The Image of God, Part III
2021-12-24
Previous posts discussed the Image of God; here you can read Parts I and II. We now continue on with the series.
Since the sin of Adam, human beings have been a marred image of God. God created human beings “in the likeness of God” (Genesis 5:1), but before Adam had any offspring, he sinned. Then Adam “begat a son in his own likeness, after his image” (Genesis 5:3). Seth and future descendants, such as us, were in the image of Adam, the marred image of God.
Christ, the second man, the last Adam, is the real fulfillment of being in the image of God. “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45). “The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:47). He “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature” (Colossians 1:15).
We see how Jesus fulfilled what humans were supposed to be. We read this of Israel: “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images” (Hosea 11:1-2). A recounting of their sins ensues. Yet in the New Testament, we read of the young Jesus, “When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son” (Matthew 2:14-15). Jesus, the sinless Son of God, was what Israel was supposed to be.
In the Psalter, we read, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psalms 8:4). In this passage, we see that man was given dominion over the world, which is what we are told in Genesis 1. However, in the New Testament, we read, “But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Hebrews 2:6). This passage attributes the Psalm to Jesus Christ, not the sons of Adam (cf. Hebrews 2:9).
In Christ, we got more than what we could ever expect. In Adam, there is a vestige of the image of God in us. In Christ, we are “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:4).