The Image of God, Part One

 

In the last post I kicked off this idea of developing a comprehensive view of sexuality based on the Bible and Christian principles.  Voices in the church have largely been silent on the issues of sexuality, outside of "fornication is bad and abstinence is good!"  My goal is to speak into this area and help restore a Christ-centered, God-glorifying view of sexuality.  The Bible paints a glorious and beautiful vision of sexuality that transcends time and space, and is cosmic in its scope, but it does take some mining to dig those truths out of Scripture.

At the foundation of our understanding of sexuality is what we believe about our bodies themselves.  Before we can talk about sexuality as an activity, we need a firm knowledge of our sex as defined in our bodies.  Every body has a given sex, male or female, as defined by their genitals, hormones, bone structure and DNA among other differences.  This is all by design.

As we have seen often enough, the first chapters of Genesis provide essential truth upon which we can build our understanding of our bodies and sexuality. Here is what we find there, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." (Genesis 1:26-28)

At the very bedrock of our beliefs about sex we must understand that we are created in the image of God.  This is probably the most important thing we can understand about ourselves as it pertains to our sexuality.  What does this mean?  This means that our bodies, minds, and spirits are all shaped and crafted as a unified whole to resemble our Creator.  Just as a photograph, painting or sculpture can be created in the image of a person, God has shaped us to resemble Him.  We are like reflections of His person and nature.  We are living icons of God.

While Adam and Eve, and by extension, all of us, were created in the image of God, they were not perfect images or replicas.  Just as a two-dimensional image cannot completely capture the three-dimensional likeness of a person, far less his personality, speech patterns and mannerisms, a human being cannot fully reflect the infinite power, glory, and beauty of God.  God exists in reality beyond our understanding and possesses all power, knowledge, wisdom, and glory, and while attributes of His nature have been given to us, we do not possess all of them.  And those we do have are limited, while His characteristics are infinite.  But He has given us consciousness, intelligence, creativity, moral understanding, and perhaps most important as far as sexuality goes, the ability to create life.

This image and likeness extend to our entire being, to our bodies along with our souls and spirits.  This means that our bodies and our sex are inherently good.  There are some who believe that the body is a bad thing that needs to be suppressed and controlled or it will lead us into sin.  This often stems from a misunderstanding of what the New Testament teaches about the Spirit and the flesh (See Galatians 5).  When the Bible speaks of the flesh leading us into sin, it is not speaking of our skin, bones, muscles, hormones and all the rest, but rather of the unclean desires that reside within our bodies.  Those desires for food, drink, sex, ambition, greed and so on that pull us away from God and into sin.  But our bodies in and of themselves are good things.  It is what we choose to do with them that makes the difference.

The goodness and glory of our bodies extends to our sex, to our masculinity and femininity.  Adam and Eve as male and female were both created in the image of God and our bodies in their masculinity and femininity are both meant to image forth the nature of God.  Just as a prism refracts light into its separate colors, male and female shine God's light in different ways.  Men show a side of God's nature that women do not, and women show a side of God's nature that men do not.

These male/female distinctions make all the difference in the world.  These are not subjective experiences that are constructed by society and our environment and can be changed based on our feeling and experiences.  Parts of our culture have failed to realize the natural goodness of the female and male body, and this has led to much confusion, chaos, and pain.

Being created in the image God means that every human body is valuable and worthy of dignity and honor.  I will close with that for now, but we have only scratched the surface of what being created in the image of God means for our lives and sexuality.  We will dig deeper into that next time.