I’m fascinated with the story of how we, humans, were created. God took mud and made something incredible. He gave us purpose, authority, and blessings. This moment of creation started something big and plays an important role in understanding most issues in the Bible. Obviously, there would be no need for the written Word of God in the world without us.

Creation and the fall of the image

In creating people, God had a particular idea of what He wanted. We find a short summary of it:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 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, ESV)

There you have it: image and likeness was the desire God had when He created the very first people. It’s as if God looked at Himself and decided to make someone similar to Him. This similarity is in the substance as well as in the role.

Being like something or someone speaks of resemblance between two objects. If I paint a portrait of myself, the paint on the canvas will resemble my appearance. My portrait will be an image of me, painted according to my likeness. As long as the painting lasts, it will speak of my certain qualities to anyone who looks at the picture.

However, the way God made us resemble Him goes much deeper than just appearance. He transferred His authority to rule over the creation by giving us dominion over the animals.

Unfortunately, Adam and Eve did something they weren’t supposed to do. Through sin, the image of God got distorted. Lawlessness (if we look at the Law as the standard of God) grabbed their hearts and everyone who was born from Adam. The broken image of God became a matter of inheritance and took over the beautiful image of the first intent.

Jesus is the perfect image of God

This line of legacy in brokenness didn’t touch Jesus as He was born on this earth. He came as the Son of God. Not from a man but from the Spirit of God.

‘He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ‘ (Hebrews 1:3, ESV)

Jesus is the perfect representation of God. He was demonstrating the nature of the Father by the way of life, decisions, works, and conversations with people. It is written that Jesus not only perfectly resembles God, but also He upholds the universe by the word of His power. It speaks of authority or dominion.

Do you see the correlation?

Originally God created man according to His image and His likeness and gave him dominion over the creation. We can see the same with Jesus: the resemblance of God and the aspect of rulership.

Can it be that Jesus wasn’t only representing God but also showing who we are created originally to be before Adam messed it up? Two words that He often said to someone prove that to be true. These words are: follow me. Jesus wouldn’t have asked us to do something we cannot perform. We can follow God, especially after the problem of sin that separated us from God was removed through the sacrifice!

The words follow me imply repetition and copying the one who is giving an example. In other words, Jesus was calling His disciples to live as He does.

Jesus was restoring the image of man to its created purpose!

The rise to the image

After rising from the dead, Jesus gave His followers authority and gifts to be used in building up the church. Pay attention to the end goal:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:11–13, ESV, emphasis mine)

We are called to grow up to be like Jesus Himself! That’s the purpose and desire that God has — complete restoration to what we were created to be in the first place.

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2, ESV, emphasis mine)

As we see Jesus as He is, we look at God and ourselves. We are getting to know God, and at the same time, we are discovering who we truly are. It heals our brokenness and restores our broken image.

We are created to represent God, to be like He is. This is what the creation is waiting for with much anticipation. Jesus came to show our true nature that resembles the One who created us. Faith in Jesus as the Son of God sets us on the path of restoration back to the very intended plan God had for us — represent Him to the creation. God made a selfie, and that selfie is you!