Image Bearers of God: Relationship | Genesis 1:26-31
Introduction
We are returning to Genesis this week after two sermons on Jonah and one on 2 John. I pray you don’t find this to be too much jumping around, but rather enjoy some variety as well as find yourself learning more of Scripture and seeing a broader view of our God than we would if we just stayed in Genesis or another book straight through. I thank God for multiple voices to encourage us, so thank you, Demer and Jack, for those sermons!
We have already seen some amazing truths in Genesis over the last several sermons:
Genesis 1:1
What if, in all of this, you got more of God?
Genesis 1:1–25
Slow Down and See God
God Creates Out of Nothing
God Reveals Himself to Us
God is Present with Us
God is for Our Good
Starting in Genesis one, we noted that Scripture starts with the phrase: “In the beginning, God,” and we asked ourselves, “What if in all of this [our life, looking at Scripture, every way we grow and change], what if in all of this we got more of God?” What if that truly was the main goal of life here, now, in this in-between moment between God’s first creation and God’s recreation of all things? What if our life is to give us a chance to know and love God more? Would that be worth it? And I hope and pray most of us would say, yes! If I can know God more and see love him more, everything is worth it!
That reality begs us then to slow down and truly see God. To see him in all of creation, but even more importantly, to see him as he presents himself to us through the special revelation of Scripture. And we have seen some amazingly beautiful things about God as we look at his work of creation from the beginning to the fifth day. We see that God is the God who needs nothing to create—he creates out of nothing! This means we can trust him, even today, to help us and care for us, unbound by the natural ways we see around us. God made all that we see, including the rules, and he is free to bend and break them if it helps us know him more.
Importantly, we see that God has revealed himself to us and that he is present with us. God’s spirit was over the deeps and God himself is with you and I today as his Spirit inhabits us through faith in Jesus. We see in Genesis that God is bringing us into his thoughts and desires, sharing with us how he made everything, and, in the rest of Scripture, his plan for all things. Our God is not a distant God who acts in secret or who doesn’t want us to see him—he shares everything with us through Scripture that we might know him!
And God is good and for our good. Everything he creates, he says, is good. If we have a very close, present, and active God, it is very helpful to know he is good and for our good!
There is so much here that we can learn and see right from the very beginning of Scripture. And yet, as we have noted, we often know this story so well that we don’t think much about it! It is so familiar that we often forget to ponder the beauty of what we see here! Especially as we get to the sixth day —God’s creation of man and woman —we tend to skip over it. We have learned that in chapter two, we get a much more in-depth view of God’s creation of man and woman, so we tend to think of this section as the summary, with the important stuff coming in chapter two. But that isn’t true at all. What God wants us to see and note here in chapter one about humanity is distinct from his main points in chapter two. Again, we need to slow down and take note here.
When my kids were younger, I drove a 1966 International Travelall. It was a wonderful vehicle for many reasons. The horn beeped when you turned the steering wheel too far to the right or left. First gear moved slower than a walking pace. But it was also a vehicle entirely of windows, like a moving bubble of visibility… and it had no seat belts. So, around Christmas time, we would put the kids in their footie pajamas, bring warm blankets and plates full of cookies and sweets, and drive around and look at Christmas lights. It was the ideal setup for slowing down, seeing, and enjoying the seasons. Kids sat there and “oohed” and “ahhed” with their noses pressed to the windows, the envy of kids in newer vehicles. I want to encourage us to do that again here in Genesis today. Sit back, enjoy, and see what God has for us in this first account of his creation of humanity.
We have seen everything God has made in days one through five, and now we notice something different is happening as we get to day six. In fact, the language of Genesis changes here. Up to day six, there has been a rhythm to every single day. They all started with “And God said, ‘Let there be…’, ‘Let the earth…’ ‘Let the waters…’. God wants to do something, he speaks it, it happens, he sees it is good, and the day ends. That is not what happens here on day six. From the very beginning, the flow is meant to jar us and make us slow down and notice that on this day, day six, something different is happening:
“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.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
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.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
(Genesis 1:26–31 ESV)
The difference starts with the phrase “Let us make man…” God brings us not just into his desire and command, but into a discussion. Most scholars think this is our first glimpse of the Trinity in Scripture —a discussion among the godhead about their goals. And what they want to do is something unique. While all the rest of creation is important and serves a great purpose in providing a place for God’s work, a place where God himself is present and active, God also wants to fill this place. He wants to fill it with image bearers. You and I are a very conscious and purposeful creation that God wanted to be like himself as part of his plan to fill this earth with his glory.
