Our salvation depends on Christ assuming what we are, including our corporality. But if our corporality is included, then so too is our existence where we started in utero—as zygotes, creatures distinct from their parents, though not yet equipped with the full suite of anatomic and physiologic functions that come with physical maturity. Christ needed to assume a human nature, and thus, a human nature—biologically and theologically—is one that begins at conception.

Editor’s Note: Christ Over All examines a different theme each month from a robust biblical and theological perspective. And occasionally we come back to themes that we’ve already covered in an “encore” piece.  In this article, we revisit the month of January 2025 and once again take a look at the image of God.

Humanity is under siege. Having cooperated with Satan in rebellion against God, humanity has turned its attention to the destruction of God’s image—ourselves. While wicked cultures perpetually seek to spoil the beauty of God’s image, several recent developments in western culture have “upped the ante.” These include (among others) transgenderism, the unmooring of marriage from biblical norms, and—the highest hand of high-handed sins—abortion.

In January, Stephen Wellum detailed Scripture’s witness of what the image of God is. In this article, I will investigate when Scripture presents God as assigning a creature his image. Specifically, I will argue the image of God is present at the moment of conception. Proving this is not simple. There is no facile proof text such as: “the image of God is present in a sperm-fertilized egg.”

On one hand, Scripture presents texts detailing “what” the image of God—or its likeness[1]—is (Gen. 1:26–27; Gen. 5:1; Gen. 9:6; 1 Cor. 11:7, Jas. 3:7-9). Included here is how for Christians, this image—though fallen—is being restored (1 Cor. 15:47–49; 2 Cor. 3:17–18; Eph. 4:22–24; Col. 3:9–11). Christ himself is the original image, into whose form his followers are being conformed (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 4:4; Heb 1:3). Scripture also describes what life is like in the womb. God knits the human together in utero (Ps. 139:13), God reverses the plight of childlessness through conception (Gen. 25:21; 29:31-32; Luke 1:24-25), and children can even “struggle” in the womb (Gen. 25:23). Further, a phase of the Ordo Salutis—regeneration—is shown to transpire in an embodied soul in the womb (Luke 1:15, 41). This is not an exhaustive list, but shows the variety Scripture uses to describe life from the earliest stages of existence in utero.

However, exegetes contest each of these verses. Vindicating the idea that these qualities in their varied forms constitute “life,” and that we should link these descriptions with the image of God is challenging. Further, much of the language describing those in the womb can also be used to describe non-humans. John the Baptizer leaped in the womb for joy (skirtaō, Luke 1:41), but so do calves (Mal. 3:20 LXX). So that kind of language does not necessarily prove the image of God is present at the moment of conception.

Considering this, I propose a different course. If we can find a text showing a physical characteristic that exists in the womb, and if this physical characteristic is tied explicitly to the image of God, it would follow that wherever this characteristic is present, then so too the image of God is present. As it stands, I believe Genesis 9:4–6 presents just such a case.

To get there, I will first define the image of God. Then, I will examine Genesis 9:4–6 as our text which ties the “life” of humans to their “blood” and simultaneously undergirds this link with the imago Dei. Following this, I will appeal to medical evidence for when “blood” is first present in the human creature in utero. I will then proceed to detail the relationship between “flesh,” “life,” and “blood” as given in Genesis 9:4–6 and in Scripture broadly, where the bridge between God’s image and the conceived baby will be located, a bridge I will invite readers to cross with me to defend and celebrate the sanctity of God’s image in the womb.

Image Defined

Many have set themselves to answering the question: “what is the image of God?” Should we answer that it is substantive, present in our rational and moral faculties, but less so in our bodies? Or is God’s image located in our ability to relate to the “other,” be it God or neighbor? Or should we answer it is our function existing in our God ordained dominion over earth, spoken to man directly after he was created (Gen. 1:28)?

The answer is: “yes,” and “but.”

“Yes,” each of these have truth to them. “But,” as Wellum notes, we should avoid “privileging one aspect of us at the expense of other aspects” and also avoid imposing theological categories onto Scripture without first allowing Scripture to speak for itself.[2] Wellum is correct to note that “image” signifies “what” we are (humans viewed holistically in rule over the world as God’s “vice-regents”), but that image isn’t reduced to merely a list of properties (substantive view), nor our function as “vice-regents,” but includes God’s relational dealings “with creation on the basis of how he deals with humans, which first begins with the covenant headship of Adam.”[3]

This is helpful for two reasons. First, it does justice to the variety of biblical data, not domesticating divergent areas of Scripture into a preconceived theological mold. Second, Wellum’s formulation as a theological category is sensitive enough to deploy in a search for the image of God across the canon’s varied presentation of it. Scripture doesn’t at every mention of the image of God speak to this image’s substance, function, and relations in the same decibel. There is variety in the biblical presentation. Wellum’s theological formulation is helpful because it accounts for any portion of Scripture that speaks to the image of God, accounting for Scripture’s varied witness but positing a unified theological concept.

