So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;  male and female he created them...and God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.  Genesis 1:27, 31

This week in the news we’ve seen a lot of discussion about images, with the death of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.  If you’ve read any articles at all about him, you know that his legacy was complicated at best (he promoted racial equality and published a lot of powerful literature, but also objectified women and fostered an abusive and unrealistic view of sexality).  I don’t offer any fresh insights into Hefner or his legacy here, but when I consider the images and values he promoted I am overcome with relief and thankfulness at the alternative God offers.

In Genesis 1, we read that God created man in His own image.  As Justin reminded us on Sunday, there are two main facets to this statement.

First, God created man.  We did not create ourselves, and therefore we are not ultimately under our own authority.  We are under God’s authority, and we ultimately find our identity in being His creation.  And we ultimately flourish when, as creatures, we humbly submit to our Creator’s authority and will.  

Second, we are created in God’s image.  As His image-bearers, we are called to reflect and represent God to the world.  In the same way that an ancient king would’ve put up statues of himself to remind his subjects who was the head of the kingdom, man as God’s embodied image-bearer should reflect God’s glory and authority in a physical world.  

But we know that Adam and Eve didn’t stay in this perfect, sinless state of rejoicing in God’s glory as reflected in creation and in one another. Instead, their sin and rebellion against their creator turned them into broken image-bearers.  Still image-bearers, but under the weight of sin.

We see that brokenness so often around us, and we feel it within us.  As someone who’s struggled her whole life with body image and a speech impairment, I feel the brokenness every time I disappointedly look in the mirror or try to have a normal conversation with someone.  We look horizontally, rather than vertically, for our identity, forgetting that we are creatures made in the image of God - we try instead to fashion identities for ourselves based on other, lesser images.  We try to convince ourselves that we’re valuable because we’re ______ (athletic, smart, a good person, or whatever we decide is the most important thing to be).  

The Playboy view of the world says that our value comes from our physical attractiveness and desirability to others.  It is chock-full of images and ideas that it says we need to conform to in order to be valuable, and these images are not only unattainable (thanks, photoshop!) but also destructive and fallen in so many ways!

Praise God that our value does not come from our conformity to any earthly image - that our value comes from our status as humans created in the image of God and declared to be “very good” by our Creator. Praise God that He loved us even after we marred His image with our sin, and that He sent His Son, His ultimate image, to redeem us and again conform us to His image.  

Praise God that, as John Calvin put it, “the design of the gospel is this - that the image of God, which had been effaced by sin, may be stamped anew upon us, and that the advancement of this restoration may be continually going forward in us during our whole life, because God makes his glory shine forth in us by little and little.”

~ Alyson Noell