What does it mean to be made in God’s image? We’re going to talk about archaeology and ancient kings and even about idols. And what about the perfect image of God that we see in Jesus?
If you don’t see the player in your email, you can click here
Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. This is episode five but if you have missed any of the other episodes, you can find those archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has the old episodes downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
Now, this week, we have a question that people have been arguing about for thousands of years. And that question is, “What does it mean to be made in God’s image?” It isn’t an easy question to answer. Throughout the Bible, the Word of God, God gives us ways of thinking about it but never gives any definite answers like, “In the book of II Opinions, it is written, “When humans were made in God’s image, it meant exactly such and such.” And, you know what? Very few things are written about that way in the Bible and maybe nothing is. I can’t think of anything right now. We have all these huge questions like, “Exactly how did God create the universe?” and “Where did God come from, anyway?” How about, “What happens when we die?” And instead of teaching us solid answers to those questions, this book does something entirely different. This book tells us about who God is and who we are to God. This Bible doesn’t seem to care about the kinds of questions we have—maybe because questions about how God created the universe and where He came from and exactly what happens to us after we die (other than the fact that we end up resurrected in the world to come) aren’t very important. All those questions don’t amount to a hill of beans unless we know from God’s Word why we can trust Him. You see, knowledge doesn’t save anyone. There was this group among the Jews and early Christians about 1900 years ago called “Gnostics” and they didn’t talk about things like sin and repentance—like the Bible does. Nope, they thought if they just became enlightened enough, meaning knowing a lot of cool mystical stuff that the Bible doesn’t even mention, that they could be extra special. And, you know what? People still tend to do that today. Grownups call that “majoring on the minors” which is just a funny way of saying that the things they were focusing on weren’t very important. The Bible tells us about who God is and why we can rely on Him. It tells us how different He is than we are and why we can totally trust and depend on Him. The Bible is a book about God’s character—which is love and loyalty. What God was doing before He created the universe just isn’t important. We’re curious and we might want to know, but I figure out brains are just way too small anyway. The Bible tells us what is actually important, which is what I am trying to teach you. The Bible says that we can trust that God will do what He says and that we don’t have to worry about the details.
Jesus said something about that in the Sermon on the Mount, “25 “So I tell you, don’t worry about the food you need to live. And don’t worry about the clothes you need for your body. Life is more important than food. And the body is more important than clothes. 26 Look at the birds in the air. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns. But your heavenly Father feeds the birds. And you know that you are worth much more than the birds. 27 You cannot add any time to your life by worrying about it. 28 “And why do you worry about clothes? Look at the flowers in the field. See how they grow. They don’t work or make clothes for themselves. 29 But I tell you that even Solomon with his riches was not dressed as beautifully as one of these flowers. 30 God clothes the grass in the field like that. The grass is living today, but tomorrow it is thrown into the fire to be burned. So, you can be even more sure that God will clothe you. Don’t have so little faith! 31 Don’t worry and say, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 All the people who don’t know God keep trying to get these things. And your Father in heaven knows that you need them. 33 The thing you should want most is God’s kingdom and doing what God wants. Then all these other things you need will be given to you. 34 So don’t worry about tomorrow.” (Matthew 6:25-34 ICB)
So, if we don’t have to worry about the things we need, we also shouldn’t worry about the mysteries that the Bible doesn’t explain. If we need to know something clearly, He will tell us. One of the confusing things the Bible says is found at the end of Genesis chapter one,
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them 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.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
This is one of the sections of Scriptures that really got those Gnostics, who thought that knowing things could save them. Working overtime on their questions. And questions are just fine, as long as we don’t come up with answers that are more important to us than what the Bible clearly reveals about God. We adults are pretty good at getting totally distracted by all the “what ifs” when we aren’t careful. The reason why is because whenever the Bible doesn’t explain something clearly, people can get a bit wacky about needing answers. But this is one of those cases where there was an answer provided, thousands of years later, as to what God’s image is actually all about.
To understand what God is talking about here, there are some things about archaeology that are important to know because when Moses read this to the ancient Israelites wandering in the desert, there were things they knew that we don’t know anymore. One of the cool things they knew was that kings would set up images of themselves all over their kingdoms, in their different cities, to remind people about who was in charge. The images didn’t even really look very much like the king, because that wasn’t the point. The point was to have reminders of the king all over the place. Reminders of who makes the laws and who protects them when there is a war and who feeds them. Those statues were a witness, a reminder, that he was real and sitting on his throne running the kingdom because normal people would probably never see him and would only hear about him. The people could feel safe knowing that there was someone higher up in charge of running their kingdom and in charge of their soldiers.
