As God created the world, the already existing sons of God sang and shouted joyfully (Job 38:7). It is to these spiritual beings that God turned and said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26).1 The implication here is important: the spiritual beings of heaven and the humans of earth are both made in God’s image. Image, therefore, serves as a function within the various realms of existence. It is a purpose bestowed upon specific beings.
The Hebrew word we translate as image is selem.2 As we look at the broader use of this word in the Old Testament, we recognize that when a selem carries a negative connotation in a passage, translators often opt to interpret it as an idol. But if we remove this gloss, we can understand the meaning of this word better. That is to say that just as one might gaze upon the selem of a false god to understand what that false god is like, so all of creation might gaze upon humanity to understand better what Yahweh is like.3 This is why humans are placed in the holy temple of Eden,4 where the selem of God belongs. We are not selems in the sense that we can or should be worshipped—rather, just as the sons of God represent Yahweh in the heavenly realm, so do humans represent Yahweh in the earthly realm. We are imagers who image Yahweh.5
Image is a status given to humans that other terrestrial beings do not possess. They are under the care of humans, and it is through the Godly representation of these humans that their fruition exists. If humans operate in the image rightly, then the sacred space of Eden will be cultivated across the earth as they are fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28).6 But if humans decide not to image Yahweh to the rest of creation, then the earth will experience chaos at their hands. This, of course, is what humanity decided to do as they “worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). Rather than imaging Yahweh, they chose to image the lesser creature of the serpent of Eden, and so “creation was subjected to futility, not willingly” (Rom. 8:20).
But there’s a double meaning in the serpent as well. In choosing him, humanity also chose to worship a lesser being of Heaven, rather than Yahweh himself. John the Revelator recognizes the serpent as Satan (Rev. 20:2), and Ezekiel 28:14 refers to him as an “anointed, guardian cherub.” But rather than guard the sacred space of the tree of knowledge of good and evil as Yahweh assigned him to do, Satan welcomed humanity to follow his directions as one of the lesser gods. Humanity acquiesced and in doing so, they imaged one of the images of Yahweh instead of imaging Yahweh himself. This may work when the imager is trying to follow Yahweh, like Paul, who said, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). However, both Satan and humanity knew what Yahweh wanted them to do, and they intentionally chose to image a different path.
This same scenario repeats itself after Yahweh divided the world up by languages and assigned these new nations over to the care of the sons of God, while he chose Abraham to be his own nation (Deut. 32:8).7 Had these lesser gods done their job and imaged Yahweh to their nations, the humans assigned to them would have been directed right back to Yahweh. But instead, these principalities and powers were found acting unlike Yahweh (Ps. 82), and they even tried to stand in God’s way (Dan. 10:13, 20). Ultimately, it’s no wonder that God “puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight” (Job 15:15). Just like the earth, the heavens are filled with free will imagers that have been given semiautonomous power and authority that they can exercise rightly or wrongly.8
Broken imagers are the only kind of imagers we know—though with over two trillion galaxies in the universe, God may have put other kinds of imagers on other planets in an effort to bring the entire cosmos into harmony with his will.9 Perhaps somewhere out there is the story of unfallen imagers who lived out their purpose and calling rightly.10 Perhaps some planets carry more than one species of imager.11 Whatever the case, ours is the only story we know and the main paradigm we have to work with—an anthropology in which imagers fall, find redemption in Christ, and go from glory to glory.
From Trinity, to Angel, to Human
When the first earthly imagers sinned, they altered God’s framework for the earth. Satan went from guardian cherub to “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), while humanity was removed from the sacred space of the Garden of Eden where the tree of life was found. The conditions of immortality had been broken, so they’d now have to face death—a power allotted to Satan (Heb. 2:14) as the instigator of this new paradigm. But this altered framework came with the prophetic promise that Eve would one day have a descendant that would bruise the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15),12 so in due time, a human would become the human answer to a human problem. But how could this be? For a human to overcome the paradigm of death, they must not be guilty of sin in the first place, for sin leads to death (1 John 5:16).
