Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Crown of Creation: Restoring the Image of God (Genesis 1:26-27)

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The Crown of Creation: Restoring the Image of God (Genesis 1:26-27) · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed thinking. I am so glad you're here with
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us. We are, well, we're two friends,
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2 theologians, and really just students of the Word who love
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nothing more than looking at the world around us through the lens
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of Scripture and the Reformed tradition.
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Yeah, it is good to be back. And just so everyone is on the
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same page as always, we're coming at this from a particular
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perspective. We hold the Westminster
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Confession of Faith and we believe in the inerrancy of
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Scripture. That's really the bedrock we're
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building on today. Absolutely.
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We're not here to deconstruct the faith.
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We're here to understand it better.
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And today we're tackling a text that I think, I really think
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acts as the charter for all of human life.
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We're looking at Genesis 1 verses 26 and 27.
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Yeah, it's one of those passages that's so familiar we almost
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just gloss over here in Sunday school.
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You see it on, you know, wall art.
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But these two verses, they are the answer to the biggest
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questions we face. Who are we?
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Why are we even here? It feels like the modern world
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is having just a massive identity crisis around those
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specific questions. You look around and the culture
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answers them with, well, total confusion.
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We're told we're cosmic accidents, biological flukes.
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Or the opposite. Or the opposite, that we're gods
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unto ourselves, that we are whatever we decide to construct
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ourselves to be. It's this wild pendulum swing
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between nihilism, you're nothing and narcissism, you are
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everything. But Genesis gives us a
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completely different starting point.
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It answers with divine design. And to help us unpack that,
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we've got a couple of really solid theological articles in
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our stack today. They dig into the image of God,
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the Imago Dei, as well as the Dominion mandate and the created
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order of male and female. Right.
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So our mission for this deep dive is, I think, pretty clear.
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Yeah. We want to establish that human
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identity is something that's received from God.
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It's not something we invent for ourselves.
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And we also have to be honest about the state of that
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identity, right? I mean, we need to look at how
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the mirror of human dignity has been cracked by thin, and then
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how it's corrected and polished through the lens of the second
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Adam, Jesus Christ. That's the whole arc, so let's
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just dive right into the text. Let's do it.
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We're in the 1st chapter of the Bible and if you just sit and
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read Genesis one, there is a very specific literary rhythm to
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it. It's almost hypnotic.
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There is you look at days one through 5 and there's a cadence.
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Let there be light, Let there be an expanse.
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Let the water swarm very I don't know, executive.
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Executive, that's a great word for it.
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It's rapid fire. Let there be.
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And it was so over and over. Yeah, it's like a foreman on a
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construction site just shouting orders and things are just
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snapping into existence. You've got the raw materials,
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the framing, the utilities going in.
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It's incredibly efficient. God speaks and reality
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reconfigures itself. It does, but then you hit day 6.
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And everything changes. Everything, the narrative just
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slows right down. That executive rhythm you talked
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about, It stops. It's like the camera zooms in.
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We've entered what some theologians call the Holy of
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Holies of the Creation Week. Oh.
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I love that analogy. It treats the universe not just
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as a, you know, a container, but as a temple palace.
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Exactly. And that's not just us reading
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that back into the text. That's how the ancient Near East
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viewed the cosmos. Days one through 5 are, in a
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sense, building the structure of the temple.
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Setting up the lights, the sun, moon, stars, the floors, the
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decorations. All of it.
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But on Day 6, God installs the statue of the deity.
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In the ancient world, the very last thing you did when you
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built a temple was bring in the image of the God that was going
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to dwell there. And here in Genesis, that image
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is man. And the language God uses to
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introduce this moment is just fascinating.
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Verse 26 Then God said, let us make man in our image.
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That phrase, let us it just, it causes you to pause because up
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until now it's all been let there be.
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It stops you in your tracks. In Hebrew, it's not, say, Adam
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and you're right. It's a pause.
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It's a moment of deliberation. It's so different from Let there
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be. This is personal, it's intimate.
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It suggests there's a council taking place.
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OK, so let's drill down on that. Who is the ASIS?
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Because I've heard different theories. 1 is that God is
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talking to the angels, to the heavenly host.
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That's a common view, especially among critical scholars.
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They call it the heavenly court interpretation.
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But when you look at it structurally and theologically,
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we really have to reject that. Why?
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Well, for one, angels are creatures.
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They aren't creators. They don't have the power to
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create life, and certainly not human life, which is the
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pinnacle of creation. Right, and the text is clear.
