Everyday Theology: What You Believe MattersНамуна

Day 5: Created in God’s Image: The Glory of Humanity

Read Genesis 1:26-31.

In Created in God’s Image, Anthony A. Hoekema discusses the Hebrew words for image and likeness, noting that tselem (image) is derived from “to carve,” as a carved likeness of an animal or person, and demuth (likeness) indicates “an image which is like us.”1 God chose to make us like Him in both form and image. You are both a picture of God and a representative of God on earth. That feels like a big responsibility, right? 

This is the truth about every person. In our world where the question, “What makes a person a person?” is a conversation in debates on abortion, slavery, or how countries have been led to genocide, defining personhood matters. Every person reflects God in their personhood, in both their form and their ability to represent God as one with intellectual reason, morality, relational capacity, and spirituality. This truth of being made in God’s image grants every person utmost dignity. 

When we view creation through God’s eyes, every person has infinite worth. They are eternal beings, just like you. We are to love them as God loves them, and we are to love ourselves as God loves us, even when they (or we) are difficult to love. 

Maybe you find your body hard to love. It may not currently do what you want or look like you want. But all God created is good. Sin has depraved us, but it has not removed God’s image from us. And for Christians, His image is progressively becoming more clear in each of us as we continue in the process of sanctification, or being made more like Him (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18). 

In Genesis 1:28, God instructed His people to “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it”  (CSB). This instruction is often called the cultural mandate. Bearing God’s image comes with responsibilities to be fruitful and multiply; building societies and filling the earth with God’s glory, and reigning over all creation and stewarding it well. The work reflects the character of God, but it is also reliant upon the Lord to yield the fruit. 

You are infinitely valuable as one made in God’s image and given great responsibility as His representative. You have valuable work to do for the kingdom. Every tribe, nation, ethnicity, and personality type was created by God. There is such beauty in the diversity of God’s creation. May we rejoice in it and rest in His kindness to make us into His image today! 

1. Anthony Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), 13.

For more of this study by author Mary Wiley, visit LifeWay.com/EverydayTheology.