Imago Dei

The Bible addresses people in relation to God. Biblical anthropology cannot be rightly understood apart from biblical theology. Right from the beginning, the Bible said, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Gen. 1:26-27) In the image and likeness of God we were made. As Walter Brueggemann said:

"The Old Testament has no interest in articulating an autonomous or universal         notion of humanness. Indeed, such a notion is, for the most part, not even on the horizon of Old Testament witnesses. The Old Testament has no interest in such a notion, because its articulation of what it means to be human is characteristically situated in its own Yahwistic, covenantal, interactionist mode of reality, so that humanness is always Yahwistic humanness or, we may say, Jewish humanness. The Old Testament, for the most part, is unable and unwilling, as well as uninterested, to think outside the categories and boundaries of its own sense of Yahweh and Yahweh's partner." [Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), p. 450.]

There are twelve truths about people created in God's image as revealed in the Bible: [Taken from Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears, Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), pp. 114-116.]

1. We were created by the Trinity. "Let us make man in our image..." (Gen. 1:26)

2. We were created as persons by a personal God.

3. God originally made mankind without sin.

4. God blesses us.

5. Unlike the animals who were made according to their "own kind," we were made in the "image of God." Animals are incapable of denying their instincts.

6. God gives commands to us because he made us as moral image bearers. We can know what is right and wrong.

7. God made us curious adventurers and granted us permission to explore his creation through everything from a telescope to a microscope. We are seekers and explorers.

8. God created us to be creative and invited us to make culture.

9. God created us to be reproductive and have children.

10. God made us with meaningful work to do.

11. God created us as his image bearers,  but not because he needed us in any way. The church father Irenaeus said, "God formed Adam, not as if He stood in need of man, but so that He might have someone upon whom to confer His benefits."

12. God created us to live coram Deo. Coram Deo means to live "before the face of God." We live before the face of God. This is Christian spirituality.