Hebrew Words For Image And Likeness Essay

This revelation simultaneously defines and commissions mankind. By God creating mankind in his own image implies a responsibility to represent God as he is. Wayne Grudem writes, “The Hebrew words for ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ simply informed the original readers that man was like God, and would in many ways represent God…When scripture reports that God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ (Gen. 1:26), it simply would have meant to the original readers, ‘Let us make man to be like us and to represent us.” Adam, acting as every-man, is commission to be a representative priest ; likewise every man is now accountable for how he or she accomplishes this task. Genesis continues to reveal what exactly this responsibility entails. Mankind represents the

image of God in his dominion and in his distinctions. God declares, “Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

(Gen. 1:26)” Furthermore, man accomplishes this task as male and female. Gavin Peacock writes, “an essential part of being an image-bearer is maleness and femaleness.” Man cannot escape this reality. This reality means that “sex differences are large, deeply rooted, and consequential.” Moreover, these differences are restrictive. Barth again helps, “Man is necessarily and totally man or woman, and that as such and in consequence he is equally necessarily and totally man and woman. He cannot wish to liberate himself from the differentiation and exist beyond his sexual determination as mere man; for in everything that is commonly human he will always be in fact either the human male or the human female. Nor can he wish to liberate himself from the relationship and be man without woman or woman apart from man; for in all that characterizes him as man he will be thrown back upon woman, or as woman upon man, both man and woman being referred to this encounter and co-existence.” Maleness and femaleness are inherently good and they are good together. Mankind represents the image of God as male and female together. Köstenberger writes, “This stewardship is a joint stewardship shared by the man and the

woman. Together they are to exercise it according to the will and for the glory of God. Together they are to multiply and be stewards of the children given to them by God. And together they are to subdue the earth by a division of labor that assigns to the man the primary responsibility to provide for his wife and children and to the woman the care for the nurture of her family.” If biblical sexuality is tied intrinsically to the image of Unchanging God, then the foundations for sexuality cannot change, either. However, something did change that causes mankind to represent this image incorrectly. Although, mankind is made in the image of God, he is profoundly fallen. Dennis Hollinger writes, “We can only understand the world as it is today in light of the fall and our subsequent sin and human brokenness. And we understand the realities of sexual impulses, temptations, and possibilities in light of this dimension of the Christian narrative.”