The Image of God and Our Own Image

 The Image of God and Our Own Image

 

Colossians 1:15 says, "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:" 2 Corinthians 4:4 also speaks of the image of God: "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."

God created the first man to reveal himself in the form (image) of a sinner. The first man is the image of God. God has no form. The form means the body, like clothing. Saying that God took on a body means that God came in a fleshly body. The first man was God Himself who went into the dust and became a man in order to give man a body of sin. The first man was created in the image of God. However, he had a body of sin. Therefore, the one who came in the flesh to break the chains of the body of sin was Jesus. The first man and Jesus were God who came in the form of a sinner.

 

Jesus Christ is referred to in Colossians 1:15 as "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature." When translated from Greek, it becomes "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature." This means that the first man is a symbol of the last Adam.

The background of the creation of the first man is in Genesis 2:7, "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being (nephesh)." Nephesh is the English word for soul, and means a living being. The first man was created in the image of God. Therefore, the first man means Christ.

 

Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.." The phrase "in the image of God (Christ)" means in the same form as a sinner. That is man (Adam) and woman (Eve). They actually sinned against God. Therefore, sin was contained in their sinful bodies.

 

The first man and the man and the woman are different beings. The first man was in the image of God, but the man and the woman were made in the image of God. The content of God creating man and woman is in Genesis 1:26-27. 『And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.』

 

God is talking to the first man (Christ). Now that God's image has been created, we (the Father and Christ) will create man and woman according to this image. Our image means that God appeared in the form of a sinner. Therefore, when creating man and woman, it is expressed as creating them in the form of this sinner.

 

The method of creating man and woman is explained in Genesis 2:21-22: "And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, he made a woman, and brought her unto the man."

 

The Hebrew word for the first man is Adam (man), but the man's name was Adam, and the woman's name was Eve. It is not translated as man, but as Adam, which causes confusion as it overlaps with the man Adam.

 

The fact that a woman was created by taking a rib from the first man ultimately means that man and woman were created separately. According to Genesis 1:27, the first man was created, and the moment he fell asleep, he disappeared, and then the male Adam and the female Eve were created. The first man who fell asleep disappeared, and the man (named Adam) appeared with his eyes open.

 

Today, believers often talk about restoring the image of God. They believe that originally, humans had the image of God, but when Adam sinned, the image of God was lost. Therefore, they focus on how to live in order to restore the image of God. God is letting humans know that they have a desire to become like God through the image of God (the appearance of sinners).

 

Humans tend to accept the image (shape) of God as they think. When the people of Exodus did not return from Mount Sinai for 40 days after Moses went up the mountain, they made a golden calf as the image of God. Today, some people say that Jesus is the Son of God. In other words, they disguise Jesus as God.

 

Jesus, the Son of God, became the Son of Man. Because he is the Son of Man (Mary), he has a body of sin. And because he is the Son of God, he must fulfill the role of carrying out God's will. God's will is to die on the cross with the mission of saving all mankind. And whoever dies in union with him will be considered dead to sin. In order for a person to become one with God, he must die on the cross with Jesus.

 

How is the image of God different from the image of self? The image of God means that God came to the world in the form of a man (a sinner), but the image of self is the idol of the body of sin (old man) in the flesh that wants to be like God, and this idol is expressed in the image of self. So, the angel who sinned was made to appear in the form of flesh. All people except the first man and Jesus Christ are beings born with the image of self. The image of self is expressed as the old man. Therefore, the image of self that appears to all people must die with Jesus to become one with God.

 

Most church members often interpreted the image of God as a holy character, etc., and tended to identify the image of God with God. That is why they even said that the invisible God appeared as a visible God in the image of God. The believers even said that Jesus, who was born in the flesh, was God. Jesus is not God, but the Son of God. Jesus, before the work of the cross, was in the image of God, but when he died on the cross, was resurrected, and returned to the place of God, he was not in the image of God, but was God himself.

 

Regarding his own likeness, Genesis 5:3-5 says, “And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.』

 

The image of oneself is the repetition of people being born and dying as flesh. The image of oneself is the life of the soul. The life of the soul is not eternal. The image of oneself shows that one is a being that must die. The first person born into the world in the image of God is the first man, and the last person born in the image of God is Jesus Christ. The first man gave people a body of sin, and Jesus Christ died on the cross to break the chains of that body of sin, and was resurrected to give the saints a spiritual body so that they can return to the kingdom of God. Therefore, all people born into the world after the first man are not in the image of God, but are merely sinners born in the image of oneself. If people say that they originally had the image of God, but forgot the image because of Adam, and that we should restore the image of God, this is close to gnosticism.