The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers—the context that produced the Bible.

The Greek word translated by this phrase is monogenes. It doesn’t mean “only begotten” in some sort of “birthing” sense. The confusion extends from an old misunderstanding of the root of the Greek word. For years monogenes was thought to have derived from two Greek terms, monos (“only”) and gennao (“to beget, bear”). Greek scholars later discovered that the second part of the word monogenes does not come from the Greek verb gennao, but rather from the noun genos (“class, kind”). The term literally means “one of a kind” or “unique” without connotation of created origin. Consequently, since Jesus is indeed identified with Yahweh and is therefore, with Yahweh, unique among the elohim that serve God, the term monogenes does not contradict the Old Testament language.

Without genuine free will, imagers cannot truly represent God. We saw earlier that the image of God is not an attribute or ability. Rather, it is a status conferred by God on all humans, that of representing God.

First, God has a divine family—a heavenly assembly, or council, of elohim. These elohim are not a replacement for the Trinity, nor do they add to it. Yahweh is among the elohim, but he is superior to all other elohim. He is their creator and sovereign master. He is unique. Since Jesus is Yahweh in flesh, he too is distinct from, and superior to, all elohim. While God has no need of a council, Scripture makes it clear that he uses one. His divine family is his divine administration. The elohim serve him to carry out his decrees.

God also has a human family and administration. Their status and function mirror the divine family-administration. Just as with the members of the divine council who represent God in what they are tasked to do, so humans are God’s imaging representatives. Just as God doesn’t need a divine council, he doesn’t need humans, either—but he has chosen to use them to further his intentions for Earth.

In Christ, believers are “the sons of God.” The language of inheritance is crystal clear. It derives from and advances the Old Testament idea that humans were meant to be in the family of God all along. It’s no coincidence that the New Testament writers repeatedly describe salvation into Yahweh’s family with words like “adoption,” “heir,” and “inheritance” to describe what the Church really is—the reconstituted divine-human family of God. The believer’s destiny is to become what Adam and Eve originally were: immortal, glorified imagers of God, living in God’s presence as his children.

What seems to us to be a long, drawn-out divine plan to restore that which was fallen was equally necessary. It might seem that God could have just stepped in after the fall and eliminated free will and the divine and human rebels who had abused it. Eden would be ensured and that would be that. While that would produce the desired end, the original means—free participation in God’s creation by God’s free-will agents, designed to be like him—would have been abandoned, amounting to a very flawed idea and spectacular failure. A resolution like that isn’t fitting (or desirable) for the God of the Bible. God’s original objective must come about in the way he intended.