ANNOUNCER: What is the imago dei, or the image of God, and what does it mean that we are created in the image of God? That is our question and topic of discussion today on Grace In Focus. Thank you, friend, for joining us. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org And at faithalone.org/seminary, you can find out about our online seminary, Grace Evangelical Theological Seminary. You can earn an MDiv degree without cost by maintaining high academic standards, and that is thanks to our generous donors. If you’ve already applied, registration is still open for the fall semester through August 16th. So come back and study with us again this fall, get what you need at faithalone.org/seminary. 

Now with today’s question and answer, here are Bob Wilkin and David Renfro. 

BOB: Here’s a question that’s often asked. In Latin, it’s called the imago dei. Dei is short for Deus, or God, and imago sounds like image. And it’s the expression, the image of God. What does it mean that men and women have been created in the image of God? And this is from Genesis chapter one, isn’t it? 

DAVID: One verse 26, the creation account, it says, “Then God said, let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, 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.” 

BOB: Okay, so there’s multiple things going on here. Number one is the creation mandate is involving both genders, male and female. And that both genders are in the image of God. They’re both to have dominion over the earth, and over the cattle, and over the fish, and over the birds, and over the entire earth. And a lot of things that are going on today with 50 genders, or 20 genders, or 10 genders, or how many genders.

DAVID: Make up a number, it doesn’t matter. 

BOB: Whatever number they have, it’s contrary to God’s creation and His creation mandate. But the question and notice it says “us,” let us make man in our own image. A lot of people suggest, here we’re getting an illusion to the Trinity, right? God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Other people, I think Michael Heiser suggested that the “us” here refers to the heavenly court. So this would be the Trinity and the unfallen angels, or the Trinity and all of the angels, because it appears, and this is a whole other question. When did Lucifer and the angels fall? I think it’s Psalm 139 that says all of the angels rejoiced, all of the sons of God rejoiced at the creation. That sounds like Lucifer and the fallen angels had not yet fallen. And so a lot of people think the fall occurred somewhere between day one and day six. That that’s when they fell, and then you get the serpent tempting them after the angelic fall. 

But in any case, when it says all of us make man in our own image, that could include the angels, but it for sure includes the Trinity. And so what does it mean to be in the image of God? Is this a physical thing? In other words, we look like God? 

DAVID: Or the way some TV preachers say God looks like us. To me that that almost smacks of paganism. 

BOB: Well, it does. Now it is true, of course, that one of the three persons of the Godhead has arms and legs. Remember in Genesis 18, he actually eats food with Abraham, and he’s with two other angels. And the angels not only appear to have bodies, but they have bodies. And part of the reason we know this in Genesis 6, some of the angels intermarried with women. And 2 Peter chapter 2 brings this out. But to say that man was created in our image, God the Father has no body. God the Holy Spirit has no body. And so it really wouldn’t be our image. It would be His image, Jesus’ image, if we said it was physical. So I don’t think the image of God is physical, even though Jesus is human, of course. Jesus is Jewish. So I don’t think he’s going to have blonde hair and blue eyes, or had blonde hair and blue eyes, or has blonde hair and blue eyes. Because most Jews don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes. 

DAVID: So are you disputing the TV preachers? Is that what you’re saying? 

BOB: I tell you that guy is off a little bit. I would say the image of God refers to our nature, and it would include multiple things. One of the things is that we were created to manifest God’s character and His nature. And before we fell, we did that. 

ANNOUNCER: The Grace Evangelical Society’s recently published Old Testament Commentary, Volume One is now available. Find it at faithalone.org/store. It’s where you can also find Bob Wilkin’s latest book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege, as well as many other titles by Grace Evangelical Society authors. Please come by and have a look today. You’ll find the GES store at our website, faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org/store. Now back to today’s topic.

BOB: Now, after the fall, the God’s image in us was marred. It was not eliminated, but it was marred by the fall. But I think it’s more than simply God has made us to where we can be manifesting the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. And God has two kinds of attributes, communicable and incommunicable. And His communicable attributes are things like, He’s loving, He’s kind, He’s just. We can be all those things. Now, the ones He can’t communicate to us are things like, He knows all things, He’s omniscient. He’s omnipresent, we can’t be that way, He’s present everywhere. He’s omnipotent, we can’t be that. But His other attributes, we can manifest, but because of the fall, we do those things in a limited sense. 

