*Starting on Monday, January 2nd, I will be posting a Bible study of the book of Acts. It will be posted in increments 5 days per week (Mon through Fri) for 13 weeks (65 posts). I wanted to announce this early, so that if you so desire, you can plan accordingly to read and study along with my lessons. On the 2nd, an index post will go up (as well as the first lesson) that will allow you to navigate more easily as the series grows in size.*
In the previous two weeks we have discussed what God's image in man is not and what it is. We saw in the post about what God's image in man is that the attributes or characteristics that God has communicated to us that make up our being made in His image have all been corrupted by the putrefying effects of sin. Today, we are going to expand on that theme by looking at the image in the Garden of Eden in creation, what happened to the image when Adam fell, and finally, how God is restoring that image in His elect Church.
Creation is where we will start. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1). As God created, things were good. Light was good (1:4); land and seas were good (1:10); vegetation was good (1:12); sun, moon, and stars were good (1:18); living creatures were good (1:25); everything He made was very good (1:31). When we look a bit closer at the creation of man we see that i) God made man in His image expressly to "have dominion" over all the animals (1:26), ii) both male and female were created in the image of God (1:27), and that iii) God blessed them in their dominion as His last act of creation on the sixth day (1:28-31).
In Genesis chapter 2 we see more specifics about the creation of man that give us some inferences about the image. Namely, that Adam was created with freedom, goodness, and rationality. His freedom is evident in 2:16-17. There God warns Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but he can eat any other tree he would like. When coupled with the fact that Adam ate from that tree in chapter 3, it becomes apparent that Adam had the freedom to choose to eat from the tree or not. In other words, Adam could have not sinned. Adam being created with goodness is seen in God's entrusting him with creation. Adam is told to work and keep it (2:15). In 1:29 Adam is told that the plants are to eat. If we consider these pieces of information together, it shows that Adam had the care of all the animals on the earth. This was part of his dominion as evidenced in his naming the animals in 2:19-20. This shows Adams' goodness, albeit not the moral perfection that God possesses, for the simple reason that God, being love itself, would not put someone/something who was not good in charge of His creation that He had declared very good (1:31). Finally, we see Adam's rationality, which is the quality or state of being reasonable, based on facts or reason, in the fall. We actually see that the rationality was used to i) hide from God because they were naked and ashamed (3:8-10) and ii) to make excuses for eating from the forbidden tree; Adam blames Eve (3:12) and Eve blames the serpent (3:13). Now, of course, this is Adam and Eve using their rationality for the wrong purposes, but in these excuses we see that they were able to reason with the facts of their situation enough that they knew they must have done something wrong and their actions needed excuses to avoid culpability. This leads right into what happened to God's image in man as a result of the fall.
As I discussed in the second post of this series, there were consequences for the fall that directly affect the image of God in man. Humanity lost its freedom and became a slave to sin (Romans 6:16) displaying mainly the aspects of walking in the flesh that Paul says are opposed to the Spirit (Galatians 5:19-21). Humanity's goodness that Adam and Eve had in the garden was lost (Romans 3:9-18) and they were separated from God, unable to get back to His presence (Colossians 1:21). Humanity's rationality was corrupted by sin and bound to misunderstand creation, for example, and turn away from God (Romans 1:18-22). This rationality, due to its decay, also cannot be a reliable way in and of itself to discover God. The natural man cannot understand the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:14-16) and needs the Holy Spirit to even call Jesus Lord (1 Corinthians 12:3). Ultimately, due to our rationality being broken, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to show people the way to God (John 16:8-15). But, even in the Garden of Eden, God already had a plan for the salvation of humanity and creation.
Genesis 3:14-15 says: "The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." In the end, God will defeat Satan and evil and death will be vanquished. But that would be to get ahead of ourselves all the way to redemption or glorification. What happens in the mean time? We can plainly see that even with Jesus' sacrificial death things are not right. Do we have to wait for the end for the image of God to be fixed? In a way, yes, the image will not be fixed completely until Christ returns and everything is remade. Right now though, through salvation in Christ, the image is being restored to those who by faith believe in the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Typically, salvation is considered to contain three parts: justification, sanctification, and redemption or glorification. Justification is right legal standing before God. Justification is given by God to the sinner who has faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:16; Ephesians 2:8). This justification makes us righteous in the sight of God (Romans 4:5). Along with justification we are remade. 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 says: "From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." We see here that we are recreated when we are saved. This is the beginning of the restoration of the image of God in us. In our recreated state, we are no longer slaves to sin (Romans 6:17-18) and our minds are no longer darkened to the truth of God's word (Ephesians 4:18). This means, being slaves to righteousness, that we are now "called to freedom" (Galatians 5:13) in Christ. Notice also in the 2 Corinthians passage from above that we are not regarded according to the flesh anymore. We have already talked about the fruit of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21), but Paul is contrasting those selfish behaviors with the unselfish behaviors found in the recreated saint as they walk in the Spirit. He says: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23a). Notice how much those things go to describing the perfect goodness of God. The more we walk in the Spirit, and by contrast, not by the flesh, the more we are like God. This moves us into the second aspect of salvation, sanctification.
Sanctification is a progressive work of God and man that makes us more and more free from sin and like Christ in our actual lives (Grudem, Systematic Theology, pg. 746). Sanctification is a lifelong process wherein we are being remade into God's image (2 Corinthians 3:18). Freedom is restored to us as we are constantly renewing our minds (Romans 12:1-2) and yielding ourselves to God (Romans 6:13). Freedom reigns in Christ for us and that allows us to live lives of faith wherein our intellect, emotions, will, and spirit are slowly being transformed to more resemble the original image of God that was imparted to Adam and Eve. Our intellect is renewed through the knowledge of God (Colossians 3:10; Philippians 1:9). Our emotions are unchained from their sinful desires and that allows us to display the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23a; 1 Peter 2:11) and put away negative emotions (Ephesians 4:31). Our will, or decision-making faculty, changes from wanting to rebel against God into wanting "to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). Our spirit is also cleansed is the sanctifying process (2 Corinthians 7:1). The image of God impacts every aspect of who we are and sanctification is the means by which God restores that image.
Finally, redemption or glorification, is the giving of the resurrection body by Christ to the elect. It will happen at the "last trumpet" when Christ returns (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). At this time, with glorified, perfect resurrection bodies, the image of God will be perfectly restored in us as the sanctification process is brought to completion by God. I will leave you with a passage from Paul, where he contrasts the corrupted image "of the man of dust" (Adam) that we have borne with the perfect image "of the man of heaven" (Jesus):
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:42-49)
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