance to God is another aspect of what it means to be made in the image of God.

Third - man bears a moral resemblance to God. Meaning, he has actual abilities and capacities and powers to decide between right and wrong. Rolland McCune says, “this is man’s innate sense of oughtness, i.e., his intuitive sense of morality and a constraining impetus (an ought, not simply a desire) to do right.” This includes man in his original state, meaning before the Fall, being disposed toward obedience in that state of righteousness and in holiness. This includes this moral resemblance, man’s conscience which a theologian named Augustus Strong defines as “consciousness of his own moral relations together with a peculiar feeling about them.” This also includes the ongoing ability that man has today to carry around this intuitive sense of what’s right and wrong. Romans 2:14-15, “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law naturally do the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they demonstrate the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.” So, man has a moral resemblance to God.

Fourth - man bears a relational resemblance to God. God has affections. Did you know that? God has affections really for His own Person as He finds the object of His love, His perfect love, within Himself. That’s where His love has always been within His being, within His own Godness, within the three-Person Godhead what we know as the Trinity. Perfect love has always existed. That’s John 17. God has this relational nature, so He has given man as His image bearers a relational nature as well. A desire for fellowship with Him and with others.

Because God made man to be relational, man seeks companionship. In the beginning man found this companionship with God Himself. That’s built into that scene in Genesis 3:8 where we learn that man hears the sound of the Lord God as He’s walking in the Garden in the cool of the day. The implication there is He’s communing with his Maker. God made man for Himself, and man found supreme satisfaction in God, in communing with Him. God also provided man with human fellowship when He created woman. Genesis 2:18 where God says to Adam “It is not good for the man to be alone.” And then He fashioned the woman we heard earlier out of one of the man’s ribs. Then Adam recognized that Eve was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh and so he called her woman. And because of the intimate relationship between the two, Genesis 2:24 says “a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” So, man was relational and created to be relational in nature because God is relational in nature.

One other item we need to work through under this first heading of definitions is that while Genesis 1:27 says that “God created man in His own image,” in the verse before, in verse 26 it says, “Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness.” Now, that “Us” word is what’s known in Hebrew as a plural of majesty. It can be argued that this language that we see in the first clause here, supports the idea of there being multiple Persons within the Godhead or even more directly, supporting the idea of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

But what I would like us to zero in on this evening is how to think about those two words that we see here, image and likeness. In modern college sports we hear about NIL deals, name, image, likeness deals. But as we all know, in college sports today a college athlete can gain revenue whether it be from a hotel chain or a food chain or a sports drink company for using pictures of them in their advertisements. I bring that up example because we are accustomed to hearing language like that in our day.

But in the context here of Genesis 1, what do those words image and likeness mean? Well, the word in Hebrew for image is tselem and the word in Hebrew for likeness is demuth. They’re different Hebrew words.
Now, some have attempted in noticing that these are two different Hebrew words to draw a distinction, and a really sharp distinction between the two terms so that there’d really be as we speak of the image of God and man, two aspects of Him being made in the image of God, first being made in His image and then second being made in His likeness.

Early on in Christian thinking, there were those who did exactly what I just articulated. They thought there was one sense in which man was made in God’s image and there was one sense in which man was made according to God’s likeness, but they were different dimensions of the overall composition of man. Like the early church fathers Tertullian and Irenaeus. They believed that the word image, tselem, referred to certain bodily traits of man. His lips, his nose, his hair, etc. while the word likeness referred to the spiritual nature of man. In the medieval period, image was considered to be the fact that man has intellectual powers. Powers of reason and powers of thought while likeness was considered to be what man did spiritually. His original holiness and His righteousness.

In the Roman Catholic Church, they weighed in on this topic over the centuries. They also have distinguished historically between the image of God and the likeness of God based on the language of Genesis 1:26, and according to the Roman Catholic Church through the Fall, man lost the likeness of God, but he didn’t lose the image of God. All that man has to do according to the Roman Catholic dogma to regain his likeness to God and to reach that status of holiness and righteousness that he once had, is to do what? Partake of the sacraments and participate in Roman Catholic liturgy. Then you get up to the days of the Reformation and make a few payments. Throw in a few indulgences into the copper jar.

