Implications of the imago dei.
Implications of the imago dei.
What it means that we’re made in God’s image.
In Genesis 1, the Triune God declares, “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” (Gen. 1:26). This remark concerning mankind’s formation is steeped with cosmic significance, as the very fabric of humanity’s nature is imbued with the image of his Maker.
While the implications of that divine initiative are many, in his work on Christian Theology, Milliard J. Erickson manages to digest them to six — the first of which is that humanity belongs to God. Mankind, writ large, is a product of God’s creative enterprise, with each human being existing with that image being enstamped upon the soul. As Erickson wisely notes, the evocative scene of Jesus examining the coin in relation to an inquiry regarding taxes actually provides an intriguing brief on the notion of God’s ownership over that which bears his image — namely, humans (Mark 12:16). Notwithstanding one’s status in relation to justification, their status as a person is such that God is their Maker and his image is in them.
A second implication is that this image of God is patterned for humanity unimpeachably and unsurpassably in the person of Jesus Christ. He is, as the writer to the Hebrews avers, the express image of God in whom dwells the fullness of deity in bodily form (Heb. 1:3; Col. 2:9). Accordingly, it is Christ alone who remains the ultimate exemplar of what it means to be human. Third, only those who are brought into union with God are invited to enjoy the full experience of what it means to be human. This, to be sure, is not to deny passion or pleasure from unregenerate. However, it is to say that those who are reconciled to the Father through the life-giving death of the Son are those who, by the Spirit, are enabled to enjoy the fullness of what it means to be made in the image of God.
Fourth, concomitant with God’s image in human beings is the elevation of one’s occupation. One’s work and one’s pursuit of learning are not resultant from the Fall. Rather, they are integral components of creation itself. “The basis for the work ethic,” Erickson says, “is to be found in the very nature of what God created us to be” (473). Fifth, since all human beings bear the image of God, all human lives have value. This is the thrust behind the divine prohibition against murder (Gen. 9:6). Sixth, and last, regardless of one’s race or sex, whether consciously recognized or not, every human being has been marked with the image of God upon them. “Every human being,” declares Erickson, “is God’s creature made in God’s own image” (474). Consequently, every human being exists as a token of the Creator’s loving, creating initiative.
Works cited:
Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 3rd edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2013).