The Image of God

Genesis 1:26-27 tells of the creation of man:

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.

The scripture leaves no doubt that man was created in the image of God. The Hebrew word for image here means bearing a resemblance, or being a representative figure. The word likeness used in verse 26 means resemblance – in like manner. Man was a model of God, created by God to have like characteristics and manners.

This leads to several questions of great importance to our faith. How we view the original state of our first parents and their state subsequent to the fall into sin impacts our understanding of justification and the work of Christ. These very first chapters of scripture set the ground work for all that is to come.

Life Before Sin

In this original state of creation, Adam and Eve bore the image of God. What does this mean? God is without sin, so it is safe to assume that they were also without sin. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that they were innocents. There was no concept of sin in their world.

It seems that they maintained an open relationship with God prior to the fall. They were in the garden, in direct relationship with God, without shame. There was no condemnation there. This is a good indication that there was no sin present in the Garden, because God cannot abide with sin. They lived in harmony with God and used all that he had given them without questions of conscience. In fact, in that environment they had no need to distinguish good from evil. Our first parents were morally neutral.

Rebellion or Deception?

If this is indeed the picture that scripture paints of life in Eden, the next question we must ask is this; did Adam and Eve intentionally rebel against God in the fall or were they deceived into sin by the serpent? Witness this conversation from Genesis 3:13:

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Now we’ve probably all heard many sermons about how Eve is simply blame-shifting when she says this. But that is something which is read into the text from a post-fall mindset. Suppose there was no attempt to blame-shift at all and Eve is stating the fact that she was simply deceived into sinning. What if there was no overt thought or intent of rebellion in their hearts at all but they were, in their innocence, truly deceived by the serpent? They saw something that appealed to them which they had been told not to eat, but here was the serpent lying to them about God’s intentions and they bought the lie - not in any kind of malicious way, but simply out of their inability to distinguish ‘good from evil’. (Keep in mind that this was indeed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, again indicating that such knowledge had not previously existed.)

By the way, this understanding of the fall is upheld by the writing of Paul. In 1 Timothy 2:13-14 he states:

For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Adam and Eve were deceived into transgression. Through this deception they became transgressors, not the other way around.

A Counterfeit Image

Returning to the original point about man being made in the image of God, the next question that must be asked is how much of that image remained after the fall? If scripture is to be believed (along with a quick survey of human nature) we would have to conclude that very little survived.

It would seem in some ways that the fall of Adam and Eve was an ‘upward’ fall. The serpent had told them the half-truth in his deception that they would become ‘like God, knowing good from evil’ (Genesis 3:5).  But the knowledge of good and evil did not make them ‘like God’ at all; rather it made them independent of God and in the exertion of this independence they began to compete with God as perverse ‘god’s’ to themselves. The true image was broken and replaced with a counterfeit image of man as his own god.

Evidence of this is everywhere in scripture. Far from being the image-bearers of God, mankind “became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 1:21-23)

It is hard to find any evidence in scripture that very much of God’s image survived the fall. Mankind was plunged under the dominion of sin and became its slave (Romans 6). Men loved the darkness rather than God’s light (John 3:19-20). Natural innocence and communion with God was lost. Condemnation and a wicked conscience became a way of life.

Why All of This Matters

This stuff matters because it has a great amount of influence on how we value the work of Christ. If we believe that we reflect God’s image but have been slightly tarnished by sin, God’s redemption will have little value to us. We will (reasonably) settle for limited amounts of ‘sprucing ourselves up’ to the danger of our eternal souls.

If on the other hand (as I believe is a more accurately represented in scripture) we understand that the nature of Adam reflects very little of God’s image, we come to understand that God is not in the business of ‘spiritual makeovers’.  That old nature must die and be replaced by a new nature – one that once again represents the image of God as we are conformed to the image of His son. The work of redemption becomes humanly impossible – no amount of sprucing up can ever be enough – and so the work of Christ becomes the only answer to our sin. Christ becomes all to us.

One of the things that makes scripture difficult to understand is that our thinking has been clouded by the effects of the fall. We look at Genesis 1-3 as those who have never known and cannot relate to life without the knowledge of good and evil. It is natural for us to assume that our first parents acted out of an evil conscience. It is also natural for us to assume that we can make amends for their sin by being ‘good’. The understanding that the problem was brought about by forces at work that are beyond our power and reasoning brings us to the place where we turn away from our power and reasoning for the answer. We must turn to God’s power and reasoning.

That is the gospel truth.