So, when Moses was reading this story to his people in the wilderness, when they heard the word for image they would say, “Our King made us to be reminders to the rest of Creation of who He is and what He is doing so, He won’t be forgotten, or doubted. We are His witnesses to the world that God the Creator is the one and only true God. That’s our job.”
I imagine that made them feel very special, and we are very special. We are the only creatures on the planet made in God’s image. Other creatures have the breath of life but we are the only ones that were made to be images of God. You can even call us reflections if you want. Do you remember episode 2 where we talked about the one word in Scripture that only God can do? That word in English is create but in Hebrew it is bara. Well, in these verses that describe God making us, God uses bara not once, not twice, but THREE WHOLE TIMES.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
So, when God created mankind (humans), we were created like Him and also unlike Him. Unlike Him, we are males and females—men and women who can have babies—and like Him in that we are His images on earth while He is in the original in the heavens. Let’s talk about images right now in a way that is totally easy for you to understand. The first thing I want you to understand is that when you have an image, it can be a true image or a false image. If I take a picture of one of you and draw a big old moustache on it or black out half your teeth then I have taken a true image of you and have made it into a false image of you. It’s false because it doesn’t look anything like you anymore. Have you ever seen a funhouse mirror? They are so hilarious. The mirror is bendy and so it can make us look shorter and fatter or taller and skinnier. Now, a real mirror will show us mostly what we actually look like and I say mostly because if you have a mole or a freckle on your left side it will look like it is actually on your right side when you look in the mirror. The next time you look in the mirror, I want you to test it. Stand in front of the mirror and take your right index finger, your pointer finger, and touch your nose. What you will discover is that you are looking at yourself taking your left finger and touching your nose—or at least that is what it will look like. It won’t really be true but other than everything looking kinda reversed, the mirror still shows you a true picture of yourself. When you get to be my age you won’t appreciate that very much, let me tell you. But when you compare your reflection with the funhouse mirror where everything is squashed or stretched and you see a huge difference, right?
And throughout the Bible, we see a lot of ways that we can be true images of God. First of all, in the Scripture we read today, we see that we can be correct reflections of God when we rule over the fish and birds and animals the way God wants us to. He created us to have dominion over the earth, but we have to do it the way He does it if we want to call ourselves true images. God doesn’t use creation selfishly, He feeds and cares for it. God also doesn’t rule over people with cruelty, and so people in authority need to behave more like God. God is the ultimate authority in the universe and yet He served people when He created the universe to be exactly everything we could ever need. He could have made it a totally inhospitable place for us, where we couldn’t feed ourselves or live. Heck, He didn’t need to make the air perfect for us to breathe. No, in every way, He created the earth to help us so that we could spend our time caring for the rest of Creation the way He cares for us. God showed us in Genesis 1 that a true king serves and provides for everyone. If we are going to be accurate reflections of what kind of King and God He is then we need to do the same. Unfortunately, human history is full of examples of animals that have gone extinct because people wanted something they didn’t actually need. Because they weren’t thinking as image-bearers but as fashionistas or they thought that a part of an animal could and should be used in a magical ritual. Today, tigers and other animals are critically endangered because people use one part for something that no one really needs in order to survive.
And so, when those Israelites were listening to Moses speak, they also probably thought of an entirely different kind of image—and that’s the idols of the false gods that they left behind in Egypt. Idols were wooden or stone carvings that represented a pagan god. No one thought that the idol was the god, but they thought they could perform a ceremony that would transfer the spirit of the god into that carving. So, not all carvings were idols, only the ones that they believed had the spirit of their god in it. Those images were bad, of course, but the Israelites would have understood that one of the special ways that humans were created in the image of God is that they were able to have His spirit inside them—like Moses did. Animals and birds and fish cannot have the spirit of God inside them. They knew that Moses and the seventy elders of Israel possessed the spirit of God because they could prophesy—speak God’s words to His people.
Num 11: 16 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them, and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you. 17 And I will come down and talk with you there. And I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it yourself alone.
They knew that the two craftsmen, Bezalel and Oholiab, had the Spirit of God inside them: Ex 35:30 Then Moses said to the people of Israel, “See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; 31 and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship
And of course, Moses had the Spirit of God. So would King Saul, for a while, and later King David, and the prophets. I believe that when humans were first created, that we all had it too, but when we rebelled against God it was taken away from us and only given to certain people after that according to God’s purposes. But because we were created in God’s image, we were created to have that Spirit inside us so that we could always be close to God. That’s how it is supposed to be. That’s what it means to be fully human. Being fully human means being everything God created us to be on the inside, where it counts the most.
