Mission Venture Ministries

Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness . . .” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:26-27) 

Morally, humanity was created in righteousness and perfect innocence, a reflection of God’s holiness. And God saw all He had made and called it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). 

After the fall however, when sin entered the world, we find these words: “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness.” (James 3:9) 

This is a very sober condemnation of the misuse of our God-given privilege of speech and how He had created us in the beginning to be holy as He is holy, and seems almost an accompanying reference to the image of God in man. Therefore, our speech should be consistently glorifying to God. We shouldn’t use one vocabulary or one tone of speaking at church or when around believers and a different one at home or on the job. 

This verse (3:9) also tells us that even though the image of God in man has been severely marred by sin, it is still there! That is, man is eternal the same way as God is eternal, and we will all continue to exist forever, either in the presence of God, or away from His presence. 

Another implication is that the word “image” includes the meaning of a physical resemblance. While God in His full essence is omnipresent and therefore invisible to human eyes, it is still true that, when God became man, He took on an actual physical body. Furthermore, our Lord Jesus, God the Son, still is “that same Jesus” and therefore still in that body. They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:10-11). And, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). 

Since Jesus’ incarnation and His work of salvation were planned by the triune God “before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20), man was apparently created in the image of that body that Christ had planned to take on when He would eventually become man. 

That being the case, our bodies are even more sacred than otherwise we might have assumed, and it is indeed a serious matter to misuse the tongue or any other member of the body, which is made after the similitude of Christ. 

The good news is that when God redeems an individual, He begins to restore the original image of God, creating a “new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). 

We need to remember that redemption is only available by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior, from the sin that separates us from God (Ephesians 2:8-9). Through Christ, we are made new creations in the likeness of God (2 Corinthians 5:17). Amen! 

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