My Enemy is (Still) Made in God’s Image
It is not an exaggeration to say that folks have argued for thousands of years about what it means that humans are “created in the image of God” (see Gen. 1:26-27). Is it something quite literal—that we have hands and faces because God does (Exod. 7:5; 33:23)? Or is it something more inward, like our consciousness or our ability to know and reflect on good and evil?[1]
In more common parlance, though, we often use “image of God” language to talk about human dignity. We tend to communicate, if in various ways, that we should at least treat one another with kindness or politeness because, “After all, we are all made in the image of God.” Or we decry the indecent, manipulative, oppressive, or cruel ways of others by lamenting that their victims are made in the image of God and therefore presumably do not deserve such treatment. In other words, the idea of the image of God seems to function like the bumpers on a bowling lane: while they do not guarantee a “strike,” in terms of successful love of neighbor, they at least keep us out of the gutter, going in the right direction.
And yet.
And yet… we still kill, we still condemn, we still disfellowship, we still cut off, we still oppress, we still assault. I could go on, right? Sometimes, it seems, the bumpers break, and the bowling balls of our actions sail into the gutter or even (if I may stretch the metaphor to its breaking point) fly out of the bowling lanes entirely!
What is happening here? Has something about that other person become more powerful than being made in the image of the God of the universe? Has that person changed somehow? Have they lost the image of God?
I actually think something else is operative here. It’s not a matter of something being more powerful than the image of God, but rather that we seem to think that something has become more important. We sometimes act as though others deserve our kindness, love, and care because they are made in the image of God UNLESS:
Unless they take a position different from ours on a social issue we care about.
Unless they belong to the wrong denomination.
Unless they support a political candidate or cause we don’t like.
Unless they let women do X in church—or they don’t let women do X.
Unless they seem to pose a threat to us, or our families, or our country.
Unless their skin is the wrong color.
Unless they express dissent in ways we disagree with.
Unless they interpret the Bible in ways we disagree with.
Unless they’re from the wrong country, region, state, city, or part of town.
Unless they don’t agree with us that a praise team is wrong, or shorts in church are wrong, or old hymns are wrong, or new songs are wrong, or jokes from the pulpit are wrong, or leavened bread is wrong (at the Lord’s Table, that is).
Again, I could go on! But here’s my question: what is the matter with us? Why do we suddenly decide that a characteristic or belief that someone possesses is more important than the fact that they are made in the image of God? Why does that mean that we are apparently now justified in behaving in all sorts of terrible, harmful, cruel, or unkind ways? It’s not that, if we were asked, we would assert that they are no longer made in the image of God. It seems we think certain things trump that image!
Now, maybe you’re thinking, “But we’re told in Scripture to resist the devil (James 4:7), and these people are obviously doing things that come from the devil!” Or you might say, “1 Timothy 6 tells us to flee from evil things and to pursue righteousness, and sometimes pursuing righteousness means rejecting unrighteousness.” Or “Jude 3 reminds us to contend for the faith, and I’m willing to fight a good fight if God tells me to.”
I get that. I don’t want to be naïve. We do have enemies in our walk with God. In English “church language,” those enemies have long been named as “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” The “flesh” usually means the weaknesses and predilections toward sin that we have in ourselves; the “devil” refers to a supernatural Enemy; but the “world” means something like “other people out there who are trying to pull us away from God,” and we must resist that pull.
But I think we always have the choice as to how we resist. We always have the choice as to how we see the other person. We can resist evil, reject unrighteousness, and even contend for the faith without losing sight of the image and likeness of God in our conversation partner, our opponent, our enemy.
Let me close with another New Testament text: Galatians 4:17-20. There, Paul is doing something not unlike our problem here: he’s trying to help the churches of Galatia resist the siren song of what he calls “another gospel,” to resist wrong ideas while at the same time praising his recipients’ zeal. He says that he is in the pains of childbirth “until Christ is formed in you” (v. 19, NIV).
To go back to the texts I mentioned earlier: we can be zealous for resisting the devil, for fleeing from evil things, and for contending for the faith, but we can do so in a way that helps Christ to be formed in us. We can engage conflict—and other people in our conflicts—in a Christlike manner so that Christ can be formed in us more fully.
Our Lord fought temptation in Gethsemane but did not reject his followers for their weakness. He did not disdain or mock Pilate, the governor from “this world”; rather, he engaged him in conversation about truth that transcends this world. He even prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified him while he was in the midst of being crucified! I think Jesus saw the image of God in those other people, and he acted accordingly.
May we do the same.
1. A recent volume that surveys this question is Lucy Peppiatt’s The Imago Dei: Humanity Made in the Image of God (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022).