Enter Jesus. Having always existed (John 17:5), Jesus is the image of God in every way (Col. 1:15). As a part of the Trinity, he is the image all other imagers are based on. As the Angel of the Lord,13 he bears the image of the heavenly sons of God. And as Jesus, he bears the image of earthly humans. Though he carries the image of God found in the higher realms, he underwent kenosis (Philip. 2:5-8), so “Everything inconsistent with being a true human was set aside in the incarnation.”14 Though his identity was still that of Yahweh himself, he was Yahweh limited by skin. He did not perform mightly supernatural works because he was Yahweh, but because he was supremely anointed with the Holy Spirit. And so just as the human prophets of times passed had multiplied food (1 Kings 17:14-16), healed the sick (2 Kings 5:1–14), raised the dead (1 Kings 17:17–24), and prophesied through the power of the Spirit, the human Jesus did the same.
While Jesus’ life was miraculous, it was also entirely human. The essential thing he did that no human had done before him, was not commit any sin (1 Peter 2:22). It seems Satan had not realized this (1 Cor. 2:8) as he entered Judas (John 13:27) and set events in play for the cross, ensuring his own demise. The cross operated as a “trojan horse,”15 taking Jesus into the realm of the dead—a place he did not belong, for he had not sinned and was not guilty of death. Once there, he took the power of death from Satan (Rev. 1:18) and then returned to earth in resurrection.
Resurrection Later
The resurrected Jesus is a strange being to read about, for he serves as a bridge between the image found in the sons of God and the image found in humanity. On one hand, he operates like Jesus-the-human: he can eat food (Luke 24:41–43), walk the earth (Luke 24:15), and be touched (Luke 24:39). But on the other hand, he operates like Jesus-the-son-of-God: he can appear in locked rooms (Luke 24:36), vanish (Luke 24:31), mask his appearance (Luke 24:16), and ascend into the heavenly realm where human bodies can’t go (Luke 24:51). So what kind of ontology does the resurrected Jesus possess? Is he an angel or a human? The answer the Bible seems to be implying is, “Yes.” Just as heaven and earth will collide in the future to create a new kind of hybrid world, so have heaven and earth collided within the personhood of Jesus, paving a way forward for his followers to receive this new kind of flesh and live in the coming world. When that day comes, humans will become “equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36). That is to say that, “believers have the capability of being transformed into angels or into entities ontologically and morally on a par with angels.”16
Of all the New Testament writers, Paul was perhaps the most excited and vocal about the resurrected body. As a resurrection-believing Pharisee in a world where the doctrine of resurrection was a hot topic (Acts 23:8), Paul celebrated the proof he found in Jesus. To him, the resurrection body was an imperishable, immortal, glorious, powerful, spiritual body that consisted of Adam and Jesus—dust and heaven (1 Cor. 15:42-49). With this in mind, it’s no wonder that Paul referred to Christians as hagioi—that is, holy ones—a term used throughout the Old Testament to classify spiritual beings.17 The Christian is no small deal for Paul, for one day they will even judge angels (1 Cor. 6:3).
The resurrected body is for a world back on track with God’s goal. While the framework may have shifted in the midst of sin, the plan has never changed. The Bible ends in the same place where it began: Eden—except in the end, the entire planet will be cultivated into Eden, which was the goal in humanity’s spreading out across the earth as they multiplied. God did not want one plot of the earth to be sacred space, but the whole thing. As access to the tree of life is restored in the age to come (Rev. 22:14), those who meet the conditions of immortality will be given new resurrected bodies to live in.18 Meanwhile, Sheol/Hades will be emptied out for judgment, and the imagers that have chosen not to image God (be it spiritual or physical) will perish (John 3:16) in a coming lake of fire known as Hell,19 which was designed for Satan and his angels (Matt. 25:41). It is there that even immortal beings will meet their end, while some mortal beings go on to immortality in their place.
Resurrection Now
While the greatest phase of earth and humanity still lies ahead of us in the eschaton, we are currently living in the most exciting phase of humanity in history. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit only anointed, empowered, and transformed certain leaders—namely the prophets and some select kings. With the Spirit’s help, they prophesied, did miracles, and were given new hearts (1 Sam. 10:9). But in the New Testament, Jesus fulfilled the prophetic promise of Joel 2:28-32 that “the possession by God’s Spirit will not be the privilege of the few, but the experience of all”20—a promise fulfilled on the day of Pentecost.
On that day, the Father sent the Spirit at the request of the Son (John 16:7) to baptize believers (Matt. 3:11), transforming them into something new. Just as a mighty wind blew across the waters at creation, so a mighty wind blew across the early church (Acts 2:2), birthing resurrection in its beta form. As Meredith Kline points out, “Pentecost is then a New Testament creation of man in God’s Spirit-likeness, a redemptive recapitulation of Genesis 1:2 and 27. In this New Testament event the Lord Christ endows his church with the Spirit and in so doing produces a likeness of the Spirit, an image of the Glory.”21 This was the moment Jesus had commanded them to wait for, for their ministry would be fruitless until they were “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).
