The Image of God is Weirder Than I Thought

So, here's a question that I've been wrestling with. What does it actually mean that we are made in the image of God?

Like, if you've grown up in church, you've likely heard this phrase your entire life. Genesis 1:27 says that, "So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female he created them." And it's one of the most famous verses in the Bible. And if you're like me, you've probably had some vague idea that this means that we're kind of like God in some way. Maybe it's that we can reason or that we have souls or that we can even make moral choices, right?

But the more I've dug into this, I'm starting to think that we might have been looking at this completely wrong or at least missing something really significant that changes the whole picture. When you start looking at the Hebrew text, especially when you look at how the ancient world actually understood divine images, there is this whole layer of meaning that most of us have never even considered. And honestly, once you see it, it's hard to unsee. It's important that when you read the Bible to try to understand it as someone living back when it was written and not in our western eyes. And that brings up the question, what does it truly mean to be made in the image of God? Because it might not mean what you think. And I promise you, if you hear me out to the end, you will have such a deeper and richer understanding of one of the most obscure details in the Bible.

So that's what I want to explore today. We're going to look at what the image of God might actually mean when you understand the ancient context. And we're going to see why some scholars think that the word imager should actually be understood more as a verb rather than a noun. And also, there's this really fascinating one that connects it to one of the ten commandments that I've never heard before. And and we'll look at what this might mean for the future because there's this whole thing in Revelation about reigning forever that I think connects back to all of this. So, without further ado, let's get into it.

Also, one last thing, please consider hitting the subscribe button if you enjoy these kinds of topics of exploring these strange parts of the Bible as there's much more to come. And as always, thank you for watching.

So, to understand what Genesis might be getting at when it talks about humanity being made in God's image, we first need to talk about something that seems completely unrelated for a second. Idols. And I know that sounds weird, but stay with me for a second. So in the ancient near east, you know, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Babylon, all of the surrounding cultures that were surrounding Israel, there was this very interesting and very specific understanding of what divine images were and how they functioned. And the crazy part about this is that when these cultures would craft an idol or a statue of a god, they weren't actually as stupid as what we think they are. They weren't stupid enough to think that the statue itself was the god. like this clay or wooden statue. The ancient Neareastern theologians actually had a pretty sophisticated system worked out. The statue was actually understood to be a physical representation of the deity. So basically a localized presence of the god that was in their temple and they had these elaborate rituals to activate the statue essentially inviting the divine presence or god to inhabit it. And there's this famous Mesopotamian example of this. It was the It was a ritual called the opening of the mouth ceremony where they would symbolically open the statue's mouth so it could essentially eat um offerings and speak. They even had priests symbolically cut off the hands of the craftsman who made it, declaring that the god had made itself, completely denying any human involvement in its creation at all.

And here's what I think is really important to understand about about this whole thing. The image wasn't meant to look exactly like the god. That wasn't the point. The image's purpose was functional. It represented the god's authority and presence in that place. So when people came to the temple and then they saw the image, they were encountering the god's representative presence there. So the image did the god's work in that location.

Now this concept actually extended to kings as well because in the ancient world, kings understood themselves kind of the same way. So the king was seen as the image of God on earth or the image of the gods depending on whatever the the culture was. Egyptian pharaohs, Mesopotamian rulers, they were all viewed as living images of the gods or representing divine authority to the people. But kings also did something else that's really interesting. They would actually set up statues of themselves in distant parts of their kingdoms or places that they couldn't physically be. And these statues represented the king's authority there. For example, if you saw the king's image in your city, you understood that you were under the king's rule, even if the king himself was hundreds of miles away in the capital.

So, when we come to Genesis 1, the original audience would have heard, "Let us make man in our image," and then immediately understood the concept because everyone knew what images were and how they functioned. But here's where Genesis does something that would have been absolutely shocking to the original audience. So, in every other ancient Neareastern culture, only the king was the image of God. It was only for royalty, only the pharaoh, only the emperor. But Genesis says that God made humanity, all of humanity in his image, not just the kings, not just the priests, every single human being. And ultimately, that's a radical idea because it's basically democratizing a concept that was normally reserved for the ruling class. So, Genesis seems to be saying that every human, man, woman, rich or poor, powerful or weak, is a royal representative of the divine king.

