The word “image” has great currency in our day. It is used in two senses. First, image can mean likeness or resemblance, as in a photograph or painting. A second and overlapping sense of image is what people seek to project about themselves to others. For example, a new phenomenon is the online dating profile that people use to connect with potential romantic partners. Numerous websites give tips for how to project a desirable image, which may or may not bear much resemblance to the reality of who you are. Image in this context is everything.
Intriguingly, the Bible uses “image” to characterize human identity in relation to God. According to the Bible, human beings are spiritual beings, capable of a close relationship with God who is Spirit (cf. John 4:24). This is nowhere more evident than in the declaration that we are made in the image and likeness of God, something stated no less than five times in the opening chapters of Genesis (1:26, 27 [2x]; 5:1; 9:6). It is to the meaning of this intriguing expression that we now turn. In what sense do human beings made in the image of God resemble God? What is it that we reflect of him?
Almost all theologians agree that “the image of God is foundational to the biblical concept of humanness.”1 But to what does it refer? Is the image of God an attribute, such as reason or conscience? Or is it our capacity for relationships with God and other human beings? Or is it the task of representing God in having dominion over the rest of creation? Is it all of the above, a combination of the above, or none of the above?
“Human beings are not only sentient but sapient, able not only to have sensations and experiences but to reflect on and interpret them. What distinguishes homo sapiens from other creatures is rationality.”
Kevin Vanhoozer2
We begin our enquiry with the first occurrences of the expression in the Bible:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Gen 1:26–28)
As regards the two main terms, “image” (Hebrew tselem) and “likeness” (Hebrew demut) do not appear to be significantly different. If in 1:26 mankind is made in the “image” and “likeness” of God, the parallel statement in 1:27 only mentions being made in the “image” of God. And later biblical references use “image” and “likeness” interchangeably (e.g., “image” in Gen 9:6; “likeness” in Gen 5:1; Jas 3:9). Together and apart, “image” and “likeness” denote the same concept. The GNT translates the two phrases: “They will be like us and resemble us” (Gen 1:26).
“That strange verse in the first chapter of Genesis, ‘in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,’ is meaningless by the standards of positivism or the higher criticism. It is unfalsifiable, undemonstrable, and dependent on terms for which we have no stable definitions. It is dependent as well on a conception of God that compels reverence and will make us reverent of one another. It tells us every essential thing about who we are and what we are, and what we are a part of. It is ontology. It is metaphysics.”
Marilynne Robinson3
Genesis makes it clear that “mankind” in the image of God includes both males and females. The same point is repeated in Genesis 5:2. All people, including both sexes, have the status of bearing God’s image.
As a general rule, there are two things that matter most when it comes to biblical interpretation: context and usage. Together they are the points of reference to look to when understanding a text is difficult. And appeal to context and usage are the best arguments in favor of a particular interpretation. By context I mean both literary context, the place in which the expression in question appears in the text, and historical context, the associations that attach to the expression in the cultural environment in which the text was written. By usage, I mean the way in which the expression functions in other parts of the Bible.
So what does it mean that we are made in the image and likeness of God? In the literary context of Genesis 1, the image of God is connected to humanity’s role of ruling over creation. In 1:26 God makes mankind in his image and likeness “so that they may rule” over the other creatures in God’s world. And in 1:27–28 the males and females are created in God’s image in order “to fill the earth and subdue it” and to “rule over” it.
Some of the background to the notion of an image in the ancient world ties in with this function. In terms of historical context, kings were thought to be the living image of a god and to embody the divine rule, the pharaohs of Egypt being a clear example.4 And in the ancient Near East, an image or statue of a king was a visible representation of the monarch’s rule. Thus, both the context in Genesis 1 and use in the world of Genesis suggest that image language is associated with humanity’s rule over creation on God’s behalf, perhaps with some royal connotations.
“ ‘Image’ describes a relationship between God and humans such that ādām can be described as a servant king.”