With the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7) now within us, our humanity can be adapted to look like Jesus through the metamorphosis that comes with the renewal of our minds (Rom. 12:2). Furthermore, the Spirit allows us to gaze at Jesus in more of his fullness so that we are metamorphosed “into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18). In doing this, the God-given glory we’ve been given as human imagers of God advances to a pre-resurrected state of glory, and perhaps grows as we yield ourselves over to the Spirit for further sanctification. In time, we advance again to a heavenly state of glory, like that of which Moses and Elijah possessed during Jesus’ temporary metamorphosis into a heavenly being—a revealing of his actual identity to the disciples (Luke 9:30–31).22 And then we advance in glory again in the eschaton when we put on the metaphysical body of the resurrection. At that point, all of the partial and dim reflections we saw of the image of Jesus in ourselves in this age will be replaced with the fullness of the image of Christ (1 Cor. 13:12). Only then will we be so transformed that we will look in the mirror and behold Christ himself. Only then will we “become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Peter 1:4).
Through Christ, humans can now be “set free from sin” (Rom. 6:18) so that it has no dominion over us anymore (Rom. 6:14). This is not a matter of pretend theology where we claim we’re free from sin while we keep on sinning—rather, this is a matter of Christian reality. For if the resurrected body will be completely free from sin, and it’s that body we’re starting to put on in the already-but-not-yet, then we can truly become free of sin right now. Sin had no hold on Jesus’ humanity and the Spirit will teach us how to live a similar life.
While no human other than Jesus will go to the grave having never sinned, pre-resurrected humans are completely capable of going to the grave having sinned less and less over time as they yield themselves to the Spirit. Indeed, John Wesley was so bold as to proclaim a belief in Christian perfection, in which the Spirit might help Christians eventually get to the point where they no longer sin intentionally.23 This may seem like a tall order to some, but it is the kind of spiritual progression the New Testament endorses.
But the Spirit doesn’t only convict us and grow us spiritually—she also brings us back in line with God’s plan.24 Now that we can remove our gaze from sin and focus it fully on God, we can return to cultivating the whole earth to look like Eden. Except now, rather than multiplying via sexual means, we multiply via conversion. As humans of different cultures are brought into the Kingdom of Heaven, they subject their cultures to King Jesus for discernment. As Jesus refines their societies, sacred space spreads throughout the earth and heavenly/Edenic efforts are made to step into the new creation in the here and now. If human imagers stay busy and continue installing heaven in our midst right now, we’ll create works substantial enough to carry on into the eschaton, for such works will not be shaken to the ground when God comes to judge the earth (Heb. 12:27).
Conclusion
Contrary to popular evangelical belief, which almost subscribes to a Christian take on ancient Gnosticism,25 our earthly bodies are not gross, but tob (Gen. 1:31)—a quality that “gratifies the senses and derivatively that which gives aesthetic or moral satisfaction.”26 God did not create us as spiritual imagers, for he already created the sons of God for that. Rather, he specifically made us out of earth so that our good bodies might be appointed to the domain of earth. This is our realm, and we are the glorious kings and queens of it. No amount of decay our bodies can undergo or create can diminish the image of God upon us. It is a distinction of humanity that cannot be removed, and it has been placed on every existing person regardless of gender, age, ability, or any other characteristic.27
In our sinful altercation of God’s framework, the world is experiencing quite a bit of disarray. As humans continue to give their heart, soul, mind, and strength over to Paul’s personified, “Sin,”28 they continue to terraform the earth with this false deity. We have all been born into Sin’s reign and we require the Holy Spirit’s patient grace and empowerment if we are to escape its grasp this side of the resurrection.
But it can be done. Humans, after all, weren’t designed for Sin, but for Yahweh. We are more ourselves apart from Sin, not less ourselves. In this sense, resurrection looks backward to our identity before the fall. The eschaton is a future past in a more glorious form.
And so as we wait for the parousia, we love our neighbors. We walk with the Holy Spirit to repair the broken imagers around us, and the brokenness in ourselves. We elevate the imagers that have been moved to the bottom of society—for no imagers belong at the bottom. We care for the earth and cultivate it as God would. We become a curious people formed around the Sermon on the Mount. In all things, we pursue resurrection in the here and now with these good but broken bodies, doing our best to unify them around Christ. And as we die, we plant the seeds of resurrection in the ground and wait for the coming age of glory, transfiguration, transformation, and metamorphosis—for Christians will then put on the glorious human image of the resurrected Christ, which is incomparable with the image of God currently found in the sons of God or humans.
