What Does It Mean to Be Made in God’s Image?
When Scripture says that God made us in His image, it gives us a reason to protect human life even when caring for someone is difficult or inconvenient. A person’s worth does not disappear because he can no longer earn a living or because other people have rejected him. His life belongs to the God who made him.
That same truth puts me under God’s authority. I cannot claim the honor of being made in His image while acting as though He has no right to tell me how to live. Genesis explains both the dignity God gave mankind and the responsibility that came with it. The fall damaged our relationship with Him, but it did not make us less than human or remove our need to answer to our Creator.
God Is Spirit
Before deciding how we resemble God, we need to be clear about His nature. Jesus said:
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
Bearing God’s image does not mean that our bodies reproduce His physical features. God can reveal Himself through visible appearances, and Scripture describes Him in language we can understand, but His divine nature is not a human body.
God made us to know Him and respond to Him. We can understand instruction, reason about what is right, and communicate with one another, so we are responsible for how we use those abilities. I can tell the truth or deliberately deceive someone, and God holds me accountable for that choice. Our relationships and creativity also belong under His direction, along with the rule He entrusted to mankind over the creatures.
We should not turn those abilities into a test of someone’s worth. A person who cannot speak or reason as well as I can has not lost God’s image, and making his dignity depend on what he can demonstrate would leave the most vulnerable people without protection. He is human because God made him human, even when he depends on others for every aspect of his care.
Neither does bearing His image make us divine. We are creatures who depend on Him, not fragments of God or little gods with authority of our own. We were made to worship Him, and honoring the people He created must never become an excuse for putting humanity in His place.
Image and Likeness
Genesis introduces mankind’s creation with God’s declaration: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” The following verses show that both men and women received that honor and were given responsibility within His creation.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
The Hebrew word tselem, translated image, can describe a representation or likeness. Demuth also speaks of likeness or resemblance. Here the words describe people made to represent God and resemble Him as His creatures. They do not erase the difference between His divine nature and our human nature.
Ancient kings used images and monuments to display their authority. An Assyrian monument portraying Ashurnasirpal II, for example, depicts the king holding a mace that symbolizes his authority. Genesis gives the honor of bearing God’s image to humanity, including both men and women. It is not a distinction reserved for a ruler or a priest.
God gave that dignity before there were nations or governments, long before Israel received its civil law. A government may acknowledge and protect human worth, but it cannot claim to have created what God had already given. Wealth and education do not make one person more human than another, and losing social approval cannot erase the honor of being made in His image.
Dominion Under God
God’s declaration about His image includes the charge to rule over the creatures. That dominion is a stewardship: responsibility for something that belongs to someone else. God owns the world, so the people He appointed to care for it must answer to Him for what they do with it.
Ordinary work belongs within that responsibility. Cultivating the earth was part of man’s calling before sin made his labor painful and frustrating. The work itself was not the curse. We can still use our abilities to care for what God has entrusted to us, whether that means tending land, repairing a home, or supervising work that other people depend on. Careless workmanship and dishonest leadership harm the people who rely on us.
A ruler who exploits his subjects misuses authority that should be exercised under God. Responsibility in a home gives a parent or a husband no right to be cruel, either. Crushing a child or abusing a wife cannot be defended as godly dominion. The person exercising authority must answer to God for how he treats those in his care, including when honesty or a just decision would cost him money or damage his reputation.
Stewardship also rules out treating the earth as ours to ruin. We can use its resources without being wasteful or indifferent to the damage we cause. Animals are part of God’s creation, so refusing to worship them is no excuse for treating them cruelly. Our responsibility is to use the abilities God gave us for good, with respect for what belongs to Him.
The authority God gave mankind did not make us independent of Him. Genesis 2 describes how Adam received his life:
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
God formed Adam’s body from dust and gave him life. Adam owed both his existence and his ability to act to his Maker. The same dependence holds for us: our physical life and the strength with which we work are gifts from Him. We have no grounds for treating that strength as an achievement of our own.