But I think another aspect of the image of God that’s not talked about enough is even brought out in the passage you’re talking about. God is creative, He created. 

DAVID: And created out of nothing. 

BOB: Out of nothing, everything, right? He created the planets, He created the stars, He created all the life on earth, animal life, plant life. He created humans, and He created the whole plan for the future. And even though Adam and Eve sinned, that plan includes the second member of the Trinity dying on the cross in our place and redeeming people and making it possible so that anyone can be saved by simply believing in Him and have eternal life. And He’s going to come again and establish His kingdom, and all of that is a manifestation of God’s creativity. 

And I think certain genres of literature I like, I like action books or movies. I like suspense, mystery, I like ones that are romantic, comedic stuff is meaningful to me. And I love sci-fi, right? Sci-fi is very interesting. All of that manifests man’s creativity. And when you look at how much knowledge is increasing, I think they say it used to take like a thousand years for knowledge to double. And now knowledge is doubling every ten years or something. 

DAVID: I was going to say ten minutes. But we have this new thing called AI. 

BOB: But what is, what we’re not going to go there because that’s a whole other show. DAVID: But what I love is the AI of course stands for artificial intelligence, artificial. Yeah. Does that mean it’s not real intelligence? I don’t know. 

BOB: I don’t know. But movies that used to have computers taking over like iRobot or Terminator or these kinds of things, it’s becoming scarier. Of course, we know God won’t allow that. But if you have a godless worldview, then yeah, the world could destroy itself. We could have, you know, all these people talking about climate change or now, I saw recently Al Gore was talking about global warming again. I thought we gave up on global warming. That’s why we call it climate change because other people say no, no, we’re going toward an ice age. And then they say, well, no, no, anything can be considered climate change. Like if it’s a, if it’s a flood, if it’s a tornado, if it’s a hurricane, whatever it is, that’s all climate change. 

DAVID: Well, yeah, and I would have to agree with climate change. But their definition of climate change is global warming. Let me, let me give you an answer about another viewpoint on this image of God. 

BOB: Do you want to come back to what we’re supposed to be talking about? 

DAVID: I know that’s shocking. Two of my professors, Old Testament professors said that it is better. One of them is Eugene Merrill. 

BOB: Is the other Waltke? Bruce Waltke. 

DAVID: Yeah, and I don’t know if Alan Ross goes along with this. 

BOB: I wish I had Bruce Waltke. 

DAVID: Oh, he was something else. But they come out with the teaching that it should not be translated, “let us make man in our image.” They studied it in the Hebrew, and the Hebrew allows this. You could say you could translate it. Let us make man as our image. In other words, we’re going to set up man to be our image. And the illustration I give is, if you were going down the ancient Near East version of an interstate, okay? And you see this image of somebody. What that means is that that person that is represented by that image has sovereignty in that area. And so what my profs say is that’s what we are here. We represent God’s sovereignty in the physical universe. And I think that’s reflected here in verse 26. Let them have dominion over the fish and so on. In other words, 

BOB: Because they’re representatives of the sovereign. 

DAVID: Yes, we’re God’s statues. We represent God’s sovereignty, even though we’re sinful, we represent God’s rule on the earth. 

BOB: So believers, Christians, should be a manifestation of God to the unbelieving world. And even to a limited extent, unbelievers are still in the image of God. It’s not been destroyed in them. That’s why unbelievers can do good things. In other words, if you’ve ever met Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses or Catholics, they can be very moral people. And they can be very nice people. And we need to remember that they’re still in the image of God. And that’s one of the reasons why they can hear and understand, is because the Holy Spirit can work in those who are in the image of God. 

All right. Well, very good. Well, thank you, David. And thank you all. And let’s remember to keep grace in focus. 

ANNOUNCER: Be our guest and subscribe to our 48-page magazine, 6 issues per year also called Grace in Focus, by emailing your name and snail mail address to GES@faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org. On this program, we keep our requests for financial partners to a minimum. But if you’re interested in becoming a financial partner with Grace in Focus, you can find out how to do that at faithalone.org.

On our next episode: join us again for a discussion of the word “day” in Genesis. And how long is that day? We’ll see you next time, and let’s keep grace in focus.