Footnotes
1 Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, 1st ed. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2015), 39-40, Logos Bible Software.
2 For more on the topic of selem, see my book. Jamin Bradley, God’s Grand Framework: Finding Our Place in God’s Story (Independently Published, 2020), 7-10.
3 Tim Mackie and Jon Collins. “Humans as Middle Management,” produced by Dan Gummel, The Bible Project, February 18, 2016, podcast, https://bibleproject.com/podcast/image-god-part-1/
4 For more on Eden as a temple, see: John H. Walton, “6 Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate,” The Lost World of Genesis One (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).
5 Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 42-43.
6 Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 50-51.
7 The ESV is helpful here as it adapts some of the older manuscripts we’ve found to solidify this belief.
8 Gregory A. Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross, Vol. 2 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017) 1196, Kindle Edition. See all of chapter 25 of this book for some terrific insight on semiautonomous power and how this theology makes sense of many confusing Bible passages.
9 For more thoughts on this topic, see my book: Jamin Bradley, Alien Theology: The God of Two Trillion Galaxies (Independently Published, 2017).
10 C.S. Lewis imagines such a scenario in his science fiction work, Perelandra. In this story, the imagers of Venus overcome demonic temptation, skip the age of sin, and are moved quickly into the age of resurrection. C.S. Lewis, Perelandra, (New York, NY: Scribner, 1972).
11 For other spiritual speculations of aliens, see: C.S. Lewis, “The Seeing Eye,” Essay Collection & Other Short Pieces (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000) 63.
12 K. A. Mathews, “Genesis 3:15.” The New American Commentary: Genesis 1-11:26, Vol. 1A. (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996). See also Tim Mackie and Jon Collins. “The Snake in the Throne Room,” produced by Dan Gummel, The Bible Project, January 28, 2019, podcast, https://bibleproject.com/podcast/theme-snake-throne-room-son-man-e3/, 00:24:54.
13 Michael Heiser, Angels: What the Bible Actually Says About God’s Heavenly Host (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018) 57-68.
14 Gregory A. Boyd and Paul R. Eddy, Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), Kindle Locations 1654-1656.
15 Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, 1066-1068.
16 M. David Litwa, “Equal to Angels: The Early Reception History of the Lukan ἰσάγγελοι (Luke 20:36),” Journal of Biblical Literature, September 1, 2021; 140 (3): 601–622. doi: https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1403.2021.8.
17 Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 311, 374.
18 For more on conditional immortality, see: Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment, 3rd Ed (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011). See also, Christopher M. Date. Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014).
19 To understand the differences between Sheol/Hades and Hell, see: Kim Papaioannou, The Geography of Hell in the Teaching of Jesus: Gehenna, Hades, the Abyss, the Outer Darkness Where There Is Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013).
20 Erika Moore, “Joel’s Promise of the Spirit,” Presence, Power and Promise: The Role of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament, edited by David G. Firth and Paul D. Wegner (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), Kindle Locations 2506-2507.
21 Meredith G. Kline, Images of the Spirit (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999), 70.
22 Richard R. Melick, Jr., “The Glory of God in the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, and the General Epistles,” The Glory of God, edited by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (Wheaton, IL: Crossway 2010) 89.
23 For more on Christian perfection, see my book: Jamin Bradley, A Taste of Jesus: Growing the Fruit of the Spirit (Independently Published, 2017), 52-53.
24 The Holy Spirit is grammatically feminine. See Gregory A. Boyd, Inspired Imperfection: How the Bible’s Problems Enhance it’s Divine Authority (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2020), Kindle Locations 182-245.
25 Tara M. Owens, Embracing the Body: Finding God in Our Flesh and Bone (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 41-42, Kindle Edition.
26 J. I. Packer, “Good,” New Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed., Edited by D. R. W. Wood, et al. (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1996), 423–424.
27 This is unlike other ancient religions that believed the image was only upon the highest leaders of earth. See, John H. Walton, Old Testament Theology for Christians: From Ancient Context to Enduring Belief, (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 84, Kindle Edition.
28 M. De Jonge,. “Sin,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, edited by Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, 2nd extensively rev. ed., (Grand Rapids, MI; Eerdmans, 1999), 782.
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