God created us as whole persons, with bodies through which we live and act. Our thoughts and our fellowship with Him cannot be reduced to physical processes, but our bodies are not meaningless shells to be disregarded, either. Body and soul belong to Him. Judging someone only by appearance or productivity overlooks the person God made and the dependence on Him that all of us share.
The Image Remains After the Fall
The people God made to represent Him rebelled against Him. In Genesis 3, the serpent tempted Eve, and both she and Adam disobeyed God. They became ashamed and tried to hide from Him. Their disobedience damaged their relationship with God and with each other. God pronounced judgment on them, and life in the world He had made good would now include pain, frustrating toil, and death.
Human abilities could now be used against the One who gave them. We can reason our way into an excuse for something we know is wrong, or use speech to deceive a person who trusts us. Authority can become a means of exploitation, while worship is directed toward idols instead of the Creator. Sin has corrupted how we live as His image-bearers, but we have not ceased to be human.
Bearing God’s image cannot be equated with being right with Him. Fallen people retain their human dignity while remaining spiritually dead and needing reconciliation, the restoration of a right relationship with God. Calling sin a failure to reach our potential does not adequately describe our condition. We have rebelled against our Creator, and we need forgiveness and the new birth through Jesus Christ.
Genesis 9 makes clear that the fall did not remove God’s image from mankind. After the Flood, God explained to Noah why shedding human blood was such a serious offense:
“Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.”
God grounded the protection of human life in His own act of creation. He did not make it depend on a person’s usefulness or his neighbors’ approval. Murder destroys the life of someone made in His image, so the offense is against the Creator as well as the person who has been killed.
An unborn child does not have to prove that he will become useful before his life deserves protection. An elderly person whose memory is failing has not become expendable because caring for him requires patience. The same dignity belongs to someone living in poverty or with a disability, even when other people overlook him. It extends to a stranger we know nothing about and even to an enemy who has deliberately harmed us.
A person convicted of a crime and imprisoned still bears God’s image. Recognizing his humanity does not excuse what he did, and the very verse that appeals to God’s image also calls for judgment against the murderer. Scripture requires us to respect human life and hold people accountable for taking it. We can pursue lawful justice while refusing to treat the guilty as less than human or to take vengeance into our own hands.
The Tongue Test
Most of us would agree that murder is wrong, but James brings God’s image into conduct we may be much quicker to excuse. He addresses people who praise God and then use the same mouth to curse someone God made.
With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.
The word translated “similitude” means likeness. James is speaking about people living long after the fall, yet he still identifies them by their likeness to God. I cannot praise their Creator and then speak as though the people He made are worthless.
Gossip can be particularly cruel because the person being discussed often has no opportunity to answer. If I repeat someone’s failure for the satisfaction of making him look foolish, being accurate about the failure does not excuse what I am doing with it. Sarcasm can become just as ugly when the enjoyment comes from humiliating someone. James’s rebuke reaches those words as well as an openly abusive outburst.
We still need to expose deception and give a firm reprimand when someone has done wrong. Reproof and church discipline are biblical duties, and there are times when a quiet, agreeable response would be irresponsible. But I do not have to despise a person to confront his sin. If I use defending the truth as an excuse to be cruel, I am disregarding the truth James has put before me.
Christ the True Image
Our conduct often gives a distorted impression of the God we were made to represent. To see Him revealed perfectly, we need to look to Jesus Christ. Paul identifies the Son this way:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Some have taken firstborn to mean that Jesus was the first being God created. But the next two verses say that all things were created through Him and for Him, and that He existed before them all. Paul is describing the Son’s rank and inheritance over creation. Calling the Son creation’s Maker rules out making Him one of its creatures. The Son is eternal and fully God.
The eternal Son became fully man without ceasing to be God, and He lived without sin. Hebrews 1:3 describes Him as the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person. He has always revealed the Father perfectly, and in becoming man He made God known through a real human life. His authority was never an excuse to exploit someone, and His compassion never required Him to pretend that sin was acceptable. In Him we see the obedience to God that our own lives have failed to reflect.
