What Does it Mean to be Created in God’s image?
In the beginning, God imprinted the image of Godself within the biological and psychological spectrum of human bodies and called those image bearing creatures very good; exceptional, glorious even. But we diverted from God’s valuation of the human body early in the record and therefore part of our salvation and redemption is the salvation of and redemption of our biological bodies as part of Creation which continually groans under the weight of having been worked to death towards futile ends.1
What if God, but Flesh?
Godhead & Anthrohead
God's Inherently Embodied Image
The human body is a glorious thing. It has the capacity to light up or darken a room by its very presence. On a purely physical level, the science of mimesis tells us that all of our senses are cued in to one another in order to behave appropriately around one another—usually in a copying, coping mechanism that ensures that we live in peace with one another. I am convinced that this natural mimeses played a part in Adam’s fall. Eve was deceived, and ate, but Adam followed his good body’s natural inclination to mimic the behaviour of another human. At that moment both male and female doubted their good bodies were good enough. They saw themselves as naked and were ashamed of the bodies that God gave them.
Who told you, that you were naked?
Recently I was explaining the travails of white supremacy and the patriarchy to my 10 1/2 year old daughter 2 She was dressed as a Victorian orphan and so I was trying to make her understand her place in Victorian society like that of Cosset in Les Misérables. It entailed telling her that her little nonverbal ASD sister would have been put in an asylum called a madhouse and that women weren’t3 treated well and that men thought they were superior and better yet if they were white. Her response was stunned silence followed by an unknowing echo of God’s voice in Genesis,
“Who told them that this was okay? Who started this?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I told her I didn’t know but that, that wasn’t the point. The point was that it doesn’t really make any sense. It satisfied her, but she’s a thinker—she will come back to me at some point with a deep question pertaining to the conversation maybe in 6 months when it resurfaces.
When God asks Adam and Eve who told them that they were naked, that question doesn’t get immediately answered because of the follow up question which implies that Adam and Eve told themselves that they were naked which is the significance of asking did you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Adam and Eve were created as biological images of God without the knowledge of good and evil. Yet now, they looked over what God had made and called it not good enough. We were not like God, and now we are and we now despise our bodies which God has made for us; they are naked and vulnerable and shameful and oh that we didn’t have them—then we would truly be like the Most High. This metaphysical lie that tells us that our bodies don’t matter permeates the people of God even today. A longing for disembodied presence in a disembodied heaven for an eternity of disembodied worship causes such devastation behind the busses of our disembodied organisations that leave all of our bodies behind the bus.
We simultaneously care deeply for our bodies and not at all for them—they are seen as a tool to work frivolously at creation, a mere allegator-skin-bag for our souls. When we mistreat one another in the name of some cause, it’s excusable. Committing socioeconomic genocide in the name of Revolution gets our name in the history books. The abuse of one or two people in the wake of a man’s life of ministry is simple math.
Embodied God
The assumption that we often make about Adam and Eve being naked is that the Serpent told them that they were naked and that nakedness was bad news, because God isn’t naked or permanently embodied, and if the whole point is to be like God then we have to give our bodies dignity by covering up. Therefore nakedness is seen as disrespectful to ourselves and others and God! Therefore to shuffle off this mortal coil, to be absent from the body and present with God—that, is better. Because of this, it may be that part of the Serpent’s lie was in suggesting that it would be far better to sacrifice this frail existence in order to transcend and know all and be like God! But if what the Serpent suggests is true, then Jesus, and the cross mean nothing. The implications of the incarnation are lost; Jesus—fully God taking on the image of God in flesh to become not only the fullness of God but also the fullness of humanity; the image of God. The resurrection is the key; being raised from the dead and not leaving the image bearing vessel to rot in the ground4 means that our bodies are not just important because they contain our soul and spirit but that they remain the perfect image of God even in death, which returns to the soil from which the image of God was first fashioned and from which it will be fashioned again in the resurrection.
Embodied Humanity
It may be that our whole selves exist as a trinity even as God exists as three in one5. We can sin against our bodies.6 We can sin against our conscience7 we ourselves are the soul which directs both body and conscience and so sin against our own selves when we neglect so a great salvation. Knowing this, a deep honour, respect, and submission in love for one of the members of our triune nature; the biological body which contains the fullness of the Anthrohead8 as surely as Jesus is the fullness of the Godhead, must be recaptured.
