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Image and Likeness

In seeking the image of God, we become divine ourselves, and through love, we become what we desire. John of the Cross

Gregg’s Recollection

For years, I just slammed the ideas of ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ of God into one thing. My spiritual director, Mark Ritchie, helped me see that while we are created in the image of God, and as we allow Spirit to shape us into the character of God we begin to take on the likeness of God. We begin in the image of God and grow into the likeness of God.

I asked AI Chat to describe what it is like to live into God’s image and likeness. I’m not sure I could come up with a better description.

Living into the image and likeness of God refers to embodying the qualities and characteristics that reflect God's nature in one’s life. This concept carries several implications:

Moral Integrity: Striving to live by ethical principles such as love, mercy, justice, and compassion, mirroring God's character.

Relationship with Others: Engaging in loving and respectful relationships, acknowledging that each person is also made in the image of God. This fosters community and promotes peace.

Creativity and Stewardship: Embracing creativity, as God is a creator, and practicing stewardship of the environment and resources, recognizing the responsibility to care for God’s creation.

Spiritual Growth: Pursuing a deep spiritual life through prayer, meditation, and study, seeking to understand and align oneself with God’s will and purpose.

Service and Humility: Emulating Christ’s example of servanthood, recognizing that true greatness comes through humility and serving others.

Love and Compassion: Cultivating a spirit of compassion and empathy, reflecting God's love for humanity in everyday actions and interactions.
Ultimately, to live into the image and likeness of God is to consciously strive to cultivate these attributes in your life, creating a direct expression of divine love and purpose in the world.

My spiritual director, Mark Ritchie, awakened me to the difference. He told me about a spiritual retreat he had hosted, with the topic of Image and Likeness. He let me know these are two different aspects of our life with God. He said:

We are endowed with both the image and likeness of God. How do we live into our endowment, what do we do with it. So many events in our life challenge us to doubt our endowment. Our whole journey is coming back to trusting and fully living into my endowment, that is the true self journey.

Let’s make a journey together into the Image and Likeness of God.

Image Likeness

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Journaling Prompts

How have you thought about Image and Likeness? As a beloved child of God, made in God’s image, how are you living into the Likeness? How is Christ living through you, acting and serving in the way of Jesus?

Scripture

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Genesis 1:26

Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

Matthew 5:3-11. The Beautitudes describe what living into the likeness of God looks like.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness.

Galatians 5:22-23. These are attributes of the likeness of God

Ancient Writing

The rule of life for a perfect person is to be in the image and likeness of God.

Clement of Alexandria

In the image of God, man was created; and in the image of God, he was to be the creator of his own character, reflecting the divine nature in his choices and actions.

St Augustine

The glory of God is a living man; and the life of man is the vision of God.

St. Irenaeus: Humanity's purpose is to be a manifestation of divine glory

Man is an image of God, and all that he is by nature is God’s gift, and is at the same time the condition of his divine likeness.

St Gregory of Nyssa: connection between nature and divine likeness is emphasized

In seeking the image of God, we become divine ourselves, and through love, we become what we desire.

John of the Cross: the transformative journey of aligning oneself with the divine

God’s grandeur is reflected in the soul, illuminating it with His own likeness, filling it with grace and love.

Teresa of Avila: the innate divine light present in every individual

Modern Writing

Centuries of Christian theology confirm that the “image” described in Genesis refers to our eternal essence in God which cannot be increased or decreased. It is the soul’s objective union with God. We (and every other created thing) begin with a divine DNA, an inner destiny as it were, a blueprint tucked away in the cellar of our being, that begs to be allowed, to be fulfilled, and to show itself. “It is the Holy Spirit poured into your heart, and it has been given to you” (Romans 5:5).