Let me tell you what it doesn’t mean to be created in God’s image. It doesn’t mean what we look like on the outside because the Bible tells us that God is unseen, invisible, and without form. That means that, although we call God “Him” He isn’t a him like the hims we see all around us. God is Spirit. He doesn’t need to eat or drink or go to the bathroom or work out. He isn’t a man and He isn’t a woman. He is God. The Bible describes God sometimes in terms of being masculine, like a father and sometimes in terms of being feminine, like a mother. But the Bible makes sure to make it clear that He isn’t like the false gods of the nations where they were male and female and looked like humans—or humans with animal heads. God is complete in Himself and doesn’t need gender and He doesn’t need to have babies even though some religions say that we are His spirit babies.
It also doesn’t mean that we can create a universe. We can’t do whatever we want whenever we want to do it. Even people who can perform miracles can’t always do it. Healers can’t always heal. Moses had his limitations—he had to wait for God to tell him what to do because the power is always God’s and not ours. David had God’s spirit, but he never worked any miracles. Neither did Isaiah or Jeremiah or John the Baptist. We are images, not duplicates. We aren’t exactly the same as Him. We are just created to be like Him in some ways. Remember, we are like those statues of the ancient kings. We are here to remind people about God and who He is and what He has done and will do.
Did you know that the second commandment tells us that we are not allowed to make an image of God? They couldn’t make a carving of anything on earth to worship as though it represented Him. I mean, how can you make a carving of God who is spirit, invisible and who has no form? You can’t. It’s totally impossible. I’ll tell you what. Go get some clay and make a sculpture of the air. You can’t. We see the proof that air exists because we aren’t suffocating. We know that wind exists because of what it does to trees and leaves. But we can’t see it. We can only see what it does to things. Same with God. We see what He does all around us. Have you ever stopped to think of how crazy it is that we can still grow food after so many thousands of years? When we make things, they wear out. Have you ever seen water wear out and get old? Does it ever stop being wet? What if someone asked you to make a sculpture of who you are. Not what you look like, but who you are on the inside—the part of you that thinks and is aware of what is going on around you. Are you your brain? Nope, there is an invisible part of us that is aware and no one has ever seen before. In a way, that’s like God too.
But the Bible is also a story of how we humans have done a terrible job of being true reflections. So God had to send us His own perfect image. Now, if we were to carve something that God created and say it looks like Him, even if it was possible for Him to be seen, how would it not be an insult? But what about if God created His own perfect image? One that would never say or do the wrong thing or give people the wrong impression of what He is like? Well, God did that when His Creative Word, His powerful logos, became a human being and lived here on earth. His Word already existed, we’ve talked about that, but when God’s Word took on human form, Jesus showed us the absolute perfect reflection of who God is and what He thinks and how He wants us to act. Jesus didn’t look like God, because God is invisible, but as part of God, God’s Creative Word who created the universe, everything He ever did looks just like God’s character and actions. What did Paul tell us about Jesus?
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Col 1:15-20, ESV)
What does this tell us? Jesus is the perfect reflection of God, who would be invisible otherwise. Jesus is how the world finally saw God in the flesh. Jesus was with God in the beginning as His Creative Word, making everything come to be and to happen—even those things that can’t be seen. He existed before every created thing and without Him everything that was created would fall apart. He is the boss of everyone who believes and we shouldn’t put any leaders before him in importance. God allowed all of who He is to live among us through Jesus—everything He thinks and does and how He loves and cares for us. And most important of all, God saved us through Jesus. He delivered all those people by living with us through Jesus. He healed all those people by living with us through Jesus. He taught us through Jesus. He raised Lazarus and Jairus’s daughter and the widow’s son through Jesus. And He saved us when Jesus died on the Cross and was raised up on the third day.
How did God do all that? How does it work? It doesn’t matter. Our brains are too small to entirely understand it but for almost two thousand years, billions of people have experienced that it is absolutely true. Just like you don’t worry about things that your parents take care of everyday, and you trust them because what you need is always there and you don’t have to understand how it works in order to receive from them what you need, so we don’t have to understand everything that is true in order for it to be true.
Next week I think we are going to talk about the Seventh Day, when God rested and what that means. It doesn’t mean that he was sleeping! I love you, and I am praying for you and I hope you have a wonderful week studying the Bible with the people who love you.