It has been observed that while it is said of Adam that he was to be made in God’s image, after His likeness, that in regard to Christ there is no mention of likeness to God where it speaks of Him as being God’s image, and for the simple reason that He is God, not just like Him. How very necessary it is to safeguard the divine glory of the Son of God come in flesh, for men, under the influence of Satan, have not been slow to take the occasion of the Son becoming Man to deny His Godhead glory. How very jealous the Spirit of God is in relation to this, for in the Scriptures of the New Testament He has given abundant witness to the divine and eternal glory of the Son, so that no upright mind could call in question that the eternal Son is co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the unity of the Godhead.
The Image of the Invisible God
God essentially dwells “in the light which no man can approach to; whom no man has seen, nor can see” (1 Tim. 6:16), and is therefore “invisible” to men. It is therefore surpassing wonderful that there is One who is called “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), and verse 13 of this same Scripture tells us who He is, the Son of God’s love. The One upon whom the love of God rests has come into Manhood that men might know the God who is invisible. As to the glory of the Son, in verse 16 it is written of Him, “For by Him were all things created…all things were created by Him, and for Him.” Not only is He the creator of all things, but “He is before all things, and by Him all things consist” (verse 17).
Who else but One who is God could set forth what God is? As the image of the invisible God the Son of God represents God, but as the perfect and full expression of all that God is in His nature, and in His attitude of grace towards men. Although God had brought Israel into relationship with Himself as His people, and had revealed Himself to Moses as the I AM, He remained in the darkness, and spoke to them from out of the darkness and the fire (Deut. 4:11-12; 5:23). It was only when the Son came that God was truly revealed, for “No man has seen God at any time; the Only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father He has declared Him” (John 1:18).
The Son in His Person is the effulgence of God’s glory, “and the expression of His substance” (Heb. 1:3), so that we see in the Son what could not possibly have been seen in creation, which indeed sets before men the glory of God’s “eternal power and divinity” (Rom. 1:20). Not in creation, or the law, or by any angel could the invisible God be made known. What God is in all the love of His heart, in His nature, in the fulness of His grace, and in all His moral attributes, has come to light in the Son of His bosom, the perfect living image of God, presenting in His own Person what God is, for He is God. In the Son of God’s love we see what God is towards all men, but in Colossians what He is specially for the assembly that is so dear to His heart.
“Christ, who is the image of God”
Christ is not only the Son of God’s love in whom all that God is has come before men, and is seen in Him now in the presence of the Father, but He is the Man of God’s counsels, the Second Man, the Last Adam, of whom the first Adam was a figure. The God of this world succeeded in defacing the image of God in the first man when he caused him to fall from his first estate of innocency, but he was unable to find anything in the Second Man on which to act. Adam was disobedient, and death was the consequence for him and for his face, but Jesus, the Second Man was obedient unto death, and in resurrection is seen as the Last Adam, the Head of a new race.
The gospel tells us of God’s grace in Christ for the blessing of men, but also tells us of the “glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4), directing the hearts of all men to Him whom God has glorified at His right hand. In Christ glorified we learn what God’s thoughts are of Man. Now, in the glory, is the Man who sets forth all God’s thoughts for the blessing of men now, and for the blessing of men in the world to come. Indeed, Christ as the image of God tells us of what Man will be for God as the Head over all things, and this because of who He is as God’s anointed, and as having secured for God the glory of redemption. The god of this world cannot touch the glory of the Last Adam, the image of God, but he has succeeded in hiding that glory from the vision of those who do not believe in Jesus.
Man Created in God’s Image
When God created man He formed him in a unique way, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. This distinguished man from the lower animals, and fitted him for his place of headship over the lower creation. Moreover, we read of God’s counsel in regard to man, for He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). When Adam sinned his likeness to God was lost, never to be recovered, but the image was retained though disfigured, for Adam, even as fallen was God’s representative as head over the lower creation. Adam unfallen was like God as being pure and undefiled, but sin not only made man guilty, it also ruined and defiled him.
