A question that I’ve had stewing in the back of my mind is, What does it mean to be made in the Image of God? It was spoken about in the churches I grew up in, but there was never a big focus on it. If it was spoken about at all, it was our abilities as humans to be creative, make decisions, to love, etc. If our physical bodies were mentioned at all, it was that because God is spirit and therefore invisible, then the Image of God in us is in the spiritual/mental capacities that we have.
As a teenager, my grandmother suggested that, as well as my normal Bible study, to try and read through the Bible every year. I have tried to do this. I have done this in multiple translations over the years. This was just a read through, with no notes or study guides. That was part of my other Bible study. Doing this gives a big picture view of the Bible.
It was out of reading through the bible like this that my question began. Particularly as it’s recorded in Genesis 1. It falls at the end of the account of the physical creation. God has created the universe and the world. He’s created all the animals in the sea, in the air, and on the land. Then he stops and we read these 2 verses.
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
The definition of the Image of God which I’d been taught seemed true, but incomplete. What particularly struck me was the poem in verse 27. Hebrew poetry is a little different than English poetry. English poetry has a repetitive rhythm and rhyming words which fit the rhythm. Hebrew poetry has, at its simplest level, pairs or triplets of ideas which speak to the same theme. The last idea is the main one. The first 2 lines speak about being made in the Image of God, the main idea is that gender is an integral part of the Image. I couldn’t get away from the thought that what creates gender is genetics. I couldn’t get away from physicality of the Image of God in us.
In future posts, I intend to explore the question, What does it mean to be created in the Image of God? Also some of the implications of being created in the image.
A Road less travelled 