Scripture: Genesis 1:24-28; John 1:15-18; Genesis 2:16-17; Genesis 9:3; Romans 8:35-39; Romans 3:23 Series: Creation
A World Communion Sunday sermon in a Creation series pairing Genesis 1 and John 1. Wilson argues the image of God is not physical resemblance but a divine capacity (Augustine: memory, understanding, desire) to see, know, and love as God does—revealed fully in Christ. This capacity extends to caring for creation: dominion means stewardship, not tyranny, evidenced by the original vegetarian covenant. Using the extended metaphor of a photograph (always manipulated, always limited at its edges), he asks where the limits lie—of the image, of redemption, of God’s love—and answers from Romans 8 that there is none: no point at which our sin or our ‘No’ is greater than God’s love and Yes. Through original sin all are malformed (none are simply good people), but in Christ and baptism the image is restored.
Illustrations: del-rio-cave-paintings, icon-controversies, niepce-first-photograph, matthew-brady-staged-photos, photograph-aperture-edge, niles-crane-moral-luck
October 1, 2023
Genesis 1:24-28
John 1:15-18
All Peoples and Creatures
World Communion Sunday
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
- Genesis 1:24-28
(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
- John 1:15-18
Images have always been powerful to humans. Some of the first human records we have are images on the walls. It is an astonishing thing to see. There are many places in the world you can go to see cave art. One I location like is in South Texas near Del Rio. Sentinel Canyon State Park is right on the Rio Grande. They’re some beautiful cave paintings you can go see that are thousands of years old. These representations humans have made. It is astonishing. Images have captivated people throughout history. For a long time in the church’s history, the way to understand the language of image of God was an icon. An icon points us to God. Icons are painted in a flat way to remind us that they are not real. They become real by pointing our mind’s eye to God. Yet there’s also been giant controversies over icons and images in the church for centuries. There was a crisis in the eighth century about icons. In the midst of this enormous transition from the ancient world to the medieval one, there was a controversy about Icons and whether they were idolatrous. In the 16th century, during the Reformation, this happened again. Churches from the Reformed tradition (like Presbyterian or Congregational) tore down icons and images of Christ as being sacrilegious. Today, some churches are full of pictures and images. Other churches could be at just a convention center because of the lack of religious decorum.
And then almost 200 years ago, humans started capturing images in a new way with photography. One of the earliest photos in existence is actually in Austin at the Harry Ransom Center. It is titled the Point de vue du gras. It was made by a French inventer named Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 in Eastern France near the community of Saint-Loup-de-Varennes. You can see it in the lobby of the Harry Ransom Center, though it is difficult to view. You have to look at it from an angle, but it’s there. Niépce’s associate, Louis Daguerre, expanded the possibilities of photography by inventing and promoting the Daguerreotype. By 1850, the world had changed and photography covered the globe. Images from photography and film are powerful. They look like reality, but they’re not reality. There’s always a manipulation. Sometimes egregiously as in the case of photographers who prepare their subject matter. There was the Civil War photographer, named Matthew Brady, who had moved the bodies of the dead after the battle to a more composed location. But even if you do not touch your subject matter, photography and film are always manipulated because there’s always what is not captured. There’s always what is just beyond the aperture. Everything outside of the view is gone. Or if someone turns away and you can’t see their face, there’s no way to capture the face is in the image again.
Series Intro
My friends, we are continuing our series on Creation, looking at Genesis 1 and John 1 together to understand more Christ’s presence in Creation, God’s power in creation, and the importance of creation for us today.
Today we’re thinking about how humans were created in the image of God, and I want us to understand how this language of image is not straightforward forward.
We are not made in the image of God in the sense that we physically resemble God or even that we physically resemble Jesus. This is not the sense that we’re going for, and we know this is true because God has no physical appearance. God has no material reality. There’s no way we could resemble God materially. There are many lazy readings of this centrally important verse from Genesis that try to make humans materially similar to God, but this is a mistake.
Let us make humanity in our image.
In what image are we talking?
Augustine, the early church father, said that the image in which we are made is Triune. And the image is that we have memory, understanding, and desire. There’s a lot of wonderful arguments in this direction, but I want us to hold onto this understanding of image in some way as a divine capacity. This is how we were made with a capacity to see God, to recognize God.