Compared to every other day, there is a lot happening here in this description of the sixth day. There are some things that are the same, and we will look at that, but there is a lot that is different and the whole cadence, flow, and even the words here note a change that we should be noticing as well. We are going to stay in this section, Genesis 1:26–31 for the next three weeks, and we are going to see several amazing truths:
Image Bearers: Relationship with God
Image Bearers: Status and Purpose
The God Who Covenants
First, we are going to see that you and I are image bearers of God, which, first and foremost, means we are meant to have a relationship with God. But second, being image bearers of God means we have a status and a purpose—God has given us a job to do! But this last one —that we have a God who covenants —is one of the amazing things we see in this section of Genesis, which continues as we go into Genesis two. God makes a covenant with his people from the very beginning of creation, and he then chooses to uphold that covenant as our good and perfect king, even when we fail!
Image Bearers
Let’s start today with this first idea that we are meant to be in relationship with God and go back and read just the first couple of verses in this section:
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.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Here, the phrase “man” is being used generically. Later, the word for man, adam, will be given to the first man as his name. But in Genesis 1:26–31 it is just the generic word for all humans. We can tell that is true because right after this first use of the word “man,” we see that God says he will “and let them have dominion.” We can also tell this because later, when God talks about making them male and female, God uses completely different words to distinguish gender there.
So might be helpful to read this section as:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind 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.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created mankind (referring back to all people);
male and female he created them.
That said, the distinctions of gender as man and woman are very important in Scripture. When we get to Genesis chapter two, we are going to see some of the distinctions that God makes within humanity, distinctions that are linked to the images he is going to use throughout the story of our world as God cares for us. And one of these distinctions is gender. But where God starts in Genesis chapter one is with our grand UNITY! Both males and females carry the very image of God in us!
We also see two things about this identity God has given us: every human has a specific relationship with God, AND a specific purpose with God. You can see that even in the way this section is written. Let’s split this first piece up a little more:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, (meaning):
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.”
So God created mankind in his own image, (meaning):
in the image of God he created mankind:
male and female he created them.
In both statements, we see a two-fold purpose that God decided he has for us. He wanted to make us in his image, meaning both 1) after his likeness, and 2) giving us a purpose multiple and to have dominion. And then we are told God DOES that. He makes us in his image and says 1) in the image of God he created us (likeness), and then says 2) male and female he created us, which in this context being male and female relates to our purpose to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion.
Image Bearers: Relationship with God
Today, we want to focus on the first purpose of being image bearers, the idea that we are made in God’s image and his likeness. But that means we have to start with this idea of being made in the image of God. What does even that mean?
Historically, there is a phrase for this:
Imago Dei
This is a Latin phrase that simply means the image of God. But you know it is important because we have a Latin phrase for it! But it is an odd thing to say, since we say again and again that God is Spirit, not flesh. Yes, the Son takes on flesh in the incarnation, but he was not always that way. So, image cannot mean what we usually think, meaning to be physically like something. This has tripped up many Christians over the years, trying to decide what being made in the Image of God means. But most scholars have landed on a very simple idea to describe the image of God:
To be made in the image of God means that we reflect what is true about God in a limited human form.
This is how Scripture talks about even Jesus when he came to earth incarnate, except he did it perfectly!
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
(Colossians 1:15–20 ESV)
What Jesus did perfectly, we were all meant to do from the beginning of creation in perfection:
We were meant to rightly show the invisible God visibly.
As mere humans we can’t perfectly show it like Jesus, the God-man does, but we were meant to truly reflect God’s true nature. What was broken in sin we are called to come back to in Jesus Christ. Paul says it this way in Ephesians 4:24:
“But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
(Ephesians 4:20–24 ESV)
Or in Colossians chapter 3:
“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
(Colossians 3:9–10 ESV)
This is exactly what Christ bought for you and I—the ability to come back into our rightful role as image bearers through the forgiveness of our sins and God’s very spirit inhabiting us and changing us. It means being able to walk in the righteousness, knowledge, and goodness of God as we were originally created to.
And in the beginning, we see that being an image bearer is given to all humanity. We see in Genesis 1:1–31 that Eden was meant to be a picture of the very temple and sanctuary of God: the place his presence dwelled with is people. And in this temple, much like the temples of the unbelievers who came after this, God put little images of himself. Holy little idols. But these were no mute and dead idols. God made his people that we might give all people an image of who our God is through one another. That we might embody and demonstrate who God is through our lives. Through his very representatives and images walking around here on earth, God would be seen in many ways.
This is not an idea that only the Bible talks about. Rulers were often equated with a deity in history. In Egypt, where the Israelites who were reading Genesis for the first time had just come from, Pharaoh was considered the living embodiment of the God Ra. In Roman times, Jesus’s audience would have clearly known that Caesar claimed to be a lord and a god.
