Living As God's Image Bearers

Satan hates us. He doesn’t see us simply as tools with which he can do evil. We aren’t just annoying obstacles in his way. We aren’t in any way neutral to him. And this is one of the reasons why: we bear the image of God.

We know from the Bible that Satan was once a holy angel of God. We understand the words of Isaiah against Tyre speak of Satan’s fall from the ranks of the angels:

How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit (Isaiah 14:12-15).

Satan desired the place of God. He desired to be the highest, the lord of everything. But, as we well know, his desires were violently denied.

And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him (Revelation 12:7-9).

Imagine the once glorious, now humiliated, Satan cast out of heaven to earth looking up from the dust and seeing humanity walking about, possessing something he so greedily desires: the likeness of God. And that becomes the battleground.

One of the reasons Satan hates us so much is because we bear the image of the God who he sought to become like himself. It is a possession he could never have, and his existence now is defined by the hatred and anger he bears toward it. Every thought of his mind, every command he gives to his demons, is toward the goal of attacking the image any way he can.

It began in the Garden of Eden when he tempted our first parents. “God knows that in the day you eat of [the Tree] … you will be like God,” he lied to the only beings made in God’s likeness. And thus, they fell, adopting Satan’s lust for their own.

Isn’t this the way Satan continues to attack the children of Adam and Eve to this day? When we become blind to the character of God and His image in us, we lose our very identity. Everything becomes skewed, twisted, and sinful. We stumble around in the darkness, having no idea who we are, why we exist, or what our purpose is. Instead of listening to the one Voice our ears were designed to hear, we instead follow every random noise that sounds good to us at the moment. Instead of loving the One our hearts were designed to love, we give our worship and affection to every idol that tugs at our emotions.

The image of God is the linchpin of our identity, and when we forget it, everything comes undone.

We live at the mercy of our circumstances

God has designed us after His likeness, and we are meant to live according to that design. But when we choose to live as if we aren’t created in His image, we become like a ship without a rudder, controlled by the chaos of the sea. Instead of living a life focused on obedience to God, we live in obedience to our circumstances.

Every new headline that speaks of wickedness or tragedy steals our hope. We spend our money on vain things, thinking that if we can just buy enough, we will be happy. Sickness drives us to idolize treatment; want drives us to idolize money; lust drives us to idolize sensual pleasure. For the person who lives as if they aren’t made in the Image of God, there are a million devils chasing them into the temples of a million little gods, and not one of them will give the deliverance they promise.

When we live according to God’s design, we have our eyes on eternity, and our rudder is set on a sure path through the waves. Nothing can touch our hope in God, not tragedy, poverty, sickness, or even death.

We become free to define others any way we want

When we lose sight of the image of God in others, they become whatever we want. We make them into objects of worship to fill up the emptiness in our hearts. We make them into enemies, so we have a sense of purpose - something to fight against. We make them foolish to inflate our intellect, or weak to make us feel strong. We turn them into objects that we can use so that we can worship ourselves. We turn them into messiahs so we can stop being afraid.

But when we recognize the image of God in others, we have to define them as God defines them. C.S. Lewis wrote of this in his essay The Weight of Glory:

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. … our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."

We become free to define ourselves any way we want

When we lose sight of the Image of God in ourselves, God’s design for how we are to be parents, workers, leaders, and worshippers - it all comes crashing down. We create our own designs, engaging every situation of life however our sinful hearts lead us. Parents lead their children to worship the idols of culture, either intentionally or by example. Workers dedicate their souls to their jobs, hoping for happiness. Leaders manipulate their followers. Worshippers forget who God is.

But when we live as image bearers, we understand that we aren’t our own creatures, and we can’t re-create ourselves any way we see fit. We must live lives that honor God. We must be parents who model the heart of our heavenly Father. We must be workers who work to the glory of God. We must be leaders who humbly influence others in righteousness and godliness. We must be worshippers who approach God on His terms.

There is an enormous responsibility on the shoulders of image bearers. When the rest of creation sees us, whether angels or animals, they see a reflection of God. The reflection is unclear in our sinfulness, but it is still there. Humanity is the only part of creation that can claim this great and mysterious trait, and we must understand the weight of it. Satan fell trying to obtain something like it. The spiritual cosmos was shaken as an angelic war was fought over it. And here we sit, living our mundane daily lives, with the Image of God permeating our being. We must not take this lightly.