A caller recently wanted to know about the image of God and how it is reflected in the human race. The Bible tells us that Christians are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ, but what about those who don’t believe? He wanted to know if the image of God is present in an atheist. To answer that question, we need to go back to the Genesis account of creation.
The image of God is what makes the human race unique. A person who doesn’t accept the reliability of the Bible can still know something about God by simply considering what he knows best - himself. Because there are qualities in man that can’t be observed anywhere else in universe it’s not unreasonable to consider the possibility that those qualities came from outside the universe. That’s what the Bible teaches us in the story of creation.
Adam and Eve were the last creatures God made, and the first to be created in His image. In other words, they were made to resemble God in some way. Because God is a spirit we can say that His image is reflected in the spirit of man that sets him apart from the animals. It’s the spirit of man that makes it possible for him to have fellowship with his Maker. And it’s the spirit that bears God’s likeness.
Like God, man has the intellectual ability to reason and choose. When someone creates a new computer program, writes a book, composes a new song or names a child, he is reflecting (on a small scale) the intellectual ability and freedom of God. He’s providing evidence for the image of God.
Sometimes we say that Adam and Eve were created innocent, but the moral reality is deeper than that. They were created holy and righteous. That’s why God saw this couple and proclaimed that they were “very good”. And that’s why even the most committed atheist will speak of good and evil or feel guilty. When he does, he demonstrates the reality of God’s image in his own sense of morality.
The human race was created with the capacity, like God’s nature, for love. When Adam was created God knew he would need Eve because it was, “not good that man should be alone.” When someone marries, makes a new friend or acts against his own self interest for the benefit of another we can see God’s nature in that person.
You know the rest of the story, however. God’s image was distorted by sin. Adam used his ability to choose to reject God’s command. His righteous nature was lost by an unrighteous act. His love for God and his wife were replaced with selfishness. On every level, God’s image was marred and he passed that depravity on to all his descendents. So what we see is that even someone who doesn’t believe reflects elements of God’s image, and at the same time shows that image corrupted by a sinful nature.
You saw both man’s greatness and his depravity graphically demonstrated on September 11, 2001. You may wonder how can anyone could be so consumed with evil and hate that he would use his last moments on earth to bring death and destruction to people he had never met? And you may wonder how someone could risk his own life by charging into a burning building to rescue strangers? The only clear and cogent answer you will find is in Genesis where it explains how God’s likeness and man’s sinfulness can exist in the same creatures.
That’s why people today, even those who don’t believe in God, reflect the greatness that comes with His image and at the same time the capacity for the worst acts of evil in our fallen nature.
The good news of the gospel is that when God saves a person, He begins a work of restoration. He creates a new nature in the Christian that changes him from glory to glory until the disfigured image of God is replaced by a true likeness.
“Put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:24
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