How often do you hear someone say something like “he’s the spitting image of his father” or “she’s a carbon copy of her mother?” We personally experienced something similar to this when our grandson Cooper was born last September. When you look at the pictures of him during his first few months, he is an exact double of what our son Todd – Cooper’s uncle – looked like when he was born. I’m sure that some of you have had that same experience in your own families. It’s all determined by genetics, of course – and there’s nothing you can do to change it.
In verse 25 of our Old Testament lesson this morning, we read these words: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.’” When you hear the words “image” and “likeness,” probably the first thing you think of is a mirror image. When you look in the mirror, you see yourself exactly as you appear to everyone else. The mirror reflects how you look in every minute detail – and no matter how you may feel about your appearance, there’s nothing you can do to change it.
So if Adam and Eve were created in God’s own image, does that mean that they actually looked exactly like God? The answer obviously is “no.” In John 4:24, Jesus very specifically says: “God is spirit.” Yes, when Jesus was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and was born of the Virgin Mary, he took on our human form – but even today we don’t know exactly what Jesus looked like because nowhere in the Gospels do we have any kind of physical description. It has been suggested that historically, Jesus was probably short by today’s standards, probably had the darker skin typical of many people from the Near East and probably looked “Jewish” – whatever that means. But that description certainly doesn’t fit anyone in this congregation and it doesn’t fit most people period.
So we come to this very logical question: What, specifically, does it mean when Scripture says that “God created man in his own image”? Let me share some thoughts that I hope will make everything clearer to you this morning.
To begin, when you read and study the creation account that you heard again this morning, an important distinction becomes clear – a distinction between the creation of man and the creation of everything else in the universe. When God created the heavens and the earth, He did so simply by speaking. “Let there be light,” He said – and there was light. Everything that God created was created from nothing and was created by speaking: “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters … let the dry land appear … let the earth sprout vegetation … let there be lights in the heavens … let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth … let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds.” God simply said “let there be” … and it was.
But the first man was not made merely by a divine command; Adam was not created by just a few spoken words. Instead, God personally formed man of the dust of the earth. God did not speak – God acted. In Genesis 2:7 we are told: “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” God personally formed man. God gave man the breath of life. In this one act of the almighty and eternal God, man received what nothing else in all of creation had received. The honor of being made in the image of God was given to no other creature on earth, nor was it given to the angels in heaven. This honor was given to man, and man alone.
There’s more to say about being made in God’s own image. Remember that at the time of their creation, Adam and Eve were without sin. The world – the universe – was without sin. Everything was made “good” and verse 31 of chapter one says: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” The holy and sinless God had made His world and His people holy and sinless, and it was, indeed, very good.
In this very good creation, Adam and Eve had true knowledge of God as He wishes to be known. They had true fear and love and confidence and trust and faith in God. They had a relationship with God that reflected back the love and tender care that God shows to us. They reflected God’s righteousness. As prominent Lutheran theologian A. I. Graebner once explained it: “In his original state, man was not only sound in body and soul, without a germ of disease or death, or a taint of sin, but endowed with concreated spiritual wisdom and knowledge, and with perfect natural righteousness, goodness, and holiness, in the image and likeness of the Triune God.”
When you see your image in a mirror, you see a reflection of exactly how you look. All of the details – those you like and those you don’t like – are there. But if the mirror somehow gets cracked or distorted, the reflection that it shows is distorted as well. If the mirror is broken or shattered, then the reflection – the image – is gone. It is destroyed. It vanishes. And there’s nothing you can do to change it.
That’s what happened when sin entered the world. The image of God that was so lovingly given to us was lost. As a result, man’s relationship with our creator was shattered. Mankind no longer has a natural knowledge of God as our loving and caring Father. Mankind no longer fears and loves and trusts in God above all things as the First Commandment compels us to do. God is now mankind’s enemy, because we cannot live the perfect, sinless life that He demands. Sin has broken creation, and sin has broken us. We like to believe that deep down we are basically good people, but God knows otherwise. Sometimes we realize it, too, for in Psalm 51 King David wrote: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” The original sin of Adam and Eve has destroyed the image of God in man and has corrupted our whole human nature, every last one of us, and there’s nothing we can do on our own to make things right with God. There’s nothing you can do to change it.
But the God who created man in His image also re-creates, and ever since that first sin in Eden he has been restoring His image to his fallen people in His broken world. After the image of God in us was lost, God acted – just like he acted at the creation of man. The Father sent His Son into our world. This Son, who is the true and eternal image of God the Father, became incarnate to show us true man – true man without sin.
So Jesus took on Himself our sin, our punishment, our death, our broken image, and gives us His Spirit. And through the Holy Spirit, the image of God is again given to us. The Holy Spirit, working through Word and Sacraments, re-creates us in the image of Christ, who is the image of the Father. This is the work of the Holy Trinity for us. The Father sends us His Son who sends us the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit joins us to the Son, who takes us to the Father.
You might wonder why we are reading and talking about Creation on this Holy Trinity Sunday. Let’s return to the words of our Old Testament lesson, where these words of God are recounted: “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” Let us make man. In our own image. After our likeness. God didn’t say “Let me make man in my own image, after my likeness.” Instead, God said: “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” Plural pronouns, not singular. Plural pronouns, indicating more than one person doing the creating. Eighteen hundred years ago the great Church father Tertullian wrote: “If the number of the Trinity … offends you … with whom did He make man? And to whom did He make him like? (The answer must be), the Son on the one hand, who was one day to put on human nature; and the Spirit on the other, who was to sanctify man. With these did he then speak, in the Unity of the Trinity.”
In our Introit this morning we sang this ancient liturgical text: “Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity. Let us give glory to him because he has shown his mercy to us.” On this Sunday of the Holy Trinity we joined Christians of all nations and all times to confess the Athanasian Creed, where we proclaim: “We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit is another. But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.”
Today we proclaim for all to hear what the Triune God has done for us. He created us in His own image. When that image was lost through sin, he sent His Son to redeem us and His Holy Spirit to bring us to faith. Through the loving work of all three persons of the Trinity, the image of God is being recreated and restored to us. There’s nothing we could do to get it back – so God does all the doing. And at the Last Day, our glorified eternal bodies will again bear this perfect and holy image of the Triune God for all eternity.
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