But not only is God greater than the other rulers of his day in that he has living idols in a temple as grand as the whole world, but God democratizes the image-bearing to all people. God doesn’t just give specific people the right to demonstrate the truth of who he is. It’s not just people at the top of the food chain who are image bearers. It’s not just one gender who images God. It’s all people who carry and image God in our lives. For a people coming out of Egypt as slaves, reading this account written by Moses as the people wandered in the desert, this would have been amazing news. And it is still amazing news to you and I today!
You are an image bearer of God! The truth of who God is and his likeness is meant to be seen in you and through you. Yes, that has been damaged by sin and may be at times very unrecognizable in our lives. But just like a broken creation can still point people to the existence of God as we read in Romans one and two, so too every human bears the unmistakable imprint of the very image of God on us, and that defines who we all are meant to be in relationship to God. You, me, and every person we know was created to have a relationship with God in two very specific ways:
Image Bearers: Relationship with God
Type of Relationship: Sons & Daughters
Value of Relationship: Inherent Worth
Image Bearers: Status and Purpose
The God Who Covenants
We are image bearers who have a relationship with God, and that means we have a very specific type of relationship: we are sons and daughters. And that means we have a very specific value of relationship: we all have an inherent worth.
Relationship with God: Sons & Daughters
While we said that image bearer isn’t about a physical resemblance, it is still most closely tied to the idea of being a son of daughter. We will see that when we get to Genesis 5:1:
“This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.”
(Genesis 5:1–3 ESV)
Just like Adam and his children, just like us and our children, to be in a relationship with God as his image bearers means we don’t have just any relationship with God. We are his sons and daughters! After giving us a high view of what happened in creation in Genesis chapter one, in chapter two, God zooms in particularly on day six and his creation of man and woman. And there we see so many beautiful things about the sonship and daughterhood humanity had with God from the beginning. God intimately made us by breathing life into people (Genesis 2:7), God talked to people directly, face-to-face (Genesis 2:16), God walked and was directly present with people (Genesis 2, Genesis 3:8). This is what we lost in the fall—our sonship and daughterhood with God. Being directly in God’s presence, talking directly to him, walking with him.
For many of you who became Christians when you were young, you may not realize what you wouldn’t have had without God in your life. So often in the New Testament one of the beautiful promises is that we will now, in Jesus, be called sons and daughters again:
[A]nd I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.
(2 Corinthians 6:18 ESV)
For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.
(Galatians 3:26 ESV)
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
(John 1:12–13 ESV)
We see this all over the New Testament. And this is not something new, but rather something we regain through the work of Jesus, the perfect Adam. In Jesus, God views us as sons and daughters who never rebelled, rather as sons and daughters who have lived perfectly before him, so we can once again have this rightful image-bearer relationship of son and daughter with God.
Application
Friends, do you really believe that you are a son or daughter of God? Many of us struggle to believe this because of the broken relationships a lot of us have with our real fathers and mothers. But that hole exists because of who God made us to be—he made us to be HIS sons and daughters. God wants you to come to him, even today, for the first time or the thousandth time, and know his love for you as your Father. That is so much of what you and I long for in our lives and what we are trying to fill in many sinful ways.
Do you also believe that this is what a lot of our friends, neighbors, and those we don’t even know yet are longing for? That all people have a hole now that they do not walk rightly as sons and daughters of God because of their sin? Currently, people who do not walk in faith with Jesus walk in fear because they don’t know God as a loving father, but rather as a judge. This is how Paul says it in Romans 8:15:
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
(Romans 8:15–17 ESV)
Outside of Christ is fear and slavery to try to solve our own salvation and find that we are failing and will be judged. In Christ, we are children again, heirs with Christ. We find in Christ Jesus that he has solved it all for us. If you and I valued our sonship and daughterhood more, I think that would change how we would talk with unbelievers. We would see them potential siblings who have stopped talking with their good father and want to see them come back to right relationship with him again. We would invite them, not shame them, back to the love their God has for them.
Relationship With God: Inherent Value
Even more than just sons and daughters, all those made as image bearers of God have an inherent value because of WHOSE image we carry with us. We are valuable because of whose likeness we all have the potential to show even though it is marred by sin. In talking about our tendency to sin against each other with our tongue, James says this:
But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
(James 3:8–9 ESV)
The problem with speaking wrongly to anyone—not just Christians—is that we “curse people who are made in the likeness (image) of God.” Does not Jesus say about all people:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.