Well, the reality is, there really is no sharp distinction between these two terms image and likeness. There really is not a linguistic basis on which to sharply distinguish between these two Hebrew terms tselem and demuth. Tselem does in different settings refer to some sort of fashioned image, some sort of shaped, representative figure, like we see in this passage, II Kings 11:18 “And all the people of the land came to the house of Baal and tore it down; his altars and his images they broke in pieces thoroughly.” That’s the word Tselem. Amos 5:26, “You also carried along Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun, your images, the star of your gods which you made for yourselves.” Now demuth tends to refer more abstractly to the idea of similarity. But again, there are very good exegetical reasons to not see any major distinction between these two terms, image and likeness.

For instance, in Ezekiel 23:14 -15, we see the terms used interchangeably. This is the account of the harlotries of two sisters Oholah and Oholibah. And it says, “And she saw men portrayed on the wall, images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion, girded with belts on their loins, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like officers, in the likeness of the Babylonians in Chaldea, the land of their birth.” There are our terms there, you see them, image and likeness. Both terms refer to something that is similar but not identical to the thing it represents. This same idea comes to fruition when we look at the human realm and specifically the relationship between human fathers and human sons. In the record of Adam’s lineage in Genesis 5 we learn this and note we have both words, both terms used here. This says, Genesis 5:3 “When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son (that would be Seth) in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.” Once again, note that both terms are used, likeness and image and they are used side-by-side essentially interchangeably. Seth was derived from Adam and was both in his likeness meaning in his father’s likeness, in Adam’s likeness, and he was according to his image meaning according to Adam’s image.

Seth was not identical to Adam, but he was like him in many ways as a son typically is with respect to his father. The text here doesn’t specify the ways in which Seth was like Adam, but it doesn’t need to. It’s understood. How many moms of boys here have ever said or thought as you look at your son, you’re just like your father. Or you’re acting just like your father. That look was just like your father, usually in a scolding kind of way. That’s the idea here. Seth the child, was like Adam, his father. That’s what it means to be in the image of Adam. To be in the likeness of Adam. In a similar vein, the ways in which mankind is like God, is all part of his being made in the image and likeness of God. Going back to Grudem’s definition here, “The fact that man is in the image of God means that man is like God and represents God.”

A few more helpful quotes, helpful I think on this topic of definition. What it means to be made in the image of God. Anthony Hoekema says “One ought to see in him or her a certain reflection of God. Man then, was created in God’s image so that he or she might represent God, like an ambassador in a foreign country.” Owen Strachan says, “Mankind is the representative of God on earth; to see a man or a woman is to see the only living creature made in the image of God.” He also says “To see humanity is to see the likeness of God. The human race is a living testimony to its Creator.” Then Marc Cortez, who teaches at Wheaton says “we need to view the imago Dei as a declaration as a declaration that God intended to create human persons to be the physical means through which he would manifest his own divine presence in the world.”

That was our first point. DEFINITIONS. Now here’s our second point. DISTINCTIONS. And by distinctions I simply mean this that we do not want to confuse what Scripture teaches about us as men and women being made in the image of God, with the Biblical truth that the Lord Jesus Christ is Himself the image of God.

The Bible’s teaches this: That Jesus is, Colossians 1:15, “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” And then we’re told from Paul in II Corinthians 4:3 - 4, that “even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

What these passages are telling us is that in His very being, in the perfect union of His perfect humanity and His perfect deity, the very things we looked at this morning in the Luke passage, in the Storm-Stilling Savior in the theanthropic Person of Christ. Big word but we studied it two summers ago when we looked at Christology. That perfect blending and that perfect union of the divine human nature. What passages like this tell us is that Jesus was and is the exact representation of God. That’s Hebrews 1:3. He was and is the true reflection of the divine and that’s because He was and is God.

Here are a few quotes for you, to drive that home. Murray Harris says that “Christ is eternally the perfect reflection of God.” F.F. Bruce says, “To say that Christ is the image of God is to say that in him the nature and being of God have been perfectly revealed that in him the invisible has become visible.” And then here’s Owen Strachan again. He says “We are made in the image of God. Christ is the ‘true’ image, the obedient Son who came to embody the rule of God, and we are right to see ourselves as a living picture of the divine.”

Now how shall we think about how these two concepts relate or tie together, that is of Christ being the image of God and the reality that we have been made in the image of God. Well, we must think about it this way. We are sinners. We are sinners who are in need of salvation and in need of forgiveness. We need grace. Robert Lightner says, “Fallen man in the image of God is so marred and depraved because of sin that only God’s grace can restore him.” Well Christ came graciously offering salvation and forgiveness to all who would believe upon Him. Mark Noll notes that “At the heart of the Christian faith stands the confession that God, the originator of everything right and good himself became man.”

Well, when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, we become new creations as we are placed into Christ. The new creation language comes here from II Corinthians 5:17, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” And when the Lord saves us that’s when He really begins to do a work in us. That’s when He begins to sanctify us. He gives us His Holy Spirit. And what the Holy Spirit does is He takes image-bearers like us who are now these redeemed image-bearers and He conforms us progressively into Christ’s image. The same Christ who is the image of God the Father. Paul puts it this way in II Corinthians 3:18, “we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” So, in regeneration and sanctification God renews the Believer according to the image of Christ to whose image we will one day ultimately be conformed. Romans 8:29, “those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.”

All of that is describing what He is doing in us as Believers today on the inside. But we also know that when He comes again, the Lord is going to do something to us on the outside, as well. He’s going to deliver these mortal bodies from their inherent corruption. He’s going to make these bodies like His own resurrected body of glory. Romans 8:23, “We ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” Philippians 3:20-21. We normally just quote the first few words here and leave out the last but look at what it says. “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory.” And on that day to borrow from I Corinthians 15:50 when the “corruptible inherits the incorruptible” we will be like our Lord not only in our spiritual nature, but in our physical nature in these glorified bodies for which we yearn today. That’s what John was referring to when he said in I John 3:2, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not been manifested as yet what we will be. We know that when He is manifested, we will be like Him.” Amen to that. What a day that’s going to be and it’s all going to be because of His grace. So, some important distinctions there between Christ our Savior Himself being the image of God, and our having been made in God’s image.

We’ve looked at DEFINITIONS. What it means to be made in the image of God. We’ve looked at a few DISTINCTIONS. Namely that distinction between Christ being the image of God and our being made in the image of God. Now some RAMIFICATIONS. And by that, I mean certain ramifications of what it means for us to be made in the image of God.

For starters, the fact that we’ve been made in the image of God is evidence of the fact that when the Creator of the universe, God Himself, decided that He wanted to make something in His image, something more like Himself than anything else in creation, He made us. Realizing that truth and reflecting upon this truth and meditating upon this truth, that ought to do something in us. That ought to provide us with a profound sense of dignity and worth and value and significance. To think of all the beauty that exists on this planet. Sometimes we think of all the negative, all the bad things that are happening on this planet and the ugly things that are happening on this planet. There still are many beautiful things that happen and we can see on this planet. When we think of the wonders that are in the skies above us. When we think of the diversity of animal life and plant life and marine life that God has placed among us. To think that we are more like the Creator than any of these things, that ought to truly move us. It ought to do something in us. That should not be a yawning ho-hum kind of moment.


Here’s another ramification of being made in God’s image, one that we don’t want to lose sight of. That is the reality that the unsaved are made in God’s image. See what we can’t do is confuse the reality that we’ve all been made in God’s image with the reality that salvation from sin is found only through Jesus Christ. What that means is that the unsaved on this planet, the unsaved that might be in this room this evening, though they are John 8:44, “children of the devil,” though they are, though they walk, Ephesians 2:2, “according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air.” They are still made in the image of God. They are still in the likeness of God. Now, to be sure sin has marred their likeness to God. But fallen, sinful man even in his unsaved, unregenerate condition still has that status of having been made in God’s image. Robert Lightner notes that “Man lost something in the fall, but not the image of God.”

Think of the implications of that and how this ought to fuel how we interact with others. As we think that everyone around us, no matter what their political strike, no matter what they say their preferences are, no matter what sin they’re entrapped by, they are someone with intrinsic value. They have value because God says they have value. They are the very pinnacle of God’s creation. So, whether it’s the President of the United States, or a death-row inmate, or a child growing in the womb, the reality is every person has been made and created in God’s image and accordingly is to be treated with dignity and respect as a bearer of the image of God.

Now, we aren’t like the secular humanists of our day who treat and view man and his happiness as the ultimate measure of all things. But at the same time, we do recognize that from a Biblical perspective mankind is important and that’s because man has been made in the image of God. In fact it’s only when we start to deny our unique status as God’s image-bearers and start depreciating the value of human life and lose our sense of importance and appreciation for the value of life as God see it, that’s when we see certain practices that are becoming more prevalent in our day, abortion, euthanasia. What about just in media, the glorification of violence toward human bodies, that becomes more and more prevalent.

Okay we’ve looked at DEFINITIONS. What it means to be made in the image of God. We’ve looked at DISTINCTIONS, how it’s different that Christ is the image of God, and how we’re made in the image of God. We’ve just considered a few RAMIFICATIONS of what it means to be made in the image of God. Now, our fourth and final point for this evening is LIMITATIONS. I have a few of these. I’ll start with this one. I mentioned this just a moment ago, but I think it’s important to develop this further.

One important limitation to recognize as we consider the image of God, is that while the image of God in man, was marred by the fall, was marred by the entrance of sin into the world. The image of God wasn’t lost through the fall. Rolland McCune again notes that “The image of God was marred by the Fall, but it was not obliterated; it was defaced but not erased.” MacArthur and Mayhue say something similar. They say, “God’s image bearers were certainly marred with the curse, but the image and likeness of God, though distorted, was not obliterated.” That’s right and there are a few different Biblical proofs for this. The image of God still does exist even in the life of the unsaved or in the persons of the unsaved. For instance, the reality of the ongoing existence of the image of God in man is showcased by the fact that the image of God in man serves as the grounds for capital punishment. Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.”

Second, the ongoing existence of the image of God in man is highlighted by the fact that it continues to serve as a ground for distinguishing between God’s design for the two sexes. I Corinthians 11:7, “For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man.”

Third, the ongoing existence of the image of God in man is shown by the fact by the way we are called to treat others who have been made in the image of God. This is seen in James 3 where cursing others is prohibited because those who otherwise would curse are made in God’s image. James 3:8-9, that famous passage on the tongues says “But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God.” And then he says in James 3:10, “My brothers, these things ought not to be so.”

Here’s another limitation on what it means to be made in the image of God. To say that humans are made in God’s image does not mean in any way that men become divine, or that they in any sense absorb a divine nature since that would make us to be God. Now we know from II Peter 1 that we are “partakers of the divine nature,” but that’s really a statement about sanctification not deification. And here’s another limitation we need to be mindful of as we consider this topic of the image of God in man, and that’s this. Animals are not made in the image of God. In fact, one of the best ways to consider what it means for us as humans to be made in the image of God is to compare ourselves and to make the comparison between us as humans and animals.

Again, I’m going to quote Rolland McCune long-time professor of theology at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. So, if you’re upset in any way with what I’m about to say you can take it up with him, but he’s actually in glory so he won’t care. He says “The best way to understand the image of God is to contrast humans with animals. Several differences are obvious.” And then He goes on, and I haven’t found a better write up than this, to note the various ways that animals differ from humans, keyways that show that animals are not created in the image of God. I’ll lay these out the way that McCune did:

1. Self-consciousness. Animals may be conscious, but only man is self-conscious. An animal cannot objectify itself, making itself the object of its own thoughts. It cannot distinguish itself from its sensations or from other objects or beings. In other words that sheep or that lamb is not thinking about the meaning of reality. It’s just a sheep doing sheep things.
2. Concepts and language. Man can think about and communicate abstract ideas or concepts. Animals, though able to replicate sounds, cannot reflect upon or communicate abstractions.
3. Judgment and reason. Animals unlike men, cannot judicially compare (this is like that), rationally associate (this follows from that) or generalize.
4. Self-determination. Animals do not consciously formulate purpose or self-consciously move toward a pre-planned goal, neither are they capable of self-improvement. Your dog isn’t doing retirement planning.
5. Conscience. Animals have no innate sense of right or wrong, no ethics or controlling moral standards.

