What Does It Mean to Be Made Imago Dei?

I recently began going through the Pipeline, a training curriculum at my church designed to equip and vet future church leaders in key doctrines and spiritual disciplines. The first question we are going through in the program is, what does it mean to be made in the image of God (imago Dei)? The questions asked in the program were thought-provoking and deeply personal, and the required readings wrenched my heart and caused me to search my soul. After completing just this first program, I felt compelled to share the deep and basic truths God revealed about himself to me in this process.

So what does it mean to be made imago Dei? I am hoping to condense my answer to this incredibly complex question into three succinct points, with bits of my personal experience intermingled.

1. Being made imago Dei gives all people inherent worth and means all people are inherently valuable. Yet this point is completely lost on our fallen world. Exploitation, murder, and various other sins against other people are rampant throughout our world and even manifest in our lives. As David Lomas succinctly summarizes in his book The Truest Thing About You, "[W]e hurt God when we hurt another person." This is something we, as the ones who accept the truth that God created us in His likeness, can change in our own lives through the power of the Spirit. By God's grace, all people who are made in His likeness and do not suppress that truth, as manifested through faith in Christ, can fight the sins in our life that hurt other people and God. We did nothing to earn this ability; rather, it is a natural outcome of a heart regenerated by the Spirit through faith in the saving power of Christ. In essence, being made imago Dei is an identity that we have received (not earned or found), and, through Christ, are able to live out.

2. Being made in the likeness of God naturally causes us to desire the worship of God in our lives and the lives of everyone around us. I am going to borrow from one of my responses to a question in my training, and I pray you feel the awe of the glory of God I felt as I wrote these words:

"Being made in God's likeness, in the image of an all-powerful, severe, holy, and merciful being, is an awe-inspiring, humbling, wonderful thing, and drives me to worship something greater than me through my actions and words, through song, and through devotion. That something is the God who created and redeemed me. I have no choice, and I want no other choice, other than glorifying God in my relationships. This desire forms the substance of my relationships with others at work and my son, who I desire and exhort to come to know this joy and hope, as well as with my wife and other Christians in my life, who I desire and encourage to fully enjoy and hope in Christ."

3. Finally, being made in the likeness of God causes us to ache and long for a joy and hope that is both fulfilled and not yet fulfilled. Once again, I am going to borrow from another response to a Pipeline question to round out this point:

"I can trust in Jesus, knowing that the joys of watching my son crawl and reminiscing of my wedding day are pointing me to the day those joys, the best joys I can imagine, are made into true joy with no tinges of sadness. I can trust in Jesus, knowing that the days devoid of hope, when those whom I love have been stripped away by cancer and death, are pointing me to the day hopelessness is made into joy with no hint of pain. I can live in community with those who will encourage me to trust in Jesus in this way, and share the joy of this trust in Jesus with those who are trying to replace the joy of Imago Dei with anything they can. This is how I can fully receive and live out my true identity."

I hope that you will read this and yearn for the day when we will be able to fully celebrate what it means to be made in the image of God, with no pangs of sorrow marring our joy as we rejoice in a hope that we know will never come to an end. In the meantime, may this short post encourage you to encourage others and allow yourself to be encouraged in the simple truth that God created you, owns you, has redeemed you, and loves you.