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It doesn't say so God and the angels created man.
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It says so. God created man in his own
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image. We aren't made in the image of
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angels. We're not.
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We're made a little lower than them in some sense, maybe in raw
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power, but we bear the image of God, which is a status never
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given to angels in this context. So the reformed view is
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different. The Reformed view, which I think
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aligns with the whole witness of Scripture, is that this is the
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pluralium multitudinous, the plural of fillness.
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It's an inter trinitarian council.
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The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit consulting within
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the Godhead. Precisely.
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It's this beautiful early hint at the complexity within the
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unity of God. And the implication of that is
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it's just staggering. It means humanity is born from
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divine community. God is in himself a community of
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perfect love, and so we were created for the purpose of
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communion with Him and communion with one another.
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We're not solitary creatures because our Creator is not a
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solitary monad. That sets the stage perfectly
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for what comes next. So God decides to make man, and
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he says let us make man in our image after our likeness.
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These are huge words in English. We kind of use them
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interchangeably. But what's going on with image
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and likeness in the Hebrew? So the Hebrew word for image is
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selim. It comes from a root that means
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to carve or to cut. Like a sculpture or a statue.
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Exactly like a sculpture. In fact, elsewhere in the Old
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Testament, Selim is the word used for physical idols or
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statues. Now you have to pair that with
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the ancient Near East context. OK, imagine a great king, a
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Mesopotamian emperor. He conquers a distant territory.
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He can't be there physically all the time.
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So what does he do to maintain his authority?
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To remind everyone who's in charge.
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He puts up a statue of himself in the town square.
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That is it. He sets up a sealum, and when
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people walk by that statue, that carving, they know this land
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belongs to the great king. His rule, his authority extends
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here. So we are God's living statues.
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That's the functional definition right there.
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We are placed on Earth to visualize the invisible God
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where human beings are. God's claim of ownership is
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present. We are the flags planted on the
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moon, marking the territory as His.
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And there's a sharp political edge to this in the ancient
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world, too, isn't there? I mean in Egypt or Babylon it
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was considered to be the image of God.
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Only the king. Just one guy.
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Yeah, just one guy. Pharaoh.
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Pharaoh was the son of RA. He was the image of God on
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earth. The common people.
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They were just, well, they were cattle.
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They were labor force. They existed to serve the image,
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not to be the image. But Genesis just completely
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flips that on its head. It democratizes royalty.
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It's revolutionary, Genesis says.
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No, it's not just the king. It is all of humanity.
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Every single human being is royalty.
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Every human being is a statue of the king.
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The peasant in the field has the exact same ontological status as
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the emperor on the throne. That is, that's the basis for
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human rights right there. It has to be.
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It is. Now we should probably clarify
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what the image is not because this is where people get
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confused. They look in a mirror and think,
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does God have a nose like mind? Right, and the answer is no,
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it's not physical. God is spirit.
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He doesn't have a body like we do now, the Incarnate Christ
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does, but the triune God in his essence is spirit.
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So we don't look like God in terms of, you know, having two
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eyes and a mouth. And it's also not just one
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specific faculty, like our ability to reason or paint a
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picture or compose music. I think this is where people get
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tripped up. They think the image of God is
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my high IQ. And that's a dangerous path,
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because if the image of God is just reason, then what happens
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if someone loses their cognitive ability?
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What about an infant? What about someone with severe
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dementia? Do they stop being in the image
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of God? Of course not.
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Absolutely not. The image is more fundamental
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than that. So how do we define it
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positively? The source material we looked at
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breaks it down into three helpful categories, ontological,
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functional, and moral. Let's unpack those ontological
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means. It is a status.
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It's what you are. You are a human, therefore you
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bear the status given by God. It's intrinsic to your very
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nature. You can't lose it.
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And functional. Functional is what we were just
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talking about, the calling to represent God, the living statue
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idea. We have a job to do, a role to
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play as his vice Regents. OK, and then moral.
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The moral aspect refers to the original condition of Adam.
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The Westminster Confession speaks to this directly.
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Man was created in knowledge, righteousness, and true
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holiness. So we were made to reflect God's
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moral character. We were wired for holiness from
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the very beginning. Exactly.
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That's the part that gets, well, it gets complicated when we get
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to Chapter 3 and talk about the fall, but that was the original
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design. OK, that covers the Let us make
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Man part. But then we get to verse 27,
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which is the actual act of creation, and the source
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material points out that the genre shifts.
