What is “Imago Dei?”

I’ve used the term “Imago Dei” several times recently and I’m surprised people don’t know what it means.

It’s a Latin term that means “image of God,” or “made in the image of God.”

It means respecting life, human life.

We’re all made in the image of God, as He himself explains in Genesis 1:27:

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27 NKJV

Christanity.com expands on this definition:

The term Imago Dei refers most fundamentally to two things: first, God’s own self-actualization through humankind;

and second, God’s care for humankind.

To say that humans are in the image of God is to recognize the special qualities of human nature which allow God to be made manifest in humans. . . .

The moral implications of the doctrine of Imago Dei are apparent in the fact that if humans are to love God, then humans must love other humans, as each is an expression of God. 

Is all creation Imago Dei?

God created other living things besides Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Is everything that lives Imago Dei?

While waiting for the kindergarten bus one day, my daughter explained that “trees were more important than people.”

My heart sank and I whispered a prayer under my breath before pointing at some nearby spindly trees. “Are those trees more important than your brothers?”

“Of course not. They’re just trees!”

“What people, then, are less important than trees?” I asked.

“People we don’t know!”

Ah, there’s the rub.

Even as a five-year-old, my daughter learned that Imago Dei refers to all people, whether you know them or not.

Of course, we love trees; but not as much as God calls us to love people–no matter who they are in relationship to us.

Jonah and the plant

In Jonah chapter 4, the prophet who already had spent time inside a whale and admonished the Ninevites to repent, settled down to sulk.

He didn’t like that God had mercy on the hated Ninevite race.

Jonah left the city and sat on a hill to see what would happen next.

But it was hot, so the same merciful God who accepted the Ninevite’s repentance, caused a plant to grow up,

That it might be shade for his head to deliver him from his misery. So Jonah was very grateful for the plant.

Jonah 4:7 NKJV

The Lutheran Study Bible notes, “this is the one time we are told Jonah was truly happy.”

The next morning, God sent a wind to scorch and kill the plant and a furious Jonah felt so sorry for himself, he demanded to die.

God called him on his lack of mercy and care for others. Was that plant of more value to Jonah than the 120,000 people in Ninevah?

They were made in God’s image and had eternal life before them.

The plant was designed to grow, wither, and die in one day.

What/who truly was more important? A plant or the eternal soul of men and women?

John Calvin on the Imago Dei

In Timothy Keller’s The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy, he discusses the value of our neighbors–the people we live with and whom we encounter, if only fleetingly, as we go through life.

John Calvin . . . discusses how Christians should regard all their neigbors. He draws remarkable implications from the doctrine of the Imago Dei.

“Remember not to consider men’s evil intentions but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.”

The Prodigal Prophet

We are called to love men and women, strangers, neighbors, foreigners, cruel people and all we meet with God’s love. They are all made in God’s image, whether they know it, or even like it, or not.

Dismissing the Imago Dei

It’s easy for many to demonize those who are not like them, or look like them.

“The other” can often seem like a threat.

And yet, Jesus calls us to love one another.

There is no asterisk excluding anyone.

That’s why racism, sexism, nationalism, class and sneering at others not like us has never made any logical sense to me.

Under the skin, we’re all the same.

I recently had a conversation with someone who told me, “I think humans are the biggest cause of climate change. They’re destroying the planet. We need to get rid of half the humans, and then we’ll be fine.”

I didn’t think anyone would suggest such an idea to a living person.

I’d already explained I thought everyone needed to be respected because of the Imago Dei–a concept of which this individual had never heard.

I shook my head. “I can’t agree with you if for no other reason than the Imago Dei.”

Mark 5

In his discussion of Jesus encountering the demon-possessed man living in the tombs among the Gadarenes, Enduring Word’s David Guzik commented on why Satan’s demons attack individuals.

Demons . . . attack men because they hate the image of God in man. They attack that image by debasing man and making him grotesque – just as they did to this man in the country of the Gadarenes.

Do Christians need to fear such attacks?

Demons have the same goal in Christians: to wreck the image of God.

But their tactics are restricted toward Christians because demonic spirits were “disarmed” by Jesus’ work on the cross (Colossians 2:15).

Yet demonic spirits certainly can both deceive and intimidate Christians, binding them with fear and unbelief.

Enduring Word, Mark 5: 8

What does it mean to be made in God’s Image?

We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Each one of us.

We are called to love one another.

Each one of us.

I may not like what you do, what you say, how you behave.

But you are Imago Dei–God’s image–and for that reason, I can choose to love you no matter what.

The real question for me is simple: do I reflect God’s image in my interaction to and with the world?

Tweetables

What is the Imago Dei? Click to Tweet

Are trees more important than the Imago Dei? Click to Tweet