Is our image shattered?

ZekeO Dec 11, 2007

There is this scripture:

~~[i]~~Gen 1:26 And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
[/i]

It says that we are created in the image of God. So my questions are :

1)Does this still hold true for someone who is outside of Christ? i.e. For man to reflect Gods image does he have to be in Christ?

2)What is the image that man received from God?

sermonindex Dec 12, 2007

Hi Zeke,

To your questions:
1)Does this still hold true for someone who is outside of Christ? i.e. For man to reflect Gods image does he have to be in Christ?

I believe there is much about unsaved man which is still like God.

Our perception that man is horribly disfigured (not that he isn't) comes from a Roman theology which adds works to the death of Christ. The unwritten message is: sin is so bad, even with all your works, and the laid-down life of the Son of God, there is no remedy for sin. Your best hope is purgatory... and that's for a long long time.

Whereas, the ancient (latterly Celtic) gospel sees that Christ was triumphant over sin, the devil and death, and has delivered to us a glorious victory through which the image of God can be restored in man by the work of the Spirit, as we gaze upon our Saviour. (I know we have to walk in the works He has designed for us, but by then, we have been saved by grace through faith.)

2)What is the image that man received from God?

This is a great question. Custance has quite a few reasonably scientific thoughts on this - including that our faces are reflective of both Adam and Eve - male and female.

I often think of God's love, and how it is mirrored in the way a man knows how to woo a maid and desires that she should become exclusively his. There is also a world of things inside the human body, which reflect aspects of God's nature - both what we call those parts, what we attribute to them by way of significance, and what they actually do towards maintaining what we call 'health'. An interesting one is the ability to heal, which is a very distinct function of ~~[u]~~life[/u].

philologos Dec 21, 2007

1. The prohibition of murder is based on the fact that man is in the image of God, so there is clearly a relic of that image in human beings. However the image is marred and the only hope of the glory intended for man is 'Christ in you, the hope of glory'. This is an ongoing miracle of metamorphosis, being changed, into the 'same image' ie Christ.

The 'new man', created in regeneration, is an event miracle and a continuing process; Col 3:10 says the new man is constantly being 'renewed in knowledge according to the image of him that created him'.

2. 'the image and likeness' of God was the original specification for the human race. This clearly has to do with quality rather than quantity. One of the elements of the creation narrative is 'according to its kind' and there is something about the nature of man that distinguished him from both angels and animals. He was created with a capacity to bear the image of God. This 'ability/capacity' was marred in the fall but is restored in authentic regeneration.