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Here again, we go from that boardroom deliberation to
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something else entirely. It does.
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Verse 27 moves from prose into poetry, is the very first song
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in Scripture. So it's actually formatted
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differently in the Hebrew text. Yes, it's a structure called
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step parallelism, or some would say a partial chiasm.
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It's written to be memorable. It's written to be sung.
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It's a signal to the reader. Pay attention.
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This is the main event. This is the crescendo.
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And in that poem, there's a specific word that just keeps
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showing up. The verbara, it means created,
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and it appears three times in this one verse.
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So God created man in the image of God.
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He created him, Male and female, He created them.
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So why the repetition? Why hammer that word 3?
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Times. It's like a drum beat.
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The author Moses is driving a theological stake into the
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ground. See, in Hebrew there are
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different words for making things.
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A human can make something that's ASA, or form something
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like a Potter with clay. That's yatzar.
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But only God can borrow. So Barra implies creating
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something completely new out of nothing ex nihilo.
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Something unprecedented, a new kind of reality.
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And this triple repetition. It intentionally blocks the idea
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of a gradual, undirected process.
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It screams divine initiative. And this is where we really have
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to touch on the reformed apologetic against a purely
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materialistic evolutionary theory.
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You can't read this text honestly and just walk away
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thinking this was an accident. We have to address it.
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The text presents this as a direct, special, immediate act
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of God. Man did not ascend from the
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animals. God condescended to make man.
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And the theological stakes for this are not just about biology,
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are they? This isn't just a creation
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versus science debate club topic.
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Not at all. It connects directly to the
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heart of the gospel. In Romans 5 and the Doctrine of
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Federal Headship, Paul argues that sin and death came into the
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world through one man, Adam. If Adam isn't a historical
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person, if he's just a metaphor for a group of hominids who
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gradually evolved consciousness, then the whole parallel with
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Christ just it collapses. It completely falls apart, Paul
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says. As an Adam all die, so in Christ
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shall all be made alive. If the first Adam is a myth,
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what does that say about the second Adam?
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It makes the whole structure wobble.
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And then there's the massive problem of death.
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Right. If evolution is the mechanism
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God used, then death, suffering, disease, and extinction existed
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for millions and millions of years before man ever arrived on
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the scene. It's the engine of the whole
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process. But scripture is crystal clear.
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Death is the wages of sin. It's the enemy, it's the curse.
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If death was already there, part of the natural order, then God
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looked at a world full of death, a graveyard essentially, and
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called it very good. And that creates a huge
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theological problem regarding the character and goodness of
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God. A massive 1.
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So for the reformed thinker, a historical atom, a special
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creation, it's non negotiable. It's essential to the logic of
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the gospel. You can't just pull that one
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thread out without the whole sweater unraveling you.
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Really. Can't.
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Let's move to the next line of that poem in verse 27.
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Male and female. He created them.
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This is so important. It's part of the climactic poem.
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It is not a footnote. It's not an addendum or an
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afterthought. And the source material we read
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highlighted that the Hebrew terms used here, they're not
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ambiguous, they're biological. They are.
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It's Zakhar and Nikba. These are not sociological terms
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about gender roles. They refer to male and female
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biology. The theological assertion here
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is that sexual distinction is synonymous with the creation of
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humanity itself. And it's declared very good.
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It's not a result of the fall. It's not a problem.
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That is such a critical distinction.
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Some people today, they act as if our physical differences or
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our gender are a problem to be overcome, or maybe a sad result
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of sin. But Genesis says God invented
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the binary. It was his good idea.
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And notice the grammar again. It's so subtle, but it's there.
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We switch from him to them. Yes, in the image of God he
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created him, male and female He created them.
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Just as God is a plurality. Let us the full expression of
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the Imago Dein community is found in the complementary union
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of male and female. So a solitary male cannot fully
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image the triune God. Not in the sense of community
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and life giving fruitfulness. It takes the two halves of
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humanity, this beautiful design complementarity, to reflect that
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fullness. And this, I mean, this brings us
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into direct conflict with some pretty significant modern
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errors. We have to talk about gender
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ideology. We.
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Do the text just flatly refutes the idea that your gender is a
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social construct or just a psychological preference?
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Today, the world says your feelings define your reality.
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Genesis says God's design defines reality.
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Your gender is a gift. It's assigned by God and
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inscribed right into your genetic code.
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Which means rejecting your body is in a very real sense
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rejecting your maker. It's looking at the creator and
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saying, God, you made a mistake. I know better.
