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The Image of God as Structure

Last week we examined the view that what it means to be the Image of God is a function. It is the vocation that we are called to live out on the earth as God's regents. While I think this view has a lot to offer and holds true to the witness to scripture it is not the only view on the table. Today we will be discussing the structural view, which is probably the most traditional view.

What I mean by structure is the way we as human beings are designed. This does not refer to our physical bodies so much as it does our whole person. Human beings are created by God as both physical and spiritual beings. We are both physical and spiritual. Some would say we are body and soul while others (with which I tend to agree) would say we are body, soul, and spirit. Regardless of the specific view one holds some believe that this combination of being both physical and spiritual is what makes us the Image of God in the world.

The view holds that it is the fact that we are physical beings, like animals, but with a spiritual component as well (like angels). We stand at crossroads of the physical and the spiritual. This uniqueness in the world is what makes us made in the Image of God. We alone of all the creatures on the earth share in the spiritual reality of God.

Again, I think there is something to this view. The idea that it is our very design as beings who exist both physically and spiritually that makes us made in God's Image. This would mean that Jesus, being the perfect Image of God, lives out this by being the perfect being both physically and spiritually never having sinned. Sin is then fundamentally a failure to live out either part of our nature. Either we fail to be spiritual and become purely physical, carnal creatures akin to animals or we fail to be physical and retreat from the world in a sort of intellectualized, detached way. In either case we fail to be human and fail to live out the Image of God.

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