The Hope of Resurrection

This is our fifth and final lesson on the image of God. So far, we have seen that the image of God is made up of three aspects: it has to do with our nature as human beings (which we call the substantive aspect), the relationships we have with God and other humans (which we call the relational aspect), and our royal status and responsibility to care for God’s creation (which we call the vocational aspect).

We have also seen that sin corrupts all three aspects of the image of God without fully destroying them: it prevents us from flourishing as human beings, it alienates us from God and damages the relationships we have with one another, and it prevents us from properly ruling over God’s creation.

The last thing for us to look at is how the resurrection of Jesus reveals God’s plan to redeem us from sin and renew the image of God in us in a way that will no longer be susceptible to sin and death and corruption like we are now.

Redemption of the whole image of God

As we start, we need to apply the same corrective to redemption as we did to sin: sin and redemption apply to all aspects of the image of God—not only our relationship with God, but also our relationship with others, our responsibility over creation, and even our human nature itself. If we focused solely on our relationship with God, then we would only be looking at one half of one third of the picture—to be sure, it would be a very important part of the picture, but it would still only be part of the picture. Think about it this way: if redemption was only about the relationship each person has with God, then it would do nothing to fix the inherent weakness in humans that made it possible for sin to enter in in the first place, it would not be able to guarantee peace between humans, and it would do nothing to fix the damage we have done to God’s creation because of our failures to live up to our vocation to care for it. Such a situation would hardly be deserving of the picture we get at the end of Revelation, which we’ll briefly look at a little later.

Given this corrective, we might wonder how it would even be possible to redeem the image of God. If it were just about our relationship with God, then we could think about redemption in terms of forgiveness, but when it’s also about our relationship to other humans, to creation, and even our human nature, how do you even start trying to fix that?

The biblical answer is that you start with Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. According to the New Testament, Jesus’s resurrection marked the beginning of a new creation (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17, Gal. 6:15), which transcends the first creation by being impervious to sin, corruption, and death (1 Cor. 15:35ff). For the time being, the first creation and this new creation coexist and overlap with one another, but one day the first will end, leaving only the new to continue forever (Rev. 21–22).

Now, in order to connect Jesus’s resurrection with the redemption of the whole image of God, we need to briefly understand two things: first we need to understand that Jesus’s resurrection was more than him merely coming back from the dead, and second we need to understand that we are able to follow Jesus through this process and be resurrected like he was.

Regarding the first point, I think NT Wright describes it well when he says that Jesus’s resurrection wasn’t simply about him coming back to the life he had before he died, but rather about going “through death and out the other side into a new form of physicality for which there was no previous example and of which there remains no subsequent example.” In Romans, Paul explains that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead means that he will never die again, because “death no longer has dominion over him.” (Rom. 6:9) And not only is his resurrected life unending, but it is also utterly impervious to sin, which is why Paul goes on to say that, “the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.” (6:10)

Regarding the second, among other reasons, Jesus’s resurrection was made possible by the same Holy Spirit who now lives in us, and will do the same to us that he did for Jesus. As Paul says a little later in Romans:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Rom. 8:11)

Or, again, as he says in 1 Corinthians:

Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Cor. 15:20–22)

So, then, given that (1) Jesus’s resurrection represents a new human life that is impervious to sin and death, and (2) we can follow him through this process by the Holy Spirit, we start to see how Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s plan to redeem the image of God in humanity.

We might say that Jesus released “version 2.0” of the image of God. The “original” image of God started with Adam in Genesis, and now there’s this “redeemed” image of God that has started with the resurrection of Jesus. This is why we see a new way of talking about the image of God emerge in the New Testament, where it is described specifically as the image of Christ. We’re told that believers are busy being transformed into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18), that we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son (Rom. 8:29), and that just as we now bear the image of Adam, the man of dust, so will we one day bear the image of Christ, the man of heaven (1 Cor. 15:47–49). As Michael Bird has summarized it, “believers will one day become miniature Jesuses who reflect his image, just as Jesus reflects the image of God.”

Substantive view: redemption of our human nature

So, Jesus’s resurrection is the doorway into the redemption of the image of God in humanity. What remains for us to do, is look at how this works itself out in terms of the three aspects of the image of God: the substantive aspect, the relational aspect, and the vocational aspect. Because the substantive aspect lays the foundation for the other two, we’ll start by looking at that.

We can think about this as a three-stage development in the believer’s life, where at each stage the Holy Spirit has a different type of influence over that person’s life.

In the first stage, we are born in the image of Adam, with the human nature that we’re familiar with today. At this point, the Holy Spirit doesn’t indwell us in any special way, because we have not yet believed in the gospel. In this state we are susceptible to sin in the same way every human has been since Adam: we are mortal, our passions are hard to control, we’re tempted by selfishness, to hate our enemies, and so on.