Now, with that context in mind, let's look at what Genesis might actually be doing here because I think there's something really interesting going on. If you look at the actual Hebrew text of Genesis 1 26-27, there's this grammatical thing that matters. Now, the traditional translation says, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness." And for most of church history, we've read that preposition in as meaning we possess something, like we have God's image embedded in us somehow. Maybe it's because of our rationality. Maybe it's our ability to love. Maybe it's even our ability to be creative. Um, some internal quality that makes us like God.

But here's what's interesting about this. There's this Hebrew grammatical feature called the Beth Essiante. I'm probably butchering that name, but it's sometimes called the Beth or Beth of predication. And I know grammar sounds boring, but stick with me because this actually matters. When this preposition is used this way, it doesn't mean possessing something. It actually means functioning as something. It's a term about status or your role and not necessarily possession. So what if and this is what um some biblical scholars are arguing for instance Michael Heiser. What if it's meant to be read as let us make man as our image not in possession of an image but being the image itself. We don't have the image we are the image.

Now you might be thinking okay that's a subtle difference but why does that even matter? Um, but this is where I think it actually becomes something huge because if the image is some quality that we possess or some attribute or ability, then we immediately run into these really uncomfortable problems. Which quality is it? Is it rationality? Well, what about those people who lose cognitive function due to dementia or brain injury? Did they lose the image of God? Um, is it the ability to make moral choices? What about infants who haven't developed that capacity yet? Are they not also image bears? You kind of see what I mean here. Anytime you try to pin it to a specific trait or capability, you end up in this weird sort of place where it seems like some humans would have it more of the image than others or where humans could lose the image. And that honestly doesn't feel like what the Bible is saying about human dignity and our value.

But if imaging is something you do just by being human, if it's a verb or a function, uh a status thing rather than a capability thing, then suddenly every human at every stage of development is equally an imager of God. You know, a fetus would be an imager, a infant is an imager, a person with severe disabilities is an imager. And it's not about what you can do. It's literally quite literally who you are.

So what does it mean to image God? Well, look at what comes immediately after in Genesis 1:28. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion. This is what biblical scholars call a dominion mandate. God seems to be giving humanity a job and that's to fill the earth with more imagers and wisely steward God's creation on God's behalf. Here's how I'm starting to think about it. God is this king of the universe, right? But in Genesis 1, he's creating the cosmos. And also a lot of scholars tend to see that this is God creating a cosmic temple. This whole universe as his temple. And what does a temple have? A divine image as we've seen in the ancient context. But instead of making a statue, God does something way more interesting. He makes living, breathing, intelligent images. Humanity. So we're God's representatives on earth. Where God is not visibly present. We represent him. We carry out his will. we extend his wise rule over creation. To be human is to image God. In other words, it's what we are by definition.

And this is where there's this connection that I had never made before. And honestly, when I first heard it, it kind of changed how I read a really familiar passage because if we bear God's image, if we represent him on earth, then we also bear his name. And that takes us to one of the ten commandments that I think that we maybe have been misunderstanding. So, this is a connection I had never made before, but once I heard it, it kind of just absolutely blew my mind. So, you know, the third commandment, right? You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. I was always under the impression that this was about cursing, like don't say God or Jesus Christ as a swear word. Maybe it's not about using his name flippantly. And look, I'm not saying those are good things, obviously. Um, but I don't think that is what the commandment is primarily getting at. The Hebrew word that gets translated take in most English Bibles is nasa or nasa and it usually means to lift up or to carry or to bear. Like one example is in the Old Testament it's translated as bear 61 times, lift 64 times, and take 49 times. So a more literal reading would be you shall not bear the name of the Lord your God in vain.

