What Does it Mean That We Are Created in the “Image of God?”

I went to church all my life, as well as Christian schools, and I swear until I was in my mid 30’s I thought we looked like God. In every picture I ever saw of him, he had two arms, two legs, and was old. He looked like us.

And the fact that Jesus was both God and a man, simply reinforces that idea, because he did look like us! It’s also true that God (or an angel of God) has taken on the form of a man, like when God visited with Abraham to discuss destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.

But God’s natural state is a spirit. “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” John 4:14. He doesn’t look like us and we don’t look like him.

Then what does it mean when the Bible says, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27.

The Hebrew root of the Latin phrase for image of God –imago Dei– means image, shadow or likeness of God. At the very least this means humans occupy a higher place in the created order because we, and not animals are imprinted with godlike characteristics. Let’s talk about just a few of the characteristics of God, humans possess, but unlike God, we possess them imperfectly and to a far lesser degree.