IMAGE OF GOD Week 3
We often think of the passage in Gensis which first mentions the phrase, 'image of God,' Genesis 1.26,7 which says--Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness...God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.

God breathed His breath into Adam, creating the image of God. It was God in Adam as a likeness of God. It was not God Himself in Adam but a likeness, an image. Genesis 2.7 explains this as--man became a living being. To be a living being is to be in the likeness of God, yet separated.


If we look at the word 'separated' we might be reminded of Genesis 3. There, Adam and Eve are the image of God, but the Lord is not mentioned when Satan comes with the invitation to eat of the wrong tree. They are His image but separated from Him. Will they chose to be separated from God forever, or will they act to be united with Him and separated from Satan? We all know the choice they made, we are what we are because of that choice.

However in Genesis 5.3 Adam--
became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image and named him Seth.


So we see that the image was not lost when Adam fell and left the garden. A magnificent nearness to God was lost, but not our likeness.

Can that nearness return? In the NT Jesus is at Jacob's well, John 4.
There He meets a woman. He says--Give Me a drink.

Her answer is an external one. Seeing He is a Jew she says--How is it that you being a Jew ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?

Then Jesus takes her from an outward viewpoint to an inward one. He says--If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.'


I'd like to think that the image of God which was breathed into Adam was like that living water, from Jesus poured into her. Jesus does not breathe on her as God did Adam, He offers her living water so that she might drink.
Notice that Adam makes an excuse--the woman gave to me, Gen. 3.12. The woman tells Jesus the truth when she admits she's had husbands, John 4.16-18. As a result, Jesus sends the woman away from the well to her own people, to tell them about Jesus. With Adam, he is punished by being sent out of the garden, to a lower plain.


Because she told Jesus the truth, she receives living water, not pain in childbirth. This living water is not bread, which must be cut down and harvested. This is not the blood of goats and lambs and bulls. This is living water, which she can freely drink.

What this means is the image of God which we are can receive the living water. The body had to be covered with fig leaves and then animal skins, due to sin. With living water, the soul can go anywhere and still be with the Lord. Jesus say this in John 3.8 when He says--
The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.


Living water is symbolic of our covenant freedom with God.