What does it mean to be human? It means being men and women who have the capacity to know God, who should know and imitate Him in righteousness and holiness, and who govern creation under Him.

Unless we know who God is, we cannot truly know who we are. Is it surprising that when people do not retain God in their thinking (Rom. 1:28) that they also cannot define humanity? Is man merely an evolved animal? Are male and female distinctions by divine design or human choice? Replacing the triune God with mother earth leads people to believe that they are children of the earth and that spirituality is a product of human brain development rather than indicating creation by “God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth” (Nicene Creed). Forgetting God’s identity makes one like an Alzheimer’s patient who, forgetting parents, wife, and children, panics, not knowing where or who he is.

The image of God defines human identity with reference to God. This short article presents glimpses of God by defining what kind of reflection He displays in His image bearers. After seeing that the eternal Son images His eternal Father, I will imitate Westminster Confession 4.2 by outlining the human image of God in four ways.¹

First, Christ is the essential image of God.

Images represent the things that they image. The Word was both in the beginning with God, and He was God (John 1:1–2). God’s Son is His only proper icon, or image, displaying the glory of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). Man is God’s image, but not like Christ. God is light, and the Son, as Word and image, is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3). As image, Christ is divine and Creator, being the same God as the Father but not the same person as the Father. Whatever we say about humanity being made in God’s image, human beings cannot hold a candle to the radiant light of the Father’s “exact image.” As eternal image, the Son radiates the Father’s divinity in His own divinity. He is the original image, and we are the copies.

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