I cannot undo my sin by making a better effort to imitate Jesus; I need Him to save me. He lived without sin and willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Wicked men tortured and crucified Him, but the Father did not punish or abandon Him. Father and Son remained united in this work of redemption. His sacrifice was complete through His shed blood and death, before His burial and bodily resurrection. The perfect Man redeems sinful men and women by grace through faith; no amount of self-improvement can make us acceptable to God.
Renewed Into His Image
God genuinely offers salvation to every person, though His offer can be resisted and rejected. We receive it through repentance and faith in Christ. God justifies us, meaning He declares us righteous before Him. That acceptance is not a reward for our good works. We are also regenerated, or genuinely born again: the Holy Spirit gives us new life, comes to dwell in us, and seals us as God’s own for the day of redemption. God keeps His children forever, and His purpose for them includes becoming like His Son. Paul explains:
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.
Paul describes the goal God appointed beforehand for His people: they are to be conformed to His Son. I do not understand this as forcing people to believe or denying others a genuine opportunity to receive salvation. Becoming like Christ does not mean becoming divine or ceasing to be human. It means learning to obey God and reflect Christ’s character instead of defending the conduct from which He saved us. If I have been using lies to protect my reputation, I cannot dismiss that dishonesty because I now call myself a Christian. God’s work in me should become evident in my willingness to confess the deceit and speak truthfully when it costs me something.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul explains how the Spirit brings about that change:
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
Earlier in the chapter, Paul recalls Moses’ veiled face and explains that the veil is taken away when a person turns to the Lord. Through Christ we can know God, and the Holy Spirit changes us as we look to the Lord in faith. We behold Him as Scripture reveals Him, rather than inventing a religious picture in our minds. The Spirit uses the Word to expose sin we have rationalized and to give us the comfort and strength we need to obey. That obedience is evidence of genuine new birth. We have not become sinless, and our obedience neither earns nor keeps salvation.
Ephesians 4:24 describes the new man as created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. Colossians 3:10 speaks of renewal in knowledge according to the Creator’s image. The person who was already made in God’s image is now being renewed through Christ. Salvation has not made him more human than his unbelieving neighbor; it has reconciled him to God and begun changing how he lives.
Image, Ownership, and Allegiance
Because we belong to God, no human authority can acquire His right to our worship. Jesus addressed the limits of Caesar’s claim when people tried to trap Him with a question about taxes. He asked them to show Him the tax money, then drew their attention to the coin itself.
And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Jesus upheld the payment of what was due to Caesar without giving Caesar the things that belonged to God. Reading His answer alongside Genesis, I believe we can also apply the comparison to ourselves: the coin carried Caesar’s image, but we bear God’s. A ruler’s right to collect taxes does not give him ownership of the people paying them or the right to demand their worship.
We should honor lawful civil authority, but we cannot let it usurp God’s authority. A government has no right to decide that some human beings are beneath protection, require us to do what God forbids, or forbid what He commands. Respect for an office does not require obedience when its holder demands rebellion against our Creator.
Revelation 13 describes a future demand that goes far beyond collecting taxes or maintaining public order. A second beast directs the world to worship the first beast and tells people to make an image of it. John then describes the power given to this second beast:
He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.
People made in God’s image will be ordered to worship an image set up against Him. The surrounding verses describe restrictions on buying and selling, so economic pressure will enforce that false worship alongside the threat of death. I understand this passage as a future warning, not an invitation to identify every new political or financial development as its fulfillment.
A ruler’s power to punish refusal gives him no right to the worship we owe God. The threat of death cannot make idolatry right. I should not wait for a ruler to threaten my life before deciding that my allegiance belongs to my Creator.
My Final Thoughts
If I believe that people bear God’s image, I need to treat them accordingly, including those whose care is inconvenient and those whose actions have angered me. That does not prevent me from confronting sin or seeking justice. It does prevent me from deciding that someone is beneath the respect owed to a human being. And because bearing God’s image does not reconcile us to Him, respecting a person also means being willing to tell him about the Savior who forgives sinners and makes us new.