John
In the passage from John, we have the gospel writer reflecting on how no one has ever seen God. It is only son himself, God, who is close to the father’s heart, who has made him known. Jesus is the one who reveals God to us. It is this capacity inside of us that is God’s image. The image in which we were created is the capacity to understand, the capacity to will, the capacity to remember. In this way, Augustine is right and we should understand who we are in this way. And it’s not what we look like. It is not what we are physically capable of. It’s that we can see as God sees. We can understand that and we can remember that, but this capacity is not limited to us. It is expanded into a way of seeing other people and seeing the world around us. Quickly, it expands to how we see the animal kingdom. This is a central point in Genesis 1. Humans are made following the creation of the rest of the living things. And then humans are given dominion over all of these creatures. What does the bible mean by subdue and rule? It is not a straightforward thing. The same word for rule or dominion here is used throughout the Old Testament to refer to kings. Is God telling humans to be kings of the jungle? The quick reading would be, “I do what I want!” but that is not what God is saying here. When we read the Bible and we come across unclear sections, it is important to interpret them with clear sections. We get clarity quickly with Genesis 2, when God says “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” This first covenant with Adam bides humans to be vegetarians. We see this because in Genesis 9, God expands the covenant with Noah to include animals and fish and birds as food. So when God tells humanity to subdue and rule over animals, it is not in the sense of a tyrant but a care-taker, a steward.
In this sense, as well, we were made in the image of God. We can care for those around us who are not us. We can care for the birds and animals and fish and plants, not because of their use for us, but because they are a gift put in our care by the God who loves us.
Before humanity, God created by fiat: let there be. With humanity, God crafts: let us make…we have been crafted intentionally.
And yet, something is amiss.
In the brokenness of this world, this capacity has been malformed. This is what the early church called original sin. Original sin is not just the fact that bad people are out there. In fact, original sin never lets us use the excuse of bad people and good people. It is an excuse to talk about bad people and good people because it completely writes off a whole swath of humanity. Original sin doesn’t let us do that. Instead we have, in the words of Paul, an understanding that all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. All of us. There’s not a hierarchy of better people, worse people, all of our capacity to do the good on our own, to see the good on our own, to love on our own, has been malformed. Sometimes we accidentally do the good but that doesn’t make us good.
There is this episode of the old 90s sitcom, Frasier, about a psychiatrist in Seattle who has a radio call in show. In the episode, Frazier’s dad, who’s this gruff, manly man, retired cop, goes to a basketball game and his sons go with him. They know nothing of sports. His younger son, Niles, has his seat number called out by the emcee. So this incredibly geeky, un-athletic psychiatrist makes his way down the rows to the court below. And just so I get my point across, Niles Crane is the least athletic human in the history of television. And yet, the ball goes in. And then he makes this huge deal about how awesome he was. But it wasn’t skill. It was dumb luck. We could call it moral luck. Sometimes we are morally lucky to do the right thing, to desire the right things. That doesn’t mean we have not been malformed by sin for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God. Yet thanks be to God and Jesus Christ. We can be redeemed and made whole. It is God who does good in the world. And whether someone believes or not, when people do good it is God working through them.
Finally, I want to go back to this language of image and of the photograph and of the edges of the photograph. I want us to remember that every image is manipulated because there’s always what is outside of the image. There is always a limit to the image. What is the limit to how we’re made in the image of God? And what is the limit to Christ’s redemption? What is the limit to God’s love?
This is precisely the moment when the metaphor falls apart because scripturally, there is no limit to God’s love. One of the ways the early church talked about redemption and salvation was restoration. The restoration of the image of God. This is one of the ways that the early church understood baptism. In baptism, we are restored to a state of grace because the malformation of sin has been washed away from us. But let’s get real, how much sin can grace cover? For this question, we must look at what we actually believe in. There’s no point at which our sin is greater than God’s love. There’s no point in which our No is greater than God’s Yes, whether we are morally lucky or not, whether we grow up in the church, or we come to faith late in life. Whether we fall away into the depths of doubt and despair, at no point os our No greater than God’s Yes. We see this fleshed out fully in Romans eight. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
It’s a question about limits. What can separate us? What can keep us from God’s love? Paul gives this beautiful list: neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So let us not put a limit on what God can do for us. Let us not self limit the Holy Spirit in our life. Let us not say, these are the parts of our life that cannot be redeemed. These are the sins I need to keep. That’s unnecessary. It is wasteful. It is one thing to gain the whole world, but give up your soul. It is another to gain barely anything at all and give up your soul. It is one thing to give your life for your friend or your country. It is another to give your life for the power company. We don’t need to sell ourselves short. God offers himself for you. You are made in the image of God. You are offered redemption in the name of Jesus Christ who offered himself to become human and fleshed, as limited as us, so that we could be restored to see as God sees to be cleansed of all but love, May it be so.
Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, thank you for your love which covers a multitude of sins. Help us to remember we are made in your image to love and sacrifice in this world. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen