What Does It Mean That We Are "Image Bearers"?
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People are unique. We all have things that make us who we are as individuals. Yet, there is something that unites all of humanity: we are all “image bearers” who are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). All throughout history and the world, in different times and places, our humanity connects us to our Creator. In James 3:9 it says that human beings have been made in God’s likeness. Being human sets us apart from the rest of creation, but it draws us together as image bearers who were originally designed to reflect their Maker.
Reflecting God’s Image from the Beginning
It was always God’s intention to create us to bear His image. From the beginning, God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26). The Father, Son and Spirit were in fellowship together from before the world began and have always been. This is why it says “us” and “our.” We worship one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is spirit (John 4:24), but when Jesus came into our world as a baby, He became flesh and blood; He was God incarnate – God with us (Matthew 1:23).
When God created man, He breathed life into him: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). We are distinct from the natural creation around us that we were mandated to steward and take care of. We were created to be in fellowship with God, to dwell with and walk with Him.
God also created a man and a woman who are both made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). The woman was to be a helper suitable for the man (Genesis 1:18) and she was created by being taken out of man (Genesis 1:23). Both man and woman were created by God, for God, and with a purpose that God had planned out from the very beginning.
Complementing the Created Order
It is said that God is a God of order and not chaos. In 1 Corinthians 14:33 it says, “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace” and we see this consistency in the order of creation. He placed the earth in the perfect conditions for life and habitation. The pattern of day and night, the rhythms of the seasons and the sequence of how He created everything was brought into perfect order. Within the order of creation, it was beautifully and intricately designed.
When God created humanity, He had an order and a purpose within that. He gave the instruction for the man and woman to increase in number, fill and subdue the earth, and rule over the creatures on land, in the sea and sky (Genesis 1:28). Through the first man, Adam, came the fall of all mankind into sin and death. Yet, this was still under the divine purpose of God, with a clear, ordered plan to rescue the image bearers He made. Romans 5:17-18 says,
“For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.”
Jesus took on flesh and lived the life that Adam did not. God became fully human; living and breathing like those made in His image from the beginning. The mind can barely fathom the wonder and the mystery of God coming down into the world He had made, as flesh and blood, “who being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used for his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6-7). The one who is the “exact imprint” of God’s nature and “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3) was made to be like us in order to reconcile us to Himself.
Disfigured, Not Destroyed
Since sin and death entered the world through Adam, the image of God in us has been disfigured. It has been marred because of the ugliness and depravity that sin works in the lives of us and those around us. Yet, this is not the end of the story. Adam and Eve were not destroyed on the spot for their decision to disobey and destroy the relationship with their loving Creator. There were serious, life-altering, eternity-shifting consequences for their choice which has been passed through generation to generation.
However, what Satan did to tempt the first image bearers in the Garden of Eden and unravel the order and peace, Jesus regenerated and restored. He lived the perfect life and died the death that we all should have died. He took the wrath of God upon Himself; all the judgment and condemnation our sins deserved was imputed from us to Him. His body was crushed for our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5). We live because of Jesus.
Adam and Eve walked out of the presence of God in Eden, but not before God had clothed them with animal skins. God is the one to make the sacrifice, taking the animal’s life, covering their shame. It is all a part of His plan, pointing to another time when He would provide the ultimate sacrifice – His body and blood poured out on the cross to cover our shame and give us eternal life in His presence.
Created to Reflect the Image of God
We are made in the image of God, but because of sin, that image has been distorted. All of us are still image bearers and we need to live with that in mind as we interact with others and love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31). Those around us bear the image of God and Jesus died for their sin as well as ours.
Seeing people as image bearers should change how we view human dignity and the sanctity of life. In Robert Letham’s book Systematic Theology, he writes of a “culture of death in the West” with euthanasia, abortion and assisted dying all being symptoms of rebellion against the living God (p. 347). Do we see people as just “clusters of molecules” or is life more than that? There are ethical, moral and spiritual implications to our understanding of all that it means to be an image bearer of the living God.
We are to reflect His image to a world needing to be reconciled with their Creator and their Savior. Those who trust in Christ’s finished work on the cross have become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17); they have been “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). He has “reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).
Those who look to Jesus for salvation and behold His glory “are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is transformational to us and others as we begin to look more and more like our Savior. It is all the Spirit’s work in us, transforming us to be like Jesus, reflecting His image to a broken world. It was all part of His plan of redemption, as it says in Romans 8:29: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
Restoration of the Image Bearer
Sin has affected God’s original design of humans being made in His image. Preacher, theologian and writer, Dr. Sinclair B. Ferguson spoke at ‘Made in the Image of God’ (Ligonier Ministries online event, 2020) of how the image of God has disintegrated within society. He said we no longer know who we are and when we remove God, we take away our identity – the image of God. But one day we will bear the image of the man from heaven, Jesus, and all will be restored.
There is hope for the people of God in a broken, fragmented and distorted world where it seems chaos and disorder dominate. Pastor and theologian John Piper describes well how the image of God in us has been defaced but not destroyed. It is worth reading his description of being like a mirror which gives a clear illustration of how we reflect God as image bearers has become distorted since the fall, where “Satan persuaded [us] that [our] image is more beautiful than God’s image.” Yet, Jesus has made salvation possible and because of Him we can see God’s glory once again and begin to reflect the beauty of the Lord Jesus to those around us.
“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:11).
Photo credit: Unsplash/Laurenz Kleinheider
