While fallen men make images of their gods, the true God made man in his own image—to image himself in the world. We humans are living, breathing, speaking, singing, moving images representing the invisible God to his world, so that others would remember and reverence him.

In the image of God — it may be one of the most often invoked, and yet least understood, catchphrases among Christians today. Whether defending the unborn, or protesting injustice, or advocating for the elderly and disabled, Christian voices often appeal for common ground, across other differences, by declaring that all humans are “in the image of God.” And so they are; we’re right to remember it.

But what does it mean to be made “in God’s image”? Rarely is that explained, and when it is, the answers can be quite speculative — that we are thinking or deliberative creatures. Or feeling creatures. Or that our will is “free” and not enslaved to instinct. Are such essentially invisible abilities really what it means to image God? Doesn’t the Bible have more to say and clarify the issue for us?

Pixels, Paintings, and People

In one sense, the image of God is (surprisingly) not a major theme in the Bible, at least in terms of explicit repetition. It is, however, the climactic declaration in the opening chapter of the Bible — and in the voice of God himself, no less. God’s poem, in just three lines, pours a foundation for theological anthropology (the Christian doctrine of humanity):

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. (Genesis 1:26–27)

An all-important initial question, right here at the outset, is, What is an image? Images flood our screens, fill our magazines, and catch our eyes on billboards. We are no stranger to images, though we are so awash in them we might be numb to their significance.

In the ancient world, images were not pixels and paint but more typically like what we think of as statues or monuments. Pagan religions employed such carved images as physical, visual representations of otherwise invisible gods. Into such a context, then, the voice of the one true God rings out, at the climax of Scripture’s first chapter, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”

While fallen men make images of their gods, the true God made man in his own image — to image himself in the world. We humans are living, breathing, speaking, singing, moving images representing the invisible God to his world, so that others would remember and reverence him.

God made us to image him, to show him, point to him, display him. He means for humans, through the words and actions of other humans, to get a greater sense of what he is like, and to appreciate and adore him for who he is — that is, to glorify him. Images glorify. They bring to mind someone great, and reveal admirable, praiseworthy traits, so that we honor the imaged one. This is why the theme of man in God’s image is so profound in Scripture, even if it’s not often explicit.

Value of Human Life

As for that explicitness, only two more verses in all the Old Testament refer to man in God’s image, and both are in the immediate chapters that follow. Genesis 5:3 tells us, “When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.” The image-and-likeness language recalls Genesis 1:26 and signals, significantly, that while tainted by sin, humanity’s calling to image God endures beyond Adam. Because of human sin, however, our words and actions display God as much (if not more) by way of contrast, rather than by way of example.

The third and final mention of man being made in God’s image, then, is Genesis 9:6, after the parking of the ark and recommissioning of Noah. Again, it’s divine speech and poetry:

Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.

Man’s uniqueness and dignity among all the creatures in imaging God makes the taking of human life the gravest of offenses, against both God and fellow man — so grave, in fact, that the shedding of human blood warrants the death of the killer. Such is the value of human life, made in the image of God, in God’s created world.

Then, after only three mentions, the Old Testament goes silent about God’s image. Almost.

Imagers Marred

While the explicit notion of man in God’s image disappears, related concepts resurface. For instance, Psalm 8, while not mentioning “God’s image,” celebrates humanity’s exalted position in the world. Also “image” as “carved image” and “metal image” appears dozens of times (more than fifty) in the Old Testament, and as we’ve already implied, there is a connection to be made.

Beginning with the second commandment, God’s people knew, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything. . . . You shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Exodus 20:4–5). Which, of course, became the very sin the nation collectively embraced. As Psalm 106 narrates the events of Exodus 32,

They made a calf in Horeb and worshiped a metal image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt. (Psalm 106:19–21)

This was enough to certify their destruction “had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before [God], to turn away his wrath from destroying them” (Psalm 106:23).

So, the nation’s temptation to image-making regularly returned throughout the ups and downs of their history. Made in God’s image, “they forgot God” in their sin and turned to making images of gods with their own hands — a tragic picture of the reversal and irrational, self-destructive nature of sin. As the apostle Paul later would decry, “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 1:22–23).

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