The Image of God

Mar 31
10 min read

Updated: Apr 5

Genesis 1:26-27 English Standard Version

²⁶Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

²⁷So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

I like the Living Bible Version of this passage,

Genesis 1:26-27 Living Bible

²⁶Then God said, “Let us make a man—someone like ourselves, to be the master of all life upon the earth and in the skies and in the seas.”

²⁷So God made man like his Maker.

Like God did God make man;

Man and maid did he make them.

Today, I saw the Lord in a vision as clearly as you see a person talking on television. He was very beautiful like a woman as He spoke about love. Today He is concerned about my wife and I. He gave me a message for her, which I am also sharing with you, the audience. The Lord stood before me and said,

"That need for love {inside you and her} is My image. That's what I want you to tell her. She thinks it {inside her} means {for her} to be a man. That need for love, is Me in you {and her} longing for you {both}".

God is love (1 Jn. 4:7–8), and God’s children are created in His image to love, just as God our Father is love. This is God’s message for today.

Love is more substantial than creativity. Many assume that the image of God consists in the capacities to create, speak, think, exercise a sense of fairness or in being male. Yet apart from love, these capacities are ultimately empty—like lifeless symbols or fruit without life—because God’s image within us is love (See 1 Corinthians 13). The need for love that every human being possesses is an expression of that image.

God is everything—the complete meaning of life. To know Him teaches us the true value of money: it is nothing compared with the true riches of knowing God. We are given one lifetime for this purpose: to know God, and to love Him and others.

Matthew 22:37-40 English Standard Version {Paraphrased}

³⁷And {Jesus said}, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

³⁸This is the great and first commandment.

³⁹And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

⁴⁰On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 6:19-33 English Standard Version {Paraphrased}

Lay Up Treasures in Heaven

¹⁹{And Jesus said} "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,

²⁰but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

²²“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, ²³but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

²⁴“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Do Not Be Anxious

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

²⁶Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

²⁷And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

²⁸And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,

²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

³¹Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’

³²For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

³³But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Philippians 3:7-14 English Standard Version

⁷But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

⁸Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—

¹⁰that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,

¹¹that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Straining Toward the Goal

¹²Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

¹³Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

In Closing,

The Need to Be Loved Is an Inherent Human Attribute;

A Universal Human Characteristic,

Present In Both Male and Female;

The Need to Be Loved Is a Core Human Need, Not Limited to Either Sex

Females possess a feminine sexual nature, and males possess a masculine sexual nature; in this respect, opposites are often drawn to one another. However, the desire to be loved is a universal aspect of human nature shared by both women and men. It is neither an exclusively feminine trait nor an exclusively masculine one; rather, it is a common human need.

Human nature, therefore, is not inherently male or female. It includes qualities that are shared by both sexes, such as the need to be loved. As a man, I have personally recognized this need, and God has spoken to me regarding it in this post. God has also spoken to my wife in this post about it, enabling her to recognize this same need in her. This affirms that the desire to be loved is not limited to one sex, but is a fundamental human attribute—one that reflects the image of God within the human heart. In this way, both male and female bear the image of God and share the same essential attributes of human nature.

The image of God is expressed in both male and female and is not confined to either sex. It means a woman should be loved as a woman, not pressured to imitate a man, and a man should be loved as a man—serving a woman through self-giving love as he fulfills his role as head. In this way, the image of God teaches us to be whole and complete in Christ.

The Holy Spirit Sounds Like a Woman

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 13:14): God the Father and God the Son are commonly spoken of in masculine terms. For this reason, some women struggle with the image of God within them, assuming that if God is “Father,” then bearing His image must mean becoming male.

Scripture further teaches that God conforms His church—both male and female—to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29). This can further confuse some Christian women into thinking they are meant to imitate masculinity. The image of God, and the image of God’s Son, is not a set of male traits, but inherent and universal spiritual qualities shared equally by both women and men—such as the fruit of the Spirit described in Galatians 5:22–23. These are not gendered virtues.

At the same time, the Holy Spirit is fully God and may be perceived in distinctly feminine ways. In the opening vision described in this post—when God spoke to me about love and His image within human anatomy, appearing as a beautiful woman—that figure was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit both sounded and appeared as a woman. In this sense, within the Godhead, the Holy Spirit may be the person with whom some women more readily identify in feminine expression.

Jesus taught that the Holy Spirit is like living water (John 7:37–39). Psalm 69:1–3 likewise uses water as a metaphor for human emotion. In that sense, both women and the Holy Spirit may be understood as operating prominently in the realm of emotion. This may help explain why the Holy Spirit can “sound” to a man like his wife—urging him toward the same counsel, such as choosing love rather than conflict.

Even so, the idea that Scripture assigns reason to men and love or emotion to women is a common cultural assumption without firm biblical support. Throughout both the Old and New Testaments, wisdom, rational thought, and emotional depth are presented as universal human capacities—rooted in the image of God—rather than a gender-segregated trait.

Finally, church, the Lord would have us take this message further by looking at the Scriptures that reveal what we share in common as male and female in His image—so we can understand the Imago Dei, the image of God, with clarity and faith.

First, we must settle this: the image of God is restored to us through Jesus Christ. Scripture declares that Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and that the glory of God is revealed in Him (2 Corinthians 4:4). If we want to know what God’s image looks like in humanity, we look to Jesus—and we yield ourselves to be conformed to Him in every spiritual quality of goodness.

Hear the Word of the Lord:

Galatians 3:28 (KJV)

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

This is not a denial of our created distinctions. It is a declaration of our shared spiritual standing. In Christ, male and female do not compete for value, closeness, or inheritance—we are one. The image of God is not a male image and a female image; it is one spiritual wholeness and completeness made available to all who are in Christ.

And this is not new. It is written from the beginning:

Genesis 1:27 (KJV)

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

From creation, God stamped His image upon both male and female. Both carry the spiritual capacity of His likeness. So the church must stop treating God’s image as though it belongs more to one than the other. God’s image is spiritual oneness—wholeness and completeness—shared by both.

So what does that image look like in us? The Bible does not leave us guessing. It shows us the evidence of God’s image working in the heart:

Galatians 5:22–23 (KJV)

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

And again:

Ephesians 5:9 (KJV)

“(For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)”

Church, this is the mark of the image restored—Christ in you. Not pride, not division, not superiority, but the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control—goodness, righteousness, and truth. Let us receive what God has given, honor what God has spoken, and walk together as one people in Christ, bearing His image for His glory.

I haven’t found Christian songs that express love for God with the same intensity that these first two songs express love for people. We live in a world that often feels spiritually empty—marked by a void where love should be. So, I want to share these songs as an expression of my love for God: to sing them to Him, and to tell Him,

“Lord, You are everything, and everything is You.”

“I can’t live, Lord, if living is without You—I can’t give anymore.”

“Knowing You, Jesus, is better than life.”

“I would rather die than live without You.”

“You, Jesus, are gold.”

“Jesus is the true riches.”

“Jesus is gold—knowing You, Jesus, is the true riches.”

And if you cannot sing to God like this today, there is coming a day when you will. In heaven, we will worship Him forever with this kind of love. When you sing to God from that place, it is the Holy Spirit giving utterance within you—God living His life through us. That is the meaning of life: to know God.

The gold and true riches of life are found in your relationship with Him (see Luke 12:13–21). Amen.

"When the night has been too lonely

And the road has been too long

And you think that love is only

For the lucky and the strong

Just remember in the winter

Far beneath the bitter snows

Lies the seed that with the sun's love

In the spring becomes the rose" ...

The Rose

Bette Midler

"You Are Everything" (The Stylistics - 1971)