One of the most important aspects of the Christology of the New Testament is the motif found throughout the Gospels, and developed further by the Apostle Paul, that Jesus is the new Adam—that is, He fulfilled what it means to be the perfect man and the perfect image of God. Jesus revealed His deity, but He also, in His humanity, shows what the human race was supposed to be. Christ is a restoration of humankind, the image of God in its fullest manifestation, so much so that even in His humanity, Jesus was correct to say, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In saying this, He did not deny His humanity, nor was He speaking only of His humanity. But if Jesus’ humanity is a perfect humanity, and if He displays the image of God in its fullest sense, then to look at Him is to behold the glory of the Creator. That’s what an image does: It reflects, mirrors, and reveals a likeness, a similitude of the original.
The Image of God After the Fall
Since the fall, we are left with a difficult question: Do we still bear the image of God, and if so, to what degree? We saw in Genesis 9 that even fallen man—in the days of Noah, as corrupt as the human race had become by then—was still seen as bearing the image of God. In answering this question, historic Protestantism has made a distinction between the image of God in the narrow sense and the image of God in a wider sense.
To bear the image of God in the wider sense means that, even after the fall and our corruption by sin, we still retain our humanness. Our minds have been affected by sin, as have our bodies; we age, we grow ill, we die, and our faculties have been weakened. We can become addicted and enslaved to certain passions, though we were originally made with a volitional freedom. We still have our faculties, however: We can still think and make choices; we still have bodies; and we are alive. We’re still human.
In spite of the loss of our innocence, we have not lost our humanity—but what has been lost is what theologians call conformitas. That is, we have lost obedience, and as disobedient creatures, we have besmirched and fogged the mirror that was made to reflect the holiness of God, so that now when the animals and the rest of creation look at us, they see people whose behavior does not conform to the character of God. This, the reflection of the character of God, is the image of God in the narrow sense, and this is what has been lost. Later, we will consider what this loss of conformity means—how seriously we have been affected by the fall and how deep the sinful corruption of our humanity penetrates.
Redeemed in Soul and Body
We must expand on the dual nature of Christ as both God and man. The Mormons believe that God has a physical body, because of their association of man’s image bearing with our physical bodies. Over and against this idea, historic Christianity has insisted that God does not have a body, that He is a spirit. Thus, we must locate those aspects that distinguish us as being in the image of God in His spiritual qualities.
However, as important as those nonphysical dimensions are to understanding what it means to be in the image of God, it would be Platonic rather than biblical to assume that our bodies have nothing whatsoever to do with our being made in the image of God. When God made us human, He didn’t just create disembodied souls; He didn’t set loose minds, wills, or feelings. He made creatures and fashioned them with bodies. If we look carefully at the biblical description of humanity from Genesis to Revelation, we see that the whole drama of redemption is concerned not simply with the soul but with the body also.
In the Apostles’ Creed, there’s a clause that reads, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” This does not refer only to the resurrection of the body of Jesus, though the creed does affirm that elsewhere. This phrase refers instead to the church’s belief that our bodies will be raised. In other words, at the heart of Judeo-Christian theology is a notion that when God created man, He made him soul and body—and when He redeems man, He redeems him soul and body.
Ligonier Ministries