My “I am” is merely a further breathing forth of the eternal and perfect “I Am Who Am” of the Creator (Exodus 3:14). This “beingness” precedes all doing. I am loved—or better, I am love—before I do anything right or wrong, worthy or unworthy. The divine indwelling is a gratuitous gift, standing presence, and guarantee. We are the containers, temples, and recipients of this gift. In a certain sense, it had nothing to do with us. Yet it is our own inherent and irrevocable dignity. I call it the True Self, an immortal, imperishable diamond. Without doubt, this is our “original blessing.”

The indwelling divine image moves toward fulfillment in each of us throughout our lifetimes. “Likeness” refers to our personal and unique embodiment of that inner divine image. It is our gradual realization of this gift. We all have the same objective gift, but different ways of saying yes and consenting to it. There are as many ways to manifest God as there are beings in the universe. Our personal and collective embodiments reveal aspects of the sacred through our personhood, relationships, fields of work and study, culture, economy, politics, and justice. Though we differ in likeness, the image of God (imago Dei) persists and shines through all created things.

Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self p. 17, 121–122.

The greatest illusion of this world is the illusion of separateness. When we realize that we are all made in the image of God, we discover our true unity.

Thomas Merton

To be a person of God means to bear witness to the image of God that is within us and in every person we encounter.

Henri Nouwen

We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for tenderness. We are made for fidelity. We are made for loyalty. We are made for togetherness. We are made for well-being. We are made for holiness. We are made for compassion.

Desmond Tutu

Each of us is a result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

Pope Francis

To live as the image of God is to see ourselves and others as part of a larger, divine tapestry where love and connection are the threads that bind us.

Richard Rohr

Our image of God creates us—or defeats us. There is an absolute connection between how we see God and how we see ourselves and the universe. After years of giving and receiving spiritual direction, it has become clear to me and to many of my colleagues that most people’s operative image of God is initially a subtle combination of their mom and dad, or other early authority figures. Without an interior journey of prayer or inner experience, much of religion is largely childhood conditioning, which God surely understands and uses. Yet atheists, agnostics, and many former Christians rightly react against this because such religion is so childish and often fear-based, and so they argue against a caricature of faith. I would not believe in that god myself!

A mature God creates mature people. A big God creates big people. A punitive God creates punitive people.

If our mothers were punitive, our God is usually punitive too. We will then spend much of our lives submitting to that punitive God or angrily reacting against it. If our father figures were cold and withdrawn, we will assume that God is cold and withdrawn too—all Scriptures, Jesus, and mystics to the contrary. If all authority in our lives came through men, we probably assume and even prefer a male image of God, even if our hearts desire otherwise. As we were taught in Scholastic philosophy, “Whatever is received is received in the manner of the receiver.” This is one of those things hidden in plain sight, but it still remains well-hidden to most Christians.

For me, as a Christian, the still underdeveloped image of God as Trinity is the way out and the way through all limited concepts of God. Jesus comes to invite us into an Infinite and Eternal Flow of Perfect Love between Three—which flows only in one, entirely positive direction. There is no “backsplash” in the Trinity but only Infinite Outpouring—which is the entire universe. Yet even here we needed to give each of the three a placeholder name, a “face,” and a personality.

Richard Rohr, Yes, And...: Daily Meditations, p. 63–64; and Creating God in Our Own Image, Daily Meditations, 11/28/21

God created human beings in God’s own image, and we’ve returned the compliment, so to speak, by creating God in our image! The human ego wants to keep things firmly in its grasp; so, we’ve created a God who fits into our small systems and our understanding of God.

Thus, we’ve produced a God who requires expensive churches and robes, a God who likes to go to war just as much as we do, and a domineering God because we like to dominate. We’ve almost completely forgotten and ignored what Jesus revealed about the nature of the God he knew. If Jesus is the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) then God is nothing like we expected. Jesus is in no sense a potentate or a patriarch, but the very opposite, one whom John the Baptist calls “the lamb of God” (John 1:29). We seem to prefer a lion.

Richard Rohr, A Spring Within Us: A Book of Daily Meditations, p. 214–215

In every act of kindness, in every expression of grace, we reflect the image of our Creator. Our true identity is found in loving others as God loves us.

Marva Dawn