What do these tell us? Well unlike man animals are not created in the image of God. There was a reason Peter when he was describing the false teachers of his day, compared them to, he says here, II Peter 2:12, unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed. He didn’t compare the false teachers to other people, to other image bearers, but to animals and in doing so highlighted that distinction between mankind and animals. We know that man from observations like these is qualitatively different than the animal realm. I would argue that the gulf between the highest form of animal and the lowest form of humanity, so the gulf between the murderer, kidnapper, rapist, and the cutest little goldendoodle is still infinite in terms of how God views those two aspects of His creation. As bearers of His image, we have capacities that no animal has ever had or is ever capable of having. And contrary to evolutionary doctrine or dogma, we aren’t an outgrowth of our animal ancestors rather, we are utterly distinguishable from the animal kingdom.
The way that God has made us to bear His image means we have a dignity, and a value that animals simply don’t have. PETA might go crazy over that statement and that’s okay. Too bad. That’s what the Bible teaches.

Tonight we have covered a very important topic, the image of God and man. We started with a story about a couple who, because they had a devalued, humanistic understanding of the worth of human life, they ended a pregnancy, because the child that the wife was carrying had Trisomy 21, Down Syndrome.

I’m going to close our time tonight by sharing another story. This one is about a woman in the U.K. whose name is Emma (Mellor). And her story was told in a BBC just a few years ago. Here’s how the story goes.

“Emma Mellor felt under pressure to abort her daughter Jaimie throughout her pregnancy. Age 24 at the time, she already had a young son with her husband Steve.” Now here’s Emma speaking. She says, “In all honesty we were offered 15 terminations, even though we made it really clear that it wasn't an option for us, but they really seemed to push and really seemed to want us to terminate, she says.” The article continues. “At her 20-week scan, Emma was told her daughter had some fluid on her brain. Doctors said she was likely to be disabled.” Emma says, “From that moment on, they recommended we should terminate and told us to think about the effect on our son and his quality of life.”

Back to the author. “Their son Logan was on the waiting list for surgery at the time, having been born with a hole in his heart. Emma says they could not imagine ending their daughter's life with an injection in the heart to stop it beating, the recommended termination method after 22 weeks, while they were waiting to fix their son's heart. Emma now says it inspired us to make the right choice. We decided to carry on and hope for the best. The article continues. It says, “At 32 weeks, a test showed she had Down's syndrome and doctors reminded Emma several times that she could be legally aborted until birth.” Emma now says “At 38 weeks, the doctors made it really, really, really clear that if I changed my mind on the morning of the induction to let them know, because it wasn't too late. I was told that until my baby had started travelling down the birth canal, I could still terminate.”

Back to the article: “When Jaimie was born, Emma was told that she had Down's syndrome but was otherwise healthy. Five years on, Jaimie is the best of friends with her brother and attends a mainstream school where she is ahead of some of her peers for reading.” Now here’s Emma again, describing her daughter. “She loves dancing and trampolining. She has a few difficulties, but she is just like any other child her age. She lights up the room and people just gravitate towards her. When we got the diagnosis, I did worry about her future. She will undoubtedly face some challenges as she gets older, but she is continuously proving that she shouldn't be underestimated.”

And then the mother, Emma, says this. “Jaimie can do anything that she sets her mind to.” That’s Jamie. A beautiful little girl, made in the image of God just like you, just like me, just like all of humanity.

I’ll close tonight with these words, from Owen Strachan. He says “Mankind is made in the image of God. The human race may recognize, celebrate, hate, or ignore this truth. It matters not. The human race is the race made to display the glory of God in all the earth in a special way.” Amen. What a privilege, and a stewardship we’ve been given. Let’s pray.