Therefore, a Man: Homosexuality and the Imago Dei
Photo by Steve Johnson
The first three chapters of the book of Genesis, the opening pages of the Bible, lay down the foundation stones upon which most of the Judaeo-Christian ethic, and Western civilisation, are laid. Very specifically verses 27 and 28 of Chapter 1 are the very heart of it:
27 ‘‘So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”’1
In these two verses we read that God, who had created the heavens and the earth and had populated the earth with all manner of life; trees, plants, birds, beasts, fish and all kinds of living things, crowned and completed His Creation by making humanity in his own image. ‘In the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.’ Mankind, so the passage says, male and female, is made in the image of God, ‘imago dei’ in Latin. This simple phrase gives ultimate value to human beings as individuals and the human race as a whole. No other creature is ‘imago dei.’ For this reason we do not do commit violence, for that is to damage imago dei. For this reason we do not murder, for that is to destroy imago dei. We do not abort the unborn or euthanise the weak for they too are imago dei. We do not create for ourselves idols to worship for there is already an image of God on earth. We love our neighbour, welcome the stranger and bless our enemies for they also, like us, are imago dei. The human person is sacred and of infinite worth because we are made in the image of God and each, in their own unique way, however damaged, reflects a facet of the infinite – personal God. Imago Dei is the glory of God from which we have all fallen short2 and to which Jesus Christ, God incarnated as a man, came to restore us. Even today, in the