This is part 1 of a three-part series. Taken from the sermon “Lament for our Land: The Sorrow of Devaluing the Image of God” by Mark Vroegop.
Our hearts should be tuned to lament the brokenness connected to the devaluing of life so prevalent in our culture. For us to understand how to lament this loss of value, we have to first understand why this is such an important issue to our faith.
Here are three principles of what it means to be an image bearer of God.
1. Bearing God’s image is central and unique to humanity.
Genesis 1 is a helpful starting point because it records the creation of man and woman, and it identifies why that moment is so important. We see not only that Adam and Eve were created by God but that they were created in the image of God.
On the sixth day God created “living creatures according to their kinds — livestock and creeping thing and beasts of the earth” (Gen.1:24). God filled the earth with living creatures.
But the crowning display of God’s creative power comes with the creation of man and woman. The language around their creation is unique because they are unique from the rest of the creation.
26 “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.’ 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Gen.1:26-28)
Each of these verses is important:
- v. 26 — The Triune God (“us”) makes mankind in the image/likeness[1] of God and after God’s likeness, and humans are given a unique and exclusive authority over creation. Image and dominion are linked.
- v. 27 — The concept of “image” is repeated for emphasis in verse 27. “Male” and “female” are identified to emphasize that the image of God is embedded in both men and women. Please note that being an image bearer is linked to being created by God, whether male or female.
- v. 28 — Adam and Eve are blessed and commanded to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, and to have dominion. They are, in effect, to do in their world what God has done in his.
Genesis 1 establishes a very important foundation for our understanding of humanity and life. It identifies God as the creator, and it clarifies that mankind is unique from the rest of creation by virtue of what it means to be made in the image of God. Nothing else in all of creation reflects the image of God like men and women. There is something special about humanity, and it is connected to “image.”
2. The image of God makes human life valuable, even after the fall.
Now, if you know the rest of the story in Genesis, it is only two chapters later that Adam and Eve disobey God, sin enters the world, they are kicked out of the garden, and their son kills his own brother. Humanity is broken at its core because of the presence of sin. However, the image of God in mankind is not totally lost. The fall may have marred the image of God, but it does not negate the reality of the image.
Genesis 9:6 is a command given to Noah after God’s judgment through the flood. God was establishing some ethical perimeters related to life. Notice how image is connected to life:
5 “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. 6 Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”(Gen. 9:5-6)
Notice that the ethical foundation for capital punishment is the fact that man is made in the image of God. In other words, murder is wrong because there is something intrinsically valuable about the life of a human, and that value is unique from the rest of the creation. That is why euthanizing a dog may be hard, but it’s fundamentally morally different than euthanizing a human being. The reason is because a dog is not made in the image of God.
3. The image of God provides the foundation for human relationships.
In the New Testament, we see a further extension and application of this concept of image. James 3 provides a strong warning against the misuse of the tongue, and in the context of that warning, we see that James uses the image of God as the reason for prohibiting cursing.
“With it [the tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God . . . these things ought not to be so.” (James 3:9-10)
Cursing people is wrong because doing so violates the sanctity of God’s imprint on a particular human being.
Whether its physical murder or verbal assault, human beings are not permitted to treat the image of God as if it’s unimportant rather than sacred and honorable.
In the end, the image of God is something beyond all of us—something worth protecting and valuing.
Read part 2 of “What It Means to Be an Image Bearer.”
To learn more about lament, check out the sermon series Lamentations: Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy.
[1] I’m linking these terms together as essentially the same reality. There is an extensive body of literature and discussion on if there is any material difference between image and likeness. I am not convinced that there is, and I take them as synonyms.
