15. The Divine Image in Man Verses:
* Genesis 1:26-27, “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.”
* Genesis 5:1-3, “This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.”
* Genesis 9:6, ““Whoever sheds the blood of man,/ by man shall his blood be shed,/ for God made man in his own image.”
* James 3:9, “With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.”
* Ephesians 4:24, “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
* Colossians 3:10, “and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
There are several points that need to be made:
* First, “It is generally agreed that there is no real difference of meaning between ‘image’ and ‘likeness’”; it is “the idea of a mirror and a reflection” (169). (See 2 Corinthians 3:18). So when we say man is made in the image of God, “we mean that God made us in such a way that we are some kind of a reflection of God” (169); that is to say, man was “a kind of reflector of something of the divine glory itself” (170).
* Second, “this term is used after the fall, as well as before the fall”; that is to say, “the image of God was not entirely lost when Adam and Eve sinned and fell” (170).
* Third, “it is something misleading to define the original image of God in man in terms of what we are about regenerate man”; that means “what happened in regeneration is not merely that we are restored to the condition that Adam was in before he fell, but we are advanced beyond that” (170).
* Fourth, “there is a difference between man as he was made at the beginning by God, and the manhood or the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ” (171).
“What is the image of God in which man was made at the beginning?” (172).
* First, “our spiritual nature, our spirituality” and “our ‘invisibility’” (172).
* Second, “our psychical powers and faculties; the powers and faculties of the soul” (172). Lloyd Jones indicates things like this: “that we are rational and moral beings; that we have intellects, we can think; that we have a will and can desire; and the intellect and the will have their powers and their propensities. Our capability to reason and to think, to analyse and to mediate is a reflection of the same thing in an eternal degree, in God. And it is unique to human beings, you do not find it anywhere else. . . . We also have self-consciousness. . . our capacity for self-contemplation and analysis” (172-173).
* Third, it is “intellectual and moral integrity revealing themselves in. . . . knowledge, righteousness and holiness” (173). (Ephesians 4:24 & Colossians 3:10)
* Fourth, it is “the body” (173). Lloyd Jones is not “referring to the material substance of which the body is made, but rather to the body as a fit organ of the soul, the instrument of the soul, the thing through which the soul and the personality express themselves, and therefore, ultimately, the instrument through which we exercise dominion over the lower creation, and especially over the animals” (173). (See Philippians 3:21 & 1 John 3: 2). * Finally, “the image of God shows itself also in man’s dominion over the earth”; that is, “man partly reflects God’s lordship and sovereignty over everything” (174). (See Genesis 1:26-27 & Psalm 8). It is found that “the moment the image is mentioned that function is mentioned” (174).
The essential elements in the image are “qualities and powers of the human soul that remain always” (174). (See Genesis 5 & 9, James 3). The accidental elements in the image are the elements that “ a man can lose and still remain man. In other words, when man sinned and fell he did not lose the whole of the image, he retained the essential elements, but he lost the accidental elements” (175). Thus, we can conclude, “the essence of the soul endowed with the faculty of knowing and willing . . . and man’s dominion over the creatures, survives even the fall, but man’s moral conformity to God was lost at the fall. “ (175).
“What was man’s original state if all those things are true?”
* First, man was connected with the earth, but he was also connected with God (175).
* “Second, God made him His representative in the world” (175).
* “Third, he was obviously intelligent and able to understand” (175). (See Genesis 2:19-20).
“What was his relationship to God?”
First, “It was one of filial dependence, the dependence of a child, a son” (176).
Second, “He gave God implicit obedience” (176).
Third, “his communion, he fellowship, his intercourse with God was entirely without fear” (176).
“[W]hat is the difference between Adam before he fell and man in regeneration and salvation” (177).
Lloyd Jones considers, “The knowledge, the righteousness, and the true holiness were there in germ and in embryo, in perfect form, but they were not yet fully developed. In other words, man was on trial, he was on probation. He was in a preliminary condition, which could lead either to infinitely greater dignity and glory or could terminate in a fall” (177). Finally, Lloyd Jones concludes, “man created in the image of God, with these intellectual, moral, rational faculties, yes. But over and above that, this original righteousness and holiness. There he is, placed in the Garden, lord of creation, reflecting something of God even in his form, in his very body, and with these two great possibilities—if he remains in correspondence with God, an everlasting development in his perfection until it becomes absolute; on the other hand, if he rebels and does not go God’s way, the possibility of a fall” (177).
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