After Noah came forth from the ark all the living creatures of the lower creation were delivered into his hand, and the sword of God’s government of the earth was also given to him, and God said, “And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it…at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen. 9:5-6). Then God gave the reason for requiring His judgment to be carried out, “for in the image of God made He man.” Men vainly imagine that they are wiser than God in setting aside His decree of capital punishment. It is a solemn matter that those who profess to be Christians should join in this, and it is hardly surprising that murder increases where the divine decree is set at naught.
When the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians sought to entangle the Lord with the question about paying tribute to Caesar, the Lord asked to be shown a penny, then said, “Whose is this image and superscription?” They answered, “Caesar’s,” and the Lord replied, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:15–21). This was not only a word to silence their objections, and to meet their hypocrisy, but was also a word for their consciences. They bore the image of God, and ought to have rendered to God what belonged to Him, but instead of putting themselves at God’s disposal they were found in opposition to Him and to His Son.
Judaism has been set aside in the cross of Christ, but God’s order in creation remains, and even in relation to the functioning of God’s assembly there is to be the maintenance of what God ordered in the creation of man and woman, so that the Spirit of God has instructed “For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image of glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man” (1 Cor. 11:3–16). The angels looking down at God’s assembly see the divine order carried out when women are covered, and when men are uncovered. Man’s glory is there hidden, but God’s image and glory are to be seen there.
The New Man
How good it is to see that in the assembly of God, which is an entirely new divine institution, and completely apart from this world, the divine order of the old creation is maintained; but we are also taught that the light of the new creation is to give character to all the relationships in which the Christian has been set by God in this world. As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ we “have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him” (Col. 3:9-10).
In Ephesians 4:24 we learn that the new man has been created after God “in righteousness and true holiness,” and in this passage in Colossians we have Christ as the creator of the new man, and he is renewed in knowledge after the image of his creator., So that the new man has not only the features of Christ, but has the knowledge that belongs to Christ. Through Christ we have the true knowledge of God, and of all the things that belong to the new creation into which God in His grace has brought us. With such knowledge we are to be here for the pleasure and the will of God, both as individual believers, and as having part in the new man.
Conformed to the Image of God’s Son
According to the purpose of God we are to be “conformed to the image of His Son,” so that Christ “might be the Firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:28-29). How great will be the satisfaction of God when His purpose is fulfilled, and when He has in His own house above a great company that He has redeemed through the precious blood of Christ, and every one there bearing the image of His Son. What joy there will be in the heart of Christ to have with Him those He is not ashamed to call His brethren, every one like Himself before the face of His Father. Sharing the joy of the Son will be the saints who have been secured by His death, and who share His place before the Father, while beholding Him as the Firstborn, the pre-eminent One, because of who He is in His own Person, because of His own distinctions and because of all He has accomplished in securing the purpose of God.
From 1 Corinthians 15 we learn how we are to bear the image of God’s Son, for it is written, “And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (verse 49). The change is to take place suddenly, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trump.” When the Lord Jesus comes out of heaven to rapture the church to be forever with Himself, the dead shall be raised, and the living saints shall be changed, and both shall be in the image of the heavenly One before taken away by Him to be His companions in the glory of His kingdom, and in the rest of the Father’s house. Our bodies of humiliation shall be changed, and each shall be “fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself” (Phil. 3:21).
While awaiting the wondrous day when we shall have our bodies changed, so that we shall be conformed to the image of God’s Son, how blessed is the knowledge that we can be morally like Him even here, even as it is written, “But we all, looking on the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even by the Lord the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). It is not by human effort that we can be like Christ, but through occupation with Him where He is. In the cross of Christ we see the setting aside in the judgment of God of all that we were as in the flesh, but as occupied with Christ where He is in glory, we can say with the Apostle Paul, “I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
R. 24.12.68