(Matthew 10:29–31 ESV)
And as the Psalmist says:
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
(Psalm 139:13–16 ESV)
Friends, I dare say that this is something we forget often. Perhaps that is one of the reasons God gives us a first account of creation, his love of humanity, and his very nature and image imprinted on us at the very beginning. That we might come back, repeatedly, as we start reading Scripture regularly in Genesis, to God’s great image impressed upon all of humanity.
Every time we demean someone, every time we make fun of someone, every time we act as though someone is less than us for any reason: their political views, their sinful choices (sinful choices that are not that unlike our sinful choices), their struggle to walk with God—every time we act these ways we act as though the very image of God is not on each and every person that God has made. Yes, the image of God is marred by our choices and our sins, but we still carry with us the very likeness of God in many ways, even as unbelievers. That means each person has value. We are all less “other” than we are the “same” to one another. When we see other image bearers of God, our first reaction should not be to notice and lament how different we are, but we should exclaim like Adam when he first saw Eve:
This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
(Genesis 2:23 ESV)
Adam was amazed at their sameness, not their difference. And you and I should see that same wonder in each person we come in contact with. Image bearers of God. Sons and daughters, many lost and not walking with their father today. Beautiful people who have the capacity and ability to image God as they walk rightly with him again!
CS Lewis said talks about this reality so well:
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal [meaning passing away], and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
How different I think our conversations would be with one another—believers and unbelievers—if we kept in mind the image-bearing qualities we each have within us. What if we saw first, when we looked at one another, a fellow son or daughter, another human imprinted with the very nature and capacities to image God as we have?
Conclusion/Response
For some of you, this may seem so simple that you may wonder why we had a whole sermon on it. But I guarantee you we don’t live out the depths of this reality. I have been asked before by people what is our goal for our church? I think they often want to hear an elaborate plan or method for us to serve God. I once had a barista in a coffee drive-thu on Sunday morning ask me, “What is unique about your church?” I had to think for a moment, and I answered her, “I hope not much. We just want to Love God and Love Others well.”
Friends, that simple idea:
Love God
Love Others
Make Disciples of Jesus
It will take us a lifetime to even begin to do, and will call all of us into the depths of the riches of God and a trust in his miraculous work that will astound us if we truly pursue it. We don’t need anything more radical than this. We simply need to spend time trying, by God’s grace, to do it.
You are an image bearer of God! That means you have an amazing relationship with God that is possible again through faith in Jesus Christ! You and I are called to be sons and daughters of God, and when we see other image bearers walking around this great Earth, we are to remember that they, too, are simply lost sons and daughters. Those who desperately need to come back to their loving Father through Jesus Christ. Equally important, we all have worth and value BECAUSE we are image bearers. This side of judgment, no matter how much we sin against our God, we still carry within us the capacity through his grace and by his Holy Spirit to image him to one another. That makes us all valuable, worth sharing with, encouraging, and helping to come to know our God and all that he has offered us again in Jesus Christ!
Friends, this idea of you and I and all of humanity being the image bearers of God is meant to be the one of the stunning Christmas light displays that we see pop off the pages throughout all of Scripture. We should be sitting there as we read our Bibles, hot chocolate and treats in hand, and be “oohing” and “aahing” about the fact that God made us image bearers. From the first pages—who would have expected that! This image continues to create a people for himself out of Israel, and they are meant to be a light to the nations. We see it in the priests, the kings, we see it in God’s prophets, and we see it in his remnant. We see it in the New Testament as God’s image bearers go mobile with their mission, with the very Spirit of God now on us and in us that we might show him rightly again.
Again and again, our role as image bearers comes into focus. We have a purpose and we have a God who by his own power has kept a covenant with us that we might be his sons and daughters again in righteousness.
As you think about your response today, what stands out most to you about this first account of God’s creation of humanity this morning?
Image Bearers: Relationship with God
Type of Relationship: Sons & Daughters
Do you know you Father as a son/daughter?
Do you love others as siblings in the God they image?
Value of Relationship: Inherent Worth
Do you see the value in all God’s image bearers?
This morning, we want to rightly lay the foundation of image bearing as one of God’s grand decisions—to adorn you and I with his very likeness in many ways and to bring us back to that likeness rightly in Jesus Christ. As his image bearers, do you know God as your loving father? What might be hindering you from knowing him that way? Do you see all those around you as siblings in the God they image? Even more importantly, do you see and value all of God’s image bearers, despite our differences? Despite even the brokenness of sin in our lives? Do we truly want to see every image bearer rightly come back to God and live in his ways again through Jesus Christ.
Benediction
“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
(Romans 15:5–6 ESV)
