We Have an Image Problem
When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.
When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
Genesis 5:1-3
My son is a lot like me. He looks like me. For better or for worse, he acts like me. He is a son in my own image.
“When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God.” He created mankind to be like him, holy and righteous and just. But a lot happened between Genesis 1 and Genesis 5. The first people, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God and fell into sin. Their perfect nature was corrupted. This image of God was lost.
Evidence of this appeared quickly. Adam and Eve’s firstborn son killed their secondborn. Later, they had another son, among all their other sons and daughters, named Seth. We’re told that “when Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image.” Uh oh.
The Bible reveals how everything we touch or form or create, we make it in our own image. Paul states in Romans 1:
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Romans 1:22,23
When it comes to creating “gods,” humans are short on creativity. Their images are made of human beings or even of the inferior animals.
We form our families in our own image. We shape our careers in our own likeness. We make our friendships and relationships a reflection of ourselves.
And what do we find? Though what we shape, what we form, what we create may be a near-perfect representation of ourselves—imperfect, defective, broken—it will be unrecognizable as a reflection of the holy God who is wholly God.
But there is good news. Though our image is imperfect, defective, and broken—though it is sinful—God restores his image to us. He sent Jesus who “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). As the the image of God, Jesus lived a perfect, whole, and unbroken life for us. What he shaped, what he formed, what he touched, all of it was made whole.
And he has chosen us to be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29) so that we may be seen as perfect, whole, and unbroken before God. In Christ, we “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10).
Because we are being renewed in God’s image, we now shape our families according to his will. We pursue our careers to his glory. We treat our relationships with others as God treats us. Though we fail, he still renews us. Though sin gets in the way, he still sustains us.
We had an image problem. But no more. God restores us in his image and his likeness through his Son and makes us whole again.