The Image of God and the Keys to Creation

While on a recent trip to Baltimore, I checked “go to a baseball game at Camden Yards” off of my bucket list. This ballpark, the home of Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles, is one of the most iconic stadiums in America. One of its unique features is a bronze statue of Baltimore native and baseball great Babe Ruth.

Ruth was raised in Baltimore and experienced a particularly harsh upbringing, and so the statue is named “Babe’s Dream” because the artist wanted to depict his dream of one day escaping his childhood and playing in the big leagues. There he stands, gazing off into the future, cleats on his feet and a bat in his hand, dreaming of the day when he will escape the shackles of his life. It’s a beautiful piece of art, really. But the sculpture is merely an image of Ruth, an inexact representation of who and what he really was.

I couldn’t help but feel a sense of solidarity between us. No, not with Babe Ruth, but with this depiction of him. While this statue was made in someone’s image, it is not an ultimate copy of the man it portrays. It is a shadow, a likeness. Likewise I, we, are made in the image of God, yet we are far removed from actually being him.

Did God Really Say?

Standing before the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Eve was posed a question: “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” To which Eve replied, “God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” The serpent, Satan, proceeded to do what he does best—twist the words of God just enough to make us believe the lie ourselves. He told her, simply, that God did not want her to be like him. A bold-faced lie. And she ate.

Eve, along with her husband, traded eternal freedom for the bondage found in that piece of fruit. They had quickly forgotten the declaration God had made about and upon them not long before: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” and told them to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:27-28). Eve’s response to Satan should’ve been clear: “I am already more like God than anything in creation. I have everything in my hands. What you’re offering me is actually less than what I already have.” In trying to be more like God, our first parents in reality marred their God-likeness.¹

In Adam and Eve’s singular act, the image of God was shattered and we live with that reality today (Rom. 5:12). Satan disguised himself as a creature that was under the rule of mankind—a serpent—and overthrows his masters by convincing them that they needed more than what they had already been undeservedly given. And they lost it all. As Desmond Alexander notes:

Although Adam and Eve are expelled from God’s presence, human beings retain the capacity to exercise dominion. However, due to their rebellious behavior, God’s authority structures are overturned. The divine ordering of creation is rejected by the human couple, with disastrous consequences for all involved. Harmony gives way to chaos. As the early chapters of Genesis go on to reveal, people exercise dominion in the cruelest of ways.² In a tangible way, the first humans were the kings of this world. God gave them the keys to creation, and they handed them over to Satan. Moving forward, Scripture is not silent about the need for restoration. And only through a perfect man, the Messiah, could the image of God and the brokenness of humanity be redeemed. That Messiah King would one day rule over the earth as Adam and Eve were supposed to (e.g., Jer. 23:5; Zech. 9:9-13).

The Perfect Image: God in the Flesh

Matthew 4, in an eerily similar scene, tells of a man approached by Satan. Satan pulls out his top hat and begins to pull rabbits from within. “Turn these stones to bread, Son of God. Throw yourself from this temple and let God’s angels catch you, Son of God. I will give you all the kingdoms of the world, Son of God.” And Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah King, answers the way Eve should have: “God said to trust what he says. He has given me authority over creation. Now go away.” Satan, the serpent that he still is, slithers away.

The first verse of the chapter says that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. Jesus wasn’t caught off guard by the devil’s appearance. Satan didn’t trap Jesus—Jesus trapped Satan. God the Son, the very image of God (Col. 1:15), stepped into human history as a man to restore the image and likeness of God in man fractured by the fall of Adam and Eve. In the wilderness, he snatched the keys to creation back from the Enemy who had stolen them so long ago. Alexander reminds us that “Jesus himself refers to Satan as the ‘ruler [or ‘prince’] of this world’ (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). Each time Jesus declares that he has come in order to overthrow him.”³

God within Us

When Jesus ascended back to heaven, he sent us the Holy Spirit, that we might be renewed into the image of God (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10). Not only so, but Jesus tells his disciples (and us) that through the Holy Spirit, they would do even greater works than he did (John 14:12-17).

This all sounds astounding on the surface—and it is. But Jesus is merely reminding us that he came to destroy darkness and that we will be taking the gospel, the good news of redemption, to the world by his authority. As Jesus’ emissary within believers, the Spirit empowers us to take the gospel to the ends of earth, pointing to the day when the King of Kings will reign over the completely restored creation, where the effects of Adam and Eve’s blunder are mere memories.

Like Babe’s Dream, we are but image-bearers of the Image. We look off into the distance, awaiting the day when we can fully escape the shackles of this life. But unlike the sculpture, we are not lifeless and stationary—we are temples of God, on a mission to reflect the image exactly as it should be.

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[1] As my friend Bill Watson, Assistant Professor of Greek and New Testament at Criswell College, says: “She allows herself to be deceived into thinking that she can grasp after what is already hers, and in doing so ironically loses the very thing she possesses already.”

[2] T. Desmond Alexander, From Eden to New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2008), 79.

[3] Ibid., 101.