2. Mankind: God’s being inherited

One of the Bible’s most profound teachings is that God created mankind in his image. This means you and I are foundationally and fundamentally derived from who God is. If we were to peel back all the historical layers of our being, if we were to plumb the limits of the question “where did I come from?”, we would find the kernel of our existence is located in God himself. In this sense, we are his heritage inherited from him. We “are” because he “is”. If he isn’t, we are not. If there is no God, we have no meaning.

This is one of the reasons why the Bible speaks so much about God as Father, and his people as “sons”. In fact, the concept of sonship is inseparably bound to the notion of his care over us. It also particularly vital to a right understanding of Jesus’ identity. In the OT, Israel’s Messianic hope (the hope for the Christ) is commonly articulated in terms of a search for a son. “To us a son is born, to us a child is given” (Isa 9:6, cf Isa 11); “ I will raise up your offspring to succeed you” (2 Sam 7), and in the NT, this hope is fulfilled in the person of Jesus, e.g. “This is my Son who I love, with him I am well pleased” (Mark 1).

One of the implications of the Bible’s emphasis on “sonship” is how it encourages an ongoing reverence and respect for those who have gone before and why it is concerned about leaving a good legacy for those who will come after. To dislocate from our heritage is to lose our true being. To dislocate from God is fatal.

The idea of mankind being in the image of God places humanity in a very distinguished position in all of God’s creation. Our lives have inherent meaning, purpose and value because they share an intimate bond with the one who exists eternally. Before we do anything, before we have anything, before we experience or achieve anything, we are something of immeasurable worth because we are derived from the eternally perfect God who is. Worth is assumed on account of the fact that you are human, not earned on account of your power, ability and stregnth.

To know ourselves in this way is truly liberating. By saying that we are created in his image, God wants us to understand that who we are is enough because he is enough. In his image, he longs for us to pursue creative endeavours and enjoy creaturely experience, but he in no way intends for us to be determined or defined by those things. Who we are rests on who he is, not on what we do.

This stands in stark contrast to other influential philosophies that hold sway over much of modern society. 20th-century philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger promote being as a product of experience in the world. “Who we are” is what we make ourselves to be through our own efforts. By default, we are born into non-being. Our authentic self can only emerge if/when we rise above the archaic moral norms that we were thrust into at birth through no fault of our own. At some point, death will overtake us, and non-being will consume us once again. In the meantime, we determine who we are through what we do.

While this sounds empowering for the individual, it is fundamentally hopeless, promotes extreme loneliness, is tremendously anxiety-inducing, dishonours the weak and vulnerable, and fuels an attitude of exploitation. Doing precedes being. Experience precedes existence. You are worthless until you are not. You will be worthy until you are not. Who you are, your “generated” value, is chronically temporary. The best you can hope for is a brief window of worthiness that you define yourself, irrespective of others, most often at the expense of others, and only then if you have the capacity and capability to rise above the oppressive norms of the world around you. Pushed to their limits, such philosophies collapse under their own weight. Sadly, though, these ideas drive much of the world we know and see today. To be in the image of God circumvents all the angst of the self-made self. We “are” before we “do” because we are made in the image of the perfect God who is before he does.