WHAT IS THE IMAGE OF GOD AND WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH US?

"So God created people in His own image. God patterned them after Himself, male and female He made them ... Then God looked on all that he had made and it was excellent in every way." - Genesis 1:27, 31 New Living Translation.

One of the fundamentals of the Christian faith is the belief that God is our Creator. He is the Master Designer, whose intelligent design is intended to bring wholeness, purpose, and fulfillment to his people. Part of that understanding is that humanity is created in the "image of God." This means that we are created to reflect His character, His values, His actions in the world. Humanity is good in God's plan--excellent in every way.

That does not mean man is God. He is below God and dependent upon God. Man lives by God's loving intent and is given power for living by God. If God were to cease to exist, it would have the same effect on humanity (on all life) as if the Earth's Sun died. Life on earth would cease.

God created us in His image and even gave us the gift of a free will. (What G.K. Chesterton called "the terrible gift of freedom,") Freedom always carries responsibility, but true freedom understands that it is responsibility that is dependent upon the empowerment of God.

Here is where original sin enters the picture. As the story of the Garden of Eden unfolds, we see the temptation to take responsibility for one's own life apart from the empowerment of God. "If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will be like God" says the serpent. Read, "you will be free to be your own god."

There is no question that man no longer lives by God's design. The image of God has been lost in the mountains of sin that humanity has created. The doctrine of original sin is the most empirically proven truth in history. The world suffers greatly and all who are in it because we no longer live to reflect the character, the values, the actions of God in the world.

Such a restoration of God's image is beyond us apart from the intervention of our Creator also as our Savior, the one who redeems that original image by once again "creating anew" something we have lost. Humanity will never correct itself, improve itself, save itself from its own depravity because that is only accomplished by the empowerment of God. And to have that we must return to what we were before the Fall in the Garden--people who once again live freely under the authority and sovereignty of God - responsibly dependent upon His empowerment.