When we start believing in the gospel, we transition to the second stage, where the Holy Spirit comes to live in us. In this state, we still bear the image of Adam, we are mortal and weak in all the ways we were before. But now the Holy Spirit works in us, to convict us of our adoption as children of God (Rom. 8:15, 1 John 3:19–24) and help us to turn from sin to love (Gal. 5:16–26). As we live out the rest of our lives in this intermediate state, our goal should be to work with the Spirit, to develop ourselves into the image of Christ as much as we can with the time we’ve been given (Rom. 8:1–11, Col. 1:28, Eph. 4:11–14).

Then, sometime after we die, the Holy Spirit will resurrect each of us into the same life that he has already resurrected Jesus into. In this state, the Holy Spirit not only works in us, but he also reconstitutes our being and animates our new life. Put another way, we become people who are powered by and live by the Spirit. At this point, then, our transformation into the image of Christ will be complete, and we will no longer bear the image of Adam. According to Paul, we will have gone from being perishable, dishonored, and weak, to being imperishable, honorable, and powerful (1 Cor. 15:42–43).

But this change from the image of God in Adam to the image of God in Christ doesn’t mean that we stop being human, or that we take on a new nature. Jesus died a human and was resurrected a human, and so too will we. What changes is that we take on a version of humanity which is not limited in the same way it was in the first creation, susceptible to sin, death, and corruption. To put this in the terms of our first lesson, we will still be rational animals with both body and soul. It’s just that these will work together in a way that we are currently too limited to achieve.

Relational view: redemption of our relationships

The changes in the substantive aspect of the image of God ripple through to changes in the relational and vocational aspects as well. Of the two, the relational aspect is more straightforward, so we’ll go there next.

When we looked at the relational view, we distinguished between the vertical relationships that humanity has with God, and the horizontal relationships that humanity has within itself. Whenever either type of relationship is strained or broken, it’s because of sin. So, when we are resurrected, we will not be susceptible to sin, and therefore be able to live in perfect harmony with God and one another.

Again, we can think of this in terms of three stages. In the first stage, we are born into a world full of sin, and no matter how hard we try to love one another and God, we succumb to sin now and then. In the second stage, we are atoned by Jesus and made right with God. And when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us, he works in us to love God and love one another (eg. Rom. 8:12–17, 12:3–21, 1 John 2:1–14). And when we are resurrected by the Holy Spirit, he weaves this love into our very being, making possible a life which is described as follows in Revelation:

[God] will dwell with [humanity], and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Rev. 21:3–4)

Here we see both vertical and horizontal relationships perfected: God lives with humanity, and humanity no longer causes pain, strife, hatred, and so on within itself.

Vocational view: redemption of our royal status

Last but not least, we must consider how our resurrection impacts our vocation to care for the rest of creation. In Romans 8, Paul clearly sees a connection between these two when he says that our resurrection will free creation from its bondage to corruption:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God... And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom. 8:19–21, 23)

This talk of “the revealing and glory of the children of God” and “the redemption of our bodies” refers to the moment when the Spirit resurrects us from the dead just as he had resurrected Jesus from the dead (Rom. 8:9–17).

One way to think of this is that creation is currently bound to corruption because of the human failure to fulfill our role to care for it, in other words to live up to the image of God. But when we’re resurrected into the image of God in Christ, we will be without sin and therefore without such a failure.

Meredith Kline has suggested another, more specific way to think about this. He says:

… the “bondage of corruption” over which… the creation groans… is the earth’s being subjected to the fate of covering the blood of the innocent and concealing the corpses of the saints… And… what the earth looks forward to in hope as its deliverance from this corruption is precisely the resurrection of the righteous.

Rather than care for creation as limited representatives of our creator, by introducing death through sin we have forced the earth to become the home for our decaying corpses rather than a source of sustenance and life. Naturally, when we are resurrected, creation will be freed from this morbid role and never have to play it again.

The hope of resurrection

After saying that both creation and us are waiting for our resurrection, Paul adds:

For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Rom. 8:24–25)

This is the state believers find ourselves in today. We were born into the image of Adam, and we look forward to the day when we will bear the image of Christ, when we will be redeemed in our substance, in our relations with God and each other, and in our vocation. In the time being, the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, and if we work with him then we will be able to get a glimpse of that redeemed image of God we will one day bear, and this will strengthen our hope.

That’s all we have for this lesson on the image of God. As I said, this is the last of the lessons in this module. But as with the other lessons, there will be follow-up videos in which we discuss some interesting ideas that are related to this topic, so keep an eye out for those.