Peter Gentry5
What about usage? The next mention of the image of God in Genesis is in 5:1–3.6 If the context of humanity made in the image of God in Genesis 1 suggests that having dominion over creation as God’s vice-regent is associated with the concept, the usage of “image and likeness” in Genesis 5 defines it as the language of family relationship:
This is the written account of Adam’s family line.
When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. (Gen 5:1–3)
Genesis 5:1–2 contains a clear allusion to the creation of mankind in the image of God in Genesis 1:26–28. Both texts use the language of the “creation” of “mankind” as “male and female” in “the likeness of God.” Genesis 5:3 describes Adam’s son Seth in language that echoes the creation of the first humans: “Adam . . . had a son in his own likeness, in his own image.” As his offspring, Seth bears the image and likeness of his father Adam. According to Genesis 5:3, to be made in the image and likeness of someone is to be their son.7
John Calvin does not specifically equate the image of God with being a child of God. However, as Julie Canlis notes: “In the garden, Adam is portrayed by Calvin as the loving son, surrounded with signs of the ‘paternal goodness’ of God. . . . Adam has no fear at the sight of God, whom he is able to identify as Father.”8
Two texts in the New Testament supply further support for the view that human beings are children of God by virtue of being made in the image of God. First, in Paul’s Areopagus address in Acts 17, he cites the Greek poet Aratus (Phaenomena 5) approvingly in saying that “we are his [God’s] offspring [genos]” (Acts 17:28). Given that Paul elsewhere teaches that Israel and Christian believers are sons of God by adoption (e.g., Rom 9:4; Gal 3:26–4:5), it is indeed striking that Paul here affirms that all human beings are children of God. However, as Calvin observes, “The word ‘sons’ can be diversely taken,” and for Paul there is a sense in which “all mortal men are called sons in general.”9 We will return to the theme of sonship in biblical theology in chapter eight, “Known in Christ, the Son of God.”
For now it is significant that several commentators appeal to the image of God as the basis for Paul’s insistence in Acts 17 that all human beings are part of the family of God. For example, David Peterson writes: “God’s commitment to bless ‘all peoples on earth’ through Abraham’s offspring (Gn. 12:3, lit. ‘all the families of the earth’) shows the Creator’s continuing care and concern for everyone made in his image and likeness (Gn. 1:26–27).”10 And perhaps it is no accident that Paul moves in Acts 17:29 to talk of images: “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.”
Secondly, and even more significantly, the conclusion of the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:38 runs: “The son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” The list of people through whom Jesus descended begins with the intimation that Jesus “was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph” (Luke 3:23). The genealogy includes some thirty-seven names, noting the fathers of each. At the end of the list, the reference to Adam as the son of God, as Joel Green writes, “presents the divine origin of the human race and indicates Jesus’s solidarity with all humanity.”11 Several commentators including Geldenhuys, Bock, and Ryken link, correctly in my view, Adam’s divine sonship with being made in the image of God.12
The main argument that the image of God marks human beings as sons of God is the usage of “image and likeness” language in Genesis 5 to denote family relationship, the identification of Adam as the son of God in Luke 3:38, and humanity as “the offspring of God” in Acts 17.
In terms of usage, there is good evidence for taking the image of God to refer to human beings as children or sons of God. However, this conclusion does not overturn the centuries of Christian reflection on the nature of the image of God. As John Dickson, Simon Smart, and Justine Toh insist, the status of being a child of God made in his image is the basis for our task of ruling the earth:
This familial dimension of the concept of the image of God accords well with the motif of representative dominion, since children, especially sons, were indeed thought of as subordinate representatives of their fathers, deriving both status and wealth from them.13
Stephen G. Dempster rightly points out that both the royal and sonship connotations of the image of God in Genesis are echoed throughout the Old Testament in the portrayals of Abraham, Moses’s descent at Sinai, David, Solomon, and Israel as a whole.14 God’s adoption of King David and his dynasty as his sons (see 2 Sam 7:14–15) forges a clear link between the role of the king and divine sonship.