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It's a modern form of Gnosticism, this idea that the
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real me is just a ghost trapped in a machine, a soul separate
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from my physical body. Right.
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Gnosticism hates the material world, but Christianity embraces
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it. Our bodies aren't costumes we
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wear, they are an integral part of who we are.
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But we also have to be careful to confront the errors on the
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other side too, like misogyny. Absolutely.
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The text is clear. Both sexes are fully image
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bearers. It does not say the male is the
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image of God and the female is the image of the male.
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They both stand in direct relation to God as his
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representatives. There is 0 room for viewing
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women as lesser or type B humans.
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None. And then there's the whole
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egalitarian versus complementarian debate, which is
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a big. One the.
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Reform view, rooted in this text and then fleshed out in the rest
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of scripture, is complementarian.
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While male and female are absolutely equal in dignity, in
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essence and worth, they are distinct in design and vocation.
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Equality does not mean sameness. It doesn't.
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It's like a violin and a cello and an orchestra.
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There are both string instruments, both of equal
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worth, but they play different notes.
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They have different roles. And if you try to make them both
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the same, you don't get equality, you lose the harmony,
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you just get noise. That is a perfect analogy.
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You destroy the music. So we have identity, which is
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the image, we have the created order, which is male and female,
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and now we get to the job description, the Dominion
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mandate. Right back in Genesis 1.26, let
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us make man in our image and let them have dominion.
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The dominion flows directly from the identity.
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We rule because we represent the king.
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You nailed it. We are vice Regents.
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That is the key term. We are not the absolute Lords of
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the earth. We're, you know, we're middle
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management. We're stewards who are
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accountable to the High King. We don't own the place, we just
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run it for the owner. I love the framework that one of
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our sources uses here, the Threefold Office, Prophet,
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priest, and King. We usually apply this to Jesus,
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but it applied to Adam first. Yes, Adam was the original, the
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proto prophet, priest and king. OK, let's break those down.
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How is Adam a king? The text gives him the verbs
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subdue and rule. His job was to bring God's order
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to the unordered parts of creation.
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The Garden was perfect, but the rest of the world was, you know,
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wild. It needed caning.
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He was supposed to expand the borders of the Garden of Eden.
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He was a king exiting righteous authority over the creation.
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OK, that makes sense. What about priest?
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That one is less obvious in Genesis.
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One, it becomes much clearer in Genesis 2 verse 15.
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It says Adam was put in the garden to work and keep it.
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Those two Hebrew verbs, Abad and shemar, are the exact same words
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used later in the Book of Numbers to describe the duties
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of the Levitical priests in the Tabernacle.
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So Adam was guarding the sanctuary, Yes.
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The Garden of Eden was the first temple, the first sanctuary, and
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Adam was the priest tasked with guarding that sacred space,
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cultivating worship and ensuring that nothing unclean entered.
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And then finally Prophet. He names the animals, and in the
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Bible, naming isn't just giving something a label, like putting
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a sticky note on it. It is an act of discerning and
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defining its nature. Adam looked at the world, saw
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what God had made, and interpreted it correctly.
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He was thinking God's thoughts after him.
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He was speaking God's truth about the world.
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This has such a huge application for our work today.
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I think so many Christians feel like they're secular jobs don't
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matter. They think that only pastors or
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missionaries are really doing God's work.
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And that is a tragedy. It's a sacred secular divide
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that just isn't biblical. Work is a creational good.
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It's not a curse. The curse made work hard.
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It brought thorns and sweat and frustration.
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But work itself was there in paradise.
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So any legitimate work, Coding software, cleaning a house,
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parenting a child, pouring concrete, that is all Kingdom
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work. If it brings order out of chaos,
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if it cultivates and cares for God's creation, if it serves
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others, it is the work of a priest king.
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You are mimicking the Creator God when you do good, creative,
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orderly work. And the mandate also forbids
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exploitation, doesn't it? Absolutely.
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Dominion does not mean domination in the sense of
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crushing or destroying. A good king does not pillage his
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own land for short term gain, he cultivates it for long term
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flourishing. So we should be the best
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conservationists, the best artists, the best developers.
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We are tending the King's garden.
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We've painted this beautiful picture here, the Holy of Holies
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of Creation, the royal statue, the Priest King and the Garden
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Temple. But we all know the story takes
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a very dark turn. We can't talk about the image of
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God without talking about what went wrong.
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We have to talk about the fall. And in the Reformed tradition,
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we view Genesis 1 and 2 as the inauguration of what we call the
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Covenant of Works. And this is so crucial for
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understanding the whole storyline of the Bible.
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God made a covenant with Adam as the representative for all
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humanity. Life eternal confirmed.
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Life was promised upon the condition of perfect obedience.
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It was a probation period. The command was simple, do this
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and live. And Adam failed.
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It failed spectacularly. The source of material calls it
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cosmic treason, and I think that's exactly what it.
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Was let's think about those three offices we just discussed.
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How did he fail in each of them specifically?
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Well, the king became a slave. He submitted to a created beast,
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the serpent. He was supposed to crush its
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head, but instead he listened to it and obeyed.
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It and the priest. The priest let the unclean thing
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into the sanctuary. He failed to guard Shamar, the
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temple. He allowed it to be defiled.
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Yeah. The Prophet.
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The prophet, the one who was supposed to speak God's truth,
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believed a lie about God. He chose the serpent's word over
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God's word. You will be like God.
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That was the lie. And the deep irony is they were
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already like God. They were made in his image, but
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they wanted autonomy. They wanted to be like God in
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authority, deciding good and evil for themselves.
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They wanted the status of divinity without the submission
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to the Divine. So what happened to the image?
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Was it lost completely? This is a huge theological
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debate. It is, and it's a nuanced point.
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The Reformed answer is that the image was marred but not erased.
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It was defaced but not effaced. And we have biblical proof of
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that. We do Genesis 9 verse 6 which is
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long after the fall, after the flood.
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Even God still says whoever sheds the blood of man by man
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shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.
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The reason for capital punishment is that murder is an
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attack on the image of God, which is still present in fallen
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humanity. So the dignity is still there,
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the status is still there. The dignity is there, the
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structure is there. We are still rational,
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relational, creative beings, but the moral integrity is gone.
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The mirror is shattered, It's cracked and covered in grime.
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It still reflects, but the reflection is now horribly
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distorted. We are bent inward on ourselves.
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We use our king power to exploit.
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We use our prophet power to lie and deceive.
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This leaves humanity in just a desperate spot.
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We have a cracked mirror and a broken covenant.
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We are failed kings and defiled priests.
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Which is why the rest of the Old Testament is basically a long
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search for the true man, the true Adam, who can step in and
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succeed where Adam failed, who can fulfill the terms of the
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covenant. Enter the second Adam.
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Jesus Christ, Colossians 1.15 calls him the image of the
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invisible God. He is the perfect image.
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He is what Adam was supposed to be.
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He's the archetype. And where the first Adam failed
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in a perfect garden. The last Adam succeeded in the
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barren wilderness. It's this beautiful, deliberate
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symmetry of Scripture. Jesus comes and faces the exact
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same categories of temptation, autonomy, power, testing God,
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and he obeys perfectly. He keeps the covenant of works
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on our behalf. He's the true king who crushes
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the serpent's head, the true priest who cleanses the temple,
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the true prophet who speaks only the Father's words.
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Yes. So redemption isn't just about,
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you know, a punch card forgiveness.
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It's not just Jesus paid the fine for my sins.
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It is about restoration. It's about restoring the Imago
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day. That's it.
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Colossians 3 point 10s is that in Christ?
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We are being renewed in knowledge after the image of our
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Creator. Ephesians 4.24 says we are
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putting on the new self created after the likeness of God and
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true righteousness and holiness. Those are the exact things we
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lost, the Westminster Confession said.
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We were originally made in knowledge, righteousness, and
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holiness. Exactly.
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Salvation is God the Son picking up the pieces of the shattered
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mirror and by his Spirit putting it back together again.
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He's making us truly human again.
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Sin makes us subhuman. Grace restores our humanity.
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And this is where justification fits in, because Christ's
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perfect obedience, his success as our representative priest
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king, is credit to us by faith. We get his perfect record.
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The Father looks at those who are in Christ and he sees the
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perfect image. He sees the second Adam.
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OK, I want to pivot now to the So what of all this?
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We are not just doing abstract theology in a classroom.
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This doctrine touches on the deepest cultural battles of our
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day. Let's talk about the rival
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accounts of what a human is. You're right, there are really 2
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main views fighting for supremacy in our culture.
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You've got the Genesis view and you've got the materialist.
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View and materialism says that man is just matter, plus time,
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plus chance. We're just smart apes.
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We're cosmic accidents. And if that's true, then human
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value is completely subjective. You are only valuable if you are
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useful to society or if you are wanted by someone more powerful.
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If you contribute to the economy, great.