And here's where it clicks with everything that we've been talking about so far. If we're God's images, imagers, his representatives on earth, then we bear his name. We represent him. In the ancient world, bearing someone's name meant you function as their representative or their agent. So, the commandment might not be primarily talking about speech. It actually might be more about misrepresenting God, burying his name poorly, claiming to represent God while living in a way that doesn't reflect who he actually is. Think about it like this. Imagine you um worked for a company and you went around town with their logo on your shirt claiming to represent them, but you started treating customers terribly. you lied about your products and you acted unethically and you m I don't know maybe like scammed some people or something you would be bearing their name in vain misrepresenting them right or imagine an ambassador from one country to another country so the ambassador bears the name and authority of their home nation but if they act foolishly or betray their country's values they're ultimately bearing that nation's name in vain and I think this might actually be what this commandment is getting at we bear God's name because we bear his image. So, we're his representatives on earth. And to take his name in vain means to represent him falsely, to claim to be his people while living in rebellion or like to say we follow him while our lives contradict everything that he stands for. And that's interesting, right? And this also connects back to imaging because if the image of God is about representation, then bearing the image very well means accurately reflecting who God is to the watching world. And bearing that image poorly, that's taking his name in vain. And from a New Testament perspective, there's this verse in 2 Timothy 2:19 where Paul says, "Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity." So if you claim his name, if you bear his image, your life probably should reflect that reality. And this might explain why Jesus seemed most angry at religious leaders in the Gospels. They bore God's name. In other words, they claimed to represent him. But they were giving people this twisted picture of what God is like, making him seem harsh and legalistic when the whole point of Jesus coming down was to show that God is actually gracious and merciful. Um, that's bearing the name in vain. And it also made Jesus furious. Really?

So, here's what we've been looking at so far. You're made as God's image. You're his representative on earth. You bear his name. Your job, or at least what you were designed for, is to accurately reflect who he is and to exercise his wise rule over creation. That's ultimately your identity. That's your purpose. That's what it means to be human. But here's the thing, and this is what makes this whole biblical story both heartbreaking and beautiful because we've kind of royally screwed up pretty spectacularly, actually.

So, humanity was supposed to image God faithfully, right? We were supposed to bear his name with honor to actually represent him accurately to the rest of creation. And of course, going back to the Garden of Eden, we didn't. Adam and Eve, the first imagers, chose to listen to the serpent instead of God. They basically abdicated their role as God's representatives. And that failure to image God faithfully, that rebellion induced sin and death into the world. Now, the image wasn't destroyed. We're still God's images, still his representatives, but ultimately it got corrupted. We started misrepresenting him. And I think the whole biblical story becomes this narrative about restoring humanity to its proper function as God's faithful imagers. For example, Israel was supposed to be a kingdom of priests, a nation that would image God faithfully to the world, demonstrating what it looks like when humans actually live under God's wise rule. But Israel, very evidently in the Bible, failed to. They took God's name. They bore his image as his chosen people, but they represented him poorly. They started worshiping idols. They oppressed the poor. They turned to other nations for security instead of trusting God. And the prophets called this out constantly. And you see it throughout the Old Testament, God is essentially saying, "You bear my name. You're supposed to be representing me to the nations, but look at how you're living. Like, you're taking my name in vain."

But then, and this is where the story gets really interesting, God himself becomes human in Jesus Christ. Jesus is called the image of God in several places. For example, 2 Corinthians 4:4 says, "Christ, who is the image of God." Colossians 1:15 says, "He is the image of the invisible God." Hebrews 1:3 says, "He is the radiance of the glory of God in exact imprint of his nature." Jesus is the perfect imager. He's what a true human looks like, the true image of God, the one who perfectly represents the father. He even says in John 14:9 that whoever has seen me has seen the father. That's seems to be perfect imaging, perfect representation. And and Jesus does what Israel was supposed to do, what humanity was supposed to do. He bears God's name faithfully. In John 17, Jesus prays to the father and says, "I have manifested your name to the people whom you've gave me out of the world." Jesus carried the name. He represented God perfectly. He image God without corruption or distortion. And then through his death and resurrection, he makes a way for us to be restored as faithful imagers. Because here's what seems to happen when you're united to Christ by faith. You actually start to be transformed into his image. You're being restored to your original design as a faithful representative of God. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, "And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. We're being conformed to the image of Christ who is the perfect image of God." So the corruption is being healed and we are being restored to our proper function.

And this ultimately brings us to the future because I don't think the story ends with us just being okay representatives of God on earth for our 70 or 80 years and then floating off to some spiritual heaven somewhere. The Bible actually seems to have a much more I don't know robust physical vision of the future than that. Revelation 22 describes the new heaven and the new earth, the final restoration of all things. And it is in Revelation 22 where there's this incredible picture. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and the lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. Did you catch that? His name will be on their foreheads. the same mark, the same identification that we've been talking about. We will bear his name openly, invisibly, eternally ultimately, and they will reign forever and ever. The dominion mandate from Genesis 1 to call and have wise rule over all of creation. I think that gets fulfilled in eternity because we will reign with Christ. And I don't think this is just poetic language or metaphor. The job that Adam and Eve were given in Genesis 1, that job gets fulfilled perfectly by redeemed humanity in Revelation 22. The story comes full circle. What was lost in Eden doesn't just get restored, it gets ultimately elevated. And we don't just go back to the garden. We move forward to the city, the new Jerusalem where God dwells with his people and we reign with him forever and ever. And I think that changes what we imagine when we think about eternity. Your destiny, if you are in Christ, isn't to sit on a cloud playing a harp. It's not to be absorbed into some kind of spiritual oneness with the divine nature. It's to be who you were always ultimately meant to be. A faithful imager of God bearing his name with honor exercising dominion over creation in perfect relationship with your creator and with the rest of his redeemed people. At least that's what it seems like the text is pointing toward. That's the future for those who are God's imagers.

So here's why I think all this matters. or at least why it's been meaningful to me to see it this way. Understanding that we are God's images, images, his representatives. It gives this framework for human dignity that doesn't depend on what you can do or what you contribute. It's not about your abilities or your usefulness or utility. It's about what you are. And every human at every stage of development in every condition with every level of ability they all bear that status. That little shift in thinking has pretty massive implications because it means that every human life has inherent dignity and value. It means that racism isn't just wrong. It's honestly an assault on God's image. It means that the vulnerable and the disabled, the unborn and the elderly, they're all imagebears deserving of honor and protection. Not because of what they can do, but because of what they are. And it also gives this sense of purpose that's just bigger than find yourself or pursue happiness or accumulate wealth. If we are here to represent God accurately, to reflect his character, to exercise wise stewardship over his world, his creation, that's a pretty significant job, and that's something worth building a life around.

The name bearing thing is convicting too honestly because if I claim to follow Jesus if I bear God's name as a Christian then my life I don't [snorts] know probably you know actually reflect that somehow not perfectly you know I'm not I'm definitely not saying that but directionally increasingly the way I treat people the way I use my resources that God has given me the way I speak about God to others or just even speak to others all of that is bearing his name and I want to do that. Well, and then there's this whole future dimension that I find really compelling. The whole idea that in Revelation 22 that we're not just going to be floating in some ethereal spiritual realm, but actually reigning with Christ in a restored creation, exercising that dominion mandate from Genesis 1 the way it was always meant to be done. There's something so beautiful about that to me about the story just coming full circle about how everything that was broken is being restored and then elevated beyond what it even was originally. And you know, maybe I'm wrong about this bearing the image thing, but I think this framework, this way of understanding what it means to be made in God's image, it makes sense of a lot of things to me. It connects Genesis to the rest of the biblical story in ways that feel coherent and it gives this vision of human purpose and and destiny for everyone that both feels both feels ancient and yet somehow fresh and renewed. So I I don't know. I thought it might be interesting to you too. It's one of those topics where the more you dig into it, the more connections you find and then the more significant it becomes. So that's what it means to be made in the image of God. Thank you for watching.