Genesis 1: In the Image of God

by John Upton, Executive Director

A treasure I will carry with me for the rest of my life is the montage of human faces I experienced while traveling the globe on behalf of BGAV and the Baptist World Alliance (BWA).

Imagine with me a big montage of human faces--thousands of faces. There are African faces, Middle Eastern, Asian, South Asian, Latin American, North American, European, Pacific Islanders, Indigenous people, people of all colors, all expressions. Among these people there are some we recognize: Meryl Streep, Beyoncé, Michael Jordan, Mother Teresa, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump, Nelson Mandela, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Emmett Till, Mozart, Elvis. Now, add faces of some children you know and your next-door neighbors and your grandparents, and add yourself. Add the last homeless people you saw, and then beneath the montage written in large letters imagine the words, “Human Being.”

Are we not the strangest, most various, contradictory, mysterious, dumbfounded species imaginable? What is a human being? You can ask philosophers, anthropologists, theologians, and biologists. You will get good answers from most of them, but none will be complete, and all will be different. Some folk will insist that human beings are the high point of creation while others will say our species is the virus that has sickened this planet. It is well to ask again, in this particular season as the people of God, What are human beings?

A surprising answer comes from the very first chapter of the Bible. This is not all the Bible says about us, but the first thing it says is that human beings are made in the image of God.

So, “Image of God” means what? Many ideas have been put on the table. Is it the capacity to reason, to choose, to exercise dominion, spiritual nature, the capacity for deep relationships, potential for wisdom, compassion, creativity? Is it any of that, or is it all of that? It is wonderful that the text does not define for us what it means, because it leaves us in a state of wonder to figure it out. It is up to us to discover what it means to be made, or remade, in God’s image.

Of this I am certain: if human beings are created in God’s image, then human beings are of sacred worth. They are divine mysteries deserving of dignity. So the great crime of our species is when some of us do not allow others of us the dignity that is inherent in being in the image of God.

Having said all this, it can be mighty hard to see God’s image in humankind. We have desecrated that image in us--slashed, defaced, distorted it. We have done it to others, and we do it to ourselves. With all this distortion of God’s image within and among others, it becomes difficult to believe the first truth the Bible tells about us. It is the image of God in us—all of us.

It helps me understand this truth better when I remember that Genesis 1 was probably written during the time when the people of Israel were in exile. It was a heartbreaking time--a disorienting, maddening, confusing, difficult time--much like the time in which we find ourselves. Genesis 1 is a pastoral word for them and for us saying: remember, God holds the world, the universe has order in it, and God has said of you and me, You are in my image. He went on to say, “It is good.” You and I now have to do the hard work of understanding what it means to be made and remade in the image of God. We have the hard work of restoring a sense of dignity to others and to ourselves. We have the delight of doing all this in the companionship of the one who was the very image of the invisible God among us. In Jesus, the image was not distorted. In him the news--this joy, this purity of self-giving love for God and for the world--this is what a human in the image of God looks like. Let us be transformed by this together.