I will hold this holistic, tripartite view of the imago Dei as a biblical-theological preunderstanding as I survey the next point: that human life and human blood are sacred, and that God associates these with the image of God.

Lifeblood and the Imago Dei: Building a Bridge from Life and Blood to Image

Now that we have reviewed what the image of God is, we turn to when it is conferred on a human being. To do this, we must expose the connection between the varied biblical and theological descriptions of life in utero and the image of God. Scripture gives a diverse presentation of life inside womb, but it rarely mentions the image (or likeness) of God in these texts. These descriptors (whether it be John the Baptist “leaping” in the womb in Luke 1:41, or Jacob and Esau “struggling” in the womb in Genesis 25:22) don’t show an explicit connection to the concept of the image of God. The phrase “image of God” or “likeness” is in fact almost never mentioned when Scripture describes conception, life in the womb, or birth/fathering, with the one exception of Genesis 5:3. Nonetheless, there is a bridge that shows the irrevocable bond between the image of God and human life in all the diversity Scripture presents it in, including in utero.

This bridge is Genesis 9:4–6.

God recasts his original prohibitory command, “you shall not eat,” in Genesis 9:4, developing the original command God gave to Adam, where God blessed Adam and gave him provision (Gen. 2:8–9, 16) but commanded him to “not eat” in Genesis 2:17. Genesis 9:4 is where the conversation of “flesh,” “life,” and “blood” kicks off. Though the prohibition originally starts in how mankind is to relate to animals, the basis for this prohibition is rooted in the worth of man due to his image bearing status (Gen. 9:6). Eating animal flesh with its lifeblood is not wrong in itself, but wrong because the animal lifeblood stands as a symbol for man’s lifeblood, the worth of which is funded by the imago Dei.

Genesis 9:4: “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”

God prohibits eating “flesh” with its “life” (nepeš, breath, life),[4] which is its “blood” (dām, blood, bloodshed, bloodguilt, murder).[5] The ESV adds “that is” between nepeš (life) and dām (blood). In Hebrew, the two are placed side-by-side appositionally, where the latter word or concept clarifies and specifies the former, both pointing to a singular reality. Leviticus 17:11 has “life of the flesh is in the blood” where nepeš equates with dām more loosely due to the preposition b (in) governing the noun dām. In Deuteronomy 12:23 we have a stronger equating of one thing with another: “Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.” That is, dām (blood) is (=) nepeš (life).

On balance, we should not over-interpret our text in Genesis 9:4 to the effect of it saying life=blood. On the other hand, it does appear that the appositional placement of “blood” after “life” with nothing in between is epexegetical, so that dām (blood) explains the preceding noun nepeš (life). The apposition of dām defines “the preceding substantive [nepeš] . . . in order to prevent any possible misunderstanding.”[6] Or as John Calvin notes, “[S]ince there is no copulative conjunction between the two words, blood and life, I do not doubt that Moses, speaking of life, added the word blood exegetically, as if he would say, that flesh is in some sense devoured with its life, when it is eaten imbued with its own blood.”[7]

An analogy might be helpful. If we think of the sun shining on us in the day, the sensation of heat is tied to the sun’s light. Wherever the sun is, there is also heat (in varying degrees). The Sun and its heat are so intricately linked that it is challenging to conceive of a situation where there could be sunlight but absolutely no heat from this same sun. The relationship between life and blood is similar. They are not ontologically one reality, but each of their individual realities is so wrapped up with the reality of the other that it is challenging to separate the two.

As the text moves ahead, in Genesis 9:5 the prohibition broadens. The lifeblood (nepeš–dām) of man inappropriately spilled requires something: a reckoning (dāraš) that God requires. This reckoning (dāraš) means a life taken creates a void that God demands an accounting for; an exacting. This exacting hangs over the one who takes the life. If we imagine there are two people, and one steals from the other, a debt emerges. Value—as backed by the image of God, and behind this, God himself—is taken from the one and due to be repaid by the other.

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