The Image of God

On the Sunday of Orthodoxy our thinking about the meaning of icons inevitably leads us to thinking about the phrase 'image of God'.

In the story of creation the human person is said to have been made in the image and likeness of God. The 'image' has usually been thought of as something given and the 'likeness' as a potential. The relation of image to likeness might be likened to that of child to adult. It is often put this way: made in the image of God we are called to grow into His likeness.

But what is that image? Where can we find that image in ourselves and in others? There are a number of answers. Some suggest that the image is found in our faculty for reasoning, logic, analysis, understanding, that is in our mind. Others have thought that it is found in our ability to make choices and act freely. Still others have found it in our capacity for self-transcendence. It has been pointed out that there is something fundamentally relational in the image, for God says 'let us make man in our image' - and so the image is thought to have something to do with inter-personal communion.

These things are not, perhaps, mutually exclusive. The image, essentially mysterious, may have many aspects. If we were to think of the image of God as love, for example, we would see that love involves understanding (mind), action (will), self-transcendence, communion. Perhaps our capacity for love is as good an understanding of the image of God as any. We are created with the capacity for love and we are called to nurture this gift and grow in it into the likeness of God Who is, after all, Love.

There is more, however. The Apostle Paul tells us that our Lord Jesus Christ is the unique and perfect image of God. Following the Apostle and addressing God the Father, our Liturgy of St Basil says of our Lord Jesus Christ that He is the image 'of Thy goodness, the seal of Thy very likeness, showing forth in Himself Thee, O Father'.

Christ is the image of God. He is love incarnate. The image of God can be thought of as Christ in us, something given in our making, renewed in baptism, nurtured in the sacraments, built up through prayer and moral education, expressed in good-works and Christian character, growing unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. This is our life in Christ, and at the heart of this is love.