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If you can't, you are expendable.
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But Genesis says man is a deliberate special creation.
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Which makes human value objective and intrinsic.
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It's not based on your utility, your IQ, your physical ability,
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or your economic output. It's based on the stamp of the
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Creator. You matter because God made you
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in his image. Period.
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End of story. And this leads directly to the
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battle over the sanctity of life, things like abortion and
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euthanasia. It has to.
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If a human being is a statue of the king, then to intentionally
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destroy an innocent human life at any stage from conception to
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natural death is a direct attack on the king.
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It's defacing royal property. In the ancient world, that was
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high treason. So it doesn't matter if the baby
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in the room is unplanned or if the elderly person in the
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hospital is a burden to the healthcare system.
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Their value is not derived from those things, it's derived from
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their ontology. They bear the image.
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To strike them is to strike God in effigy.
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Then there's the issue of autonomy versus stewardship.
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The modern creed, you hear it everywhere, is I belong to
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myself. My body, my choice.
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I define my own truth. I have the right to determine my
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own identity. But the.
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Biblical creed is the complete opposite.
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You are not your own. You were bought with a price.
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You are a created being. You belong to your Creator and
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your Redeemer, and the danger of the modern view, what you could
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call power ethics, is that if God does not define us, the
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strong will inevitably define the weak.
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If there is no transcendent standard for human value, then
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might makes right. That is always how it plays out
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in history. The image of God is actually the
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greatest protection for the weak and marginalized.
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It levels the playing field. The CEO and the janitor are
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equal in dignity without that theological anchor.
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The CEO is worth more because he generates more capital with it.
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They are brothers, both made in the King's image.
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I want to use that framework from our source material to
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close out this application section head, heart and hands.
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How do we actually live this doctrine out?
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OK, let's start with the head. Intellectually, we need to
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believe the history and the theology.
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We have to consciously reject the Gnostic idea that our bodies
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are just prisons for our real selves.
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We need to affirm the goodness of the material creation.
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We need to think rightly about our origins.
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And heart. This feels like it's about
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repentance. It is.
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It's about repentance of partiality.
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Racism is a direct assault on the image of God, The book of
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James says. You cannot bless God in one
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breath and cursed men who are made in the likeness of God in
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the next. You can't look down on someone
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because of their ethnicity or their social status or their
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disability. It's about finding our security
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in our received identity, not our achieved identity.
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That is so freeing. You don't have to hustle to
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prove you matter. You matter because God declared
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that you matter when he made you.
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It kills both pride and despair. And finally, hands.
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What does this look like in action?
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We. Protect the vulnerable.
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We fight for the unborn, we care for the elderly.
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We welcome the disabled. And evangelism.
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Evangelism is not just trying to get people to join your
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religious club, it is telling people who they really are.
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That's a powerful reframe. It is.
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You're telling them they are displaced royalty.
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They are sons and daughters of the king who have forgotten
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their names and are living in the mud of the pigs die.
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You're showing them the way home.
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That changes how you view your neighbors.
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They aren't projects to be fixed, but broken statues that
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need restoration by the master artists.
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It changes everything. It changes how you talk to the
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cashier at the grocery store, how you treat your spouse when
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you're angry, how you view the homeless person on the corner.
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As we wrap this up, let's try to summarize the coherent vision
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we've seen today in Genesis I. Think it's like a three legged
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stool. The image gives us our dignity.
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We are royalty. The dominion mandate gives us
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our vocation, We have a purpose and the male and female design
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gives us our order. We have a complementarity.
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And if you take away any one of those legs, the whole stool just
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falls over. The modern world has sawed off
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all three legs and is now wondering why everything is
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collapsed into confusion and chaos.
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So the charge to you, the listener, is this don't leave
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the sanctuary of this deep dive and go back to living like
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you're a biological accident. Live as a son or daughter of the
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King. Look to Christ to clean the
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grime from the image. Let Him restore you to your true
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office of priest and king in His Kingdom.
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I think I want to leave everyone with that thought from CS Lewis.
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It fits so perfectly here. It's one of my favorites.
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He says it is a serious thing to live in a Society of possible
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gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most
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uninteresting person you talk to May 1 day be a creature which if
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you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.
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You have never met an ordinary person.
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You are interacting with potential immortals.
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And that really leaves you with a question, doesn't it?
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How does that change the way you treat the person who annoys you
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the most? That's the question to carry
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with you this week. This has been reformed thinking.
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Thanks for joining us. Race and peace.