Gavin Ortlund is correct in affirming that, rather than replacing the traditional views, the metaphor of fathering as creating can be seen as “supplementing and potentially unifying them. . . . A child is like his father, represents his father, bears many of his father’s characteristics.”15 Indeed, the “son of [something]” is regularly used in the Bible as an idiom for reflecting someone’s essential characteristics. For example, in 2 Kings 6:32 NASB a “son of a murderer” is a murderer; in Isaiah 19:11 NASB a “son of the wise” is a wise counselor; and in Mark 3:17 Jesus gives James and John “the name Boanerges, which means ‘sons of thunder,’ ” to refer to their passionate and volatile nature.
For our purposes, recognizing the sonship dimension to the image of God has great potential for a more unified biblical theology of personal identity. The image of God has been rightfully used to insist on the value and significance of all human beings and as the grounds for the just treatment of all people.16 However, this ethical use of the image of God needs to be supplemented with a biblical-theological use. Our very identity as human beings is tied up with being children of God made in the image of God. And the story of redemption is one of God choosing to bless Abraham and the children of Abraham as the restored children of God.
The image of God then becomes the firm foundation for several topics that we will treat later in this book. These include the imitation of God as his beloved children, the adoption of believers in Christ as children of God with the full rights as heirs of God, and several strands of teaching about Jesus Christ whereby we find new life in him. Once we understand the image of God aright, sonship is seen as a central category not only for redemption but also for creation and new creation. As Henri Blocher states: “In the Son we become sons, an act of grace which fulfills and transcends our primeval quasi-sonship,”17 a reference to Adam and Eve as image bearers and children of God.
Before leaving the opening chapters of Genesis, it is worth examining more closely the manner in which our identity as God’s children was lost. Adam and Eve’s transgression was very much a crisis of identity. Much has been written about the implications of the fall concerning the damage it did to the image of God. Just as important are its ramifications for our status as God’s children.
In John 8:44–45 Jesus says of the devil, “there is no truth in him,” and describes him as “a liar and the father of lies.” Revelation 12:9 describes Satan as the one “who deceives the whole world” (NET). In this section, we compare and contrast the two most famous episodes in the Bible involving satanic deception, namely, the temptations of Adam and Eve and of Jesus.
When the serpent tempted Eve in Genesis 3:1–5, he not only told her lies; he also called God a liar:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”18
God said not to eat of the fruit of one particular tree in the garden. According to Genesis 2:17, they were not to eat from that tree for their own protection: if they eat, they will “certainly die.” Nothing in the narrative to this point has given Adam and Eve any reason to question God’s motives for this prohibition. The serpent undermines God’s word to Adam and Eve concerning the tree of knowledge of good and evil with three counterclaims, each of which tempts them to seek to establish their own autonomy and an identity independent of God: (1) you will not die; instead, (2) your eyes will be opened; and (3) you will be like God.19 Each of the three lies contained an element of truth and a tragic irony. We take them in reverse order.
First, in one sense Adam and Eve did become like God: in rebelling against him, they asserted their personal autonomy and independence from God and usurped the place of authority in their lives that God occupied. But ironically, as creatures made in the image and likeness of God, they were already “like God,” in the best sense of being his children, made in his image and likeness. In disobeying God, they forfeited the privileges associated with that status, including being known by him intimately and personally in the garden.
Secondly, Adam and Eve’s eyes were actually “opened,” but not in a good way. They saw that they were naked, but ironically this realization led to fear and shame rather than liberation (Gen 3:10–11). Prior to their transgression, “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Gen 2:25).
And thirdly, Adam and Eve did not die immediately. In fact, according to Genesis 5:5 Adam made it to 930 years of age before dying! But in a more profound and dramatic sense, they did die.20 They cut themselves off from God.
Gordon Wenham explains how the first humans experienced “death before death,” having cut themselves off from God: “In Israelite worship, true life was experienced when one went to the sanctuary. There God was present. There he gave life. But to be expelled from the camp, as lepers were, was to enter the realm of death. If to be expelled from the camp of Israel was to “die,” expulsion from the garden was an even more drastic kind of death. In this sense they did die on the day they ate of the tree: they were no longer able to have daily conversation with God, enjoy his bounteous provision, and eat of the tree of life; instead they had to toil for food, suffer, and eventually return to the dust from which they were taken.”21
In the garden, Adam and Eve were known intimately and personally by God. He knew them by name and as his children. He walked with them, conversed with them, and showed them his fatherly care, loving concern, and devoted attention. The presence of God gave the garden its life-giving power (Gen 2:7), an environment in which Adam and Eve experienced true life in knowing God and being known by him. But the serpent undermined their relationship with God by questioning God’s motives: “God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Gen 3:5). As Calvin states, Satan “charges God with malignity and envy, as wishing to deprive man of his highest perfection.”22 The serpent’s lies were designed to undermine Adam and Eve’s confidence in God and to tempt them to find their identity independently of him. In succumbing to the serpent’s lies, they turned from their Father and became disobedient children.
Turning to the New Testament, it is indeed striking that the devil’s three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness are also directly related to Jesus’s identity as God’s Son:
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ ”
Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. (Matt 4:1–11; cf. Luke 4:1–13)
The first two of Satan’s tests are prefaced with the taunt, “if you are the Son of God” (Matt 4:3, 6). Satan’s tests are designed to see whether or not Jesus will remain God’s faithful and obedient Son. What does it mean to be the Son of God? What sort of Son is Jesus? All three probe whether or not Jesus still trusts his Father in his weakened state. In response to the first temptation, to turn the stones into bread, Jesus quotes the Old Testament: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4; cf. Deut 8:3).
This same pattern is repeated with the second and third tests. In each case, Jesus quotes the Old Testament to indicate that “listening to God is that which is life-sustaining.”23
The similarities and contrasts between Genesis 3 and Matthew 4 are striking:
• Both start with temptations to do with eating, but occur in entirely different settings: one in the plenty of the garden, the other in the scarcity of the wilderness.
• Both scenes concern the truth and goodness of the word of God. If Adam and Eve deny what God said and succumb to temptation, Jesus affirms the sufficiency of God’s Word and stands firm.
• Both scenes reveal the identity of the ones being tempted. Adam and Eve are known by God intimately and personally as his children, but doubt God’s paternal goodness. Jesus, on the other hand, affirms his trust in his Father and proves himself to be God’s faithful and obedient Son. Significantly, the scene immediately preceding the temptation of Jesus in Matthew is the baptism of Jesus, which climaxes with the voice from heaven saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17).
• Both set the pattern for two different versions of what it means to be a human being. One, following Adam and Eve’s example, leads to death, as God had warned; the other sets the course for a new humanity leading to life.
To sum up, in the garden Adam and Eve believed the serpent and became rebellious sons of God, suffering “a symbolic death” as a result.24 In the wilderness Jesus passed the test and refused to believe Satan’s lies; he was indeed the Son of God (see Matt 4:1–11).
Satan continues to tell lies about the identity of human beings in our day, seeking to rob us of the life-giving blessing of being known by God as his children. These lies include:
• God wants to keep your eyes closed and stop you from realizing your potential;
• Independence from God and personal autonomy is the path to life;
• Following the desires of your heart will lead to finding your true self;
• Shutting your ears to God is the key to authentic living;
• Becoming like God will open your eyes and lead to knowing who you really are.
The two archetypal episodes of temptation in the Bible were fought over the issue of personal identity. What is a human being? Who are Adam and Eve? Who is Jesus? Should they establish their identity independently of God? Will self-assertion lead to becoming like God? Does God their Father love them or not? At root, these questions are versions of the most fundamental questions: Are Adam and Eve, and Jesus, truly “sons of God,” and if so, how should they behave?
In both cases, the lesson is that true freedom is found in knowing God as your Father, trusting his word, resisting satanic lies, and finding your identity in being known and loved by him. If Adam and Eve failed the test, Jesus Christ proved to be a faithful and obedient Son of God.
When Adam and Eve transgressed God’s word in the garden by believing the lies of the serpent, they became rebellious children of God, in spite of the fact that they were made in God’s image. They suffered death as a result. As a consequence, we also forfeited our status as God’s children and became estranged from him, no longer known by him as our Father. The contrasting case of the temptation of Jesus Christ, who withstood the lies of Satan and proved to be God’s faithful and obedient Son, gives us hope that our true identity as those known by God as his children can be restored.
1. The concept of the “image of God” is often used to explain the value and significance of all human beings. This chapter has argued that there is much more to it than that. How does a biblical-theological interpretation of the term broaden your perspective?
2. The biblical account of Adam and Eve’s transgression in the garden can be seen as a crisis of identity. Consider the list of Satan’s lies on page 88. Is your sense of identity challenged or restricted by any of these lies? How can you find freedom?
3. If we, both men and women, are now children of God through his act of grace to us in Jesus Christ, how do you see God re-creating you in the image of his Son?
1. Philip S. Johnston, “Humanity,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. D. Alexander and B. S. Rosner (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 564.
2. Kevin Vanhoozer, “Human Being, Individual and Social,” in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 160.
3. Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 171.
4. Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1–15, ed. David A. Hubbard, Glenn W. Barker, and John D. W. Watts, Word Bible Commentary 1 (Dallas: Word, 1987), 30–31.
5. Peter J. Gentry, “Kingdom through Covenant: Humanity as Divine Image,” SBJT 12.1 (2008): 28–29.
6. Gavin Ortlund observes that “there has been surprisingly little exploration of the import of Gen 5:3 for the meaning of the imago Dei” (“Image of Adam, Son of God: Genesis 5:3 and Luke 3:38 in Intercanonical Dialogue,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 57.4 (2014): 673.
7. In recent years a number of scholars have written in support of understanding the image of God in terms of sonship, including Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis (Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity Press, 1984), 89; Gentry, “Kingdom through Covenant,” 28–29; John Dickson, A Doubter’s Guide to the Bible: Inside History’s Bestseller for Believers and Skeptics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 28; G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 401; Gavin Ortlund, “Image of Adam, Son of God,” 679, 687; Graeme Goldsworthy, The Son of God and the New Creation, ed. Dane C. Ortlund and Miles V. Van Pelt, Short Studies in Biblical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 61, 67; and Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 388.
8. Julie Canlis, “The Fatherhood of God and Union with Christ in Calvin,” in “In Christ” in Paul: Explorations in Paul’s Theology of Union and Participation, ed. Michael J. Thate, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and Constantine R. Campbell (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 404.
9. John Calvin and Henry Beveridge, Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles, vol. 2 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 170.
10. David G. Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 500. See also Calvin, Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles, 170.
11. Joel Green, The Gospel of Luke, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 189.
12. Cited in Ortlund, “Image of God, Son of God,” 685.
13. John Dickson, Simon Smart, and Justine Toh, “Human to the End,” 4. Unpublished CPX document.
14. Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible, ed. D. A. Carson, NSBT 15 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 76, 106, 141, 147, 198, 202, 225.
15. Ortlund, “Image of God, Son of God,” 687.
16. See Gen 9:6: “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind,” and note Jas 3:9–10.
17. Blocher, In the Beginning, 90.
18. In the NIV’s “you will be like God” (Gen 3:5), “God” translates the Hebrew ’elohim, which is sometimes rendered “gods” (KJV, NEB, NJB) or “divine beings” (NET). Either way, the point is the same: “Satan promises them [Eve and Adam] divinity” (Calvin, Commentary upon the Acts of the Apostles, 151).
19. “You will not certainly die” (Gen 3:4) is second-person plural in Hebrew, referring to both the woman and the man. Therefore, we are justified in speaking of the temptation of both Eve and Adam.
20. Kenneth A. Mathews calls it a “symbolic death”: “They achieved isolation and fear. The couple was cut off as well from the possibility of life, the one feature of divinity for which otherwise they were destined” (Genesis 1–11:26, NAC 1A [Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996], 237).
21. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 75.
22. John Calvin and John King, Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 149–50.
23. John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), xvii. Emphasis original.
24. Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, 237.