The gospel for our souls is the same gospel for our bodies. Jesus, the fullness of God and fullness of humanity came to die—in His body He carried God and Us and when He died the fullness of God and the fullness of us descended to set the captives free. When He rose from the dead there was a great resurrection host with Him that appeared to many9. This may all seem very high minded but it is essential for our hope in the resurrection that our bodies rest in the knowledge that they get redeemed as well—in fact, that without our body’s redemption there is no hope for our souls.10 Therefore, if we would present the gospel to lost souls and not to their bodies then we would give them a false gospel without hope. We must re-examine how we treat the body; the temple of God which holds the presence of God and the fullness of us. In it, no matter how marred, no matter how loud we groan in the pains of childbearing before the great release of resurrection life—in every single body resides the image of God and the fullness of humanity. If we truly believed this in our various iterations and organisations then perhaps we would spend less time defending collateral costs in human bodies and more time defending their bodies—the gospel is not the image of God, we are—the gospel is merely the news about God, but in us is God with us; God embodied.
3 Suggested Applications
Pay Attention to the Stories We Tell and Consume
We don’t always recognise the power of mimesis. We see bodies through screens or in shows everyday. Clothed ones and naked ones, broken and whole, and we feel nothing for their bodies and everything for their ideological plight. We are so far removed from them physically that our spirits are calloused to what is happening to their bodies11. We and the story teller regularly accept and tell stories that say that the acceptable cost of any worthwhile endeavour is our physical bodies; that if we truly believed in something we would give and take lives for it. This is a backward story that neither preserves worthwhile ideologies nor the lives it claims to protect—the Word says that those who live by the sword will die by the sword—end of.
Refocus Your Mind to include Your Body
If we are to reunify ourselves to the true nature of who we are, we must listen to the prayers12 of our bodies to our soul and spirit. They are not always great prayers, but they tell us where we are in our bodily redemption. We will not likely be very far along in the sanctification of our bodies because we have ignored them for so long and as a result, they have largely taken over for the soul and spirit denying their existence and significance as well. Reunification of our triune Anthrohead is an essential part of our redemption that must not be ignored any longer. When we are at one with ourselves in body, soul and spirit then when we look at others we see this same triune existence in the full glory of their body containing the fullness of their humanity as God intended.
A New Right I Give You: The Right of Anthrohead Redemption
If you’ve been around Not My People’s Publication then you know that everything we write is informed by a core document that we regularly update called The Christian’s Bill of Rights which lays out the Spiritual Rights of the People of God as found in the Word of God that must not be infringed by any leader or organisation’s traditions in thought or practice.
13. Thirteenth: No tradition shall be taught or practiced which denies the reality of the tripart redemption of humanity in body, soul and spirit such that one part should be the cost of the salvation of another part. Such practices deny the triune nature of the Godhead in whose image we are created and see the biological body as collateral damage to the salvation of the soul, or the mind as more important than the body or soul and engage the so-called gospel with an inappropriate emphasis on one member of the Anthrohead over another. It is the right of every believer to work out their whole salvation; body, soul and spirit with fear and trembling looking forward to the day of resurrection in which the whole self will be redeemed with the rest of Creation. 13
22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8:22-23 ESV
Our conversations always end up with me trying to explain a lifetime of learning in 10 minutes; they’re usually pretty wild.
and still are not
Psalm 16:10
This is generally called Tripartite in theological anthropology consisting of body, soul, and spirit. However, I have never seen it taught in a way that actually means anything for the individual beyond soul care or spirit care.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20
Romans 14
Trying to coin a term that bears the weight that the term Godhead bears. If you have heard of any others or have a suggestion yourself, let me know in the comments.
Matthew 27:51-53
1 Corinthians 15
Yes, even of fictional plights
By this I mean our literal aching requests for satisfaction.
This new right will be added to the running document we keep in the tabs at the top of the page called The Christian’s Bill of Rights.
Application 2 hit a wound I carry. I am paying attention. Thanks!!! 🙏