Last week we asked, Are you made in God’s image, or is he made in yours?
Most people would scoff at this and say, of course we’re made in his image. How would he be God if he were made in ours? I agree, and yet there are many theological disagreements that boil down to “How could a good God ever do such and such?” What we may not realize in asking such questions is that we are in danger of sitting in judgment over God.
Then we ask, what does the question mean?
In Genesis 1:26-27 the Scripture reads,” Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and 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 question is answered. We are made in his image. Does that mean that God is humanoid, with flesh and blood and occasionally bad breath? No. God is without parts. God is spirit. (John 4:24)
But what of Jesus Christ? Jesus “put on” flesh at the incarnation. He took on flesh at his birth, but as an eternally existing member of the trinity he existed, and still exists, as spirit in his divine nature. He is fully man (with parts and faculties) and fully God (without parts or passions.) We’ll talk more on the hypostatic union, divine impassibility, and the trinity in more depth throughout this series.
God is eternally existent. He always was, always is, and always will be. He refers to himself as “I AM,” a declaration of divine existence. We cannot similarly declare our eternal existence as there was a time when we were not. Before God created us, we did not exist. Yet there is a permanence now to our souls. We will now exist eternally from our creation forward though only because God upholds his by his power. (Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3)
Our existence is contingent upon God. We exist because he created and sustains us. God is not contingent upon us. He does not depend on us, is not derived from us, and does not need us. We do not share these attributes with him as we depend on him, are derived from him in his act of creating us, and we need him. Our eternal existence will continue after our bodies die in either Heaven or Hell. Again, we are dependent upon God for our continued existence in either place.
So we do not share most of God’s attributes. There are yet more we will cover.
We share shadows of some. One of those is our morality. We have a knowledge of right and wrong inherently. All cultures of the world share a code of conduct based on lawful and unlawful actions. The standard of that code shifts a bit depending on time and place, yet the code remains. Why? Because we are made in the image of God. In creating us he imparted upon us a moral nature which has categories for right and wrong.
When we sin, we shift the categories and ignore what God says is right and wrong in favor of our own standard. Make no mistake, when you sin you are fully convinced that you are right in committing the action when you do it. You may feel conflicted and in anguish as you wrestle with temptation, but when you give in you have decided it is best to do the sin than to not. In these times, god is made in our image. How so? Because we call ourselves god, in a sense, by deciding we know better than God what is right and wrong.
If you feel tension with the Bible’s clear commands and yourself, the problem is not with the Bible, but with you. I’ve felt this tension and wrestled through it. Being made in the image of God, I must submit to the image maker as an image bearer. He made me, not I him.
“But wait! I have more questions!”
Next week, my friends. We are far from done. We haven’t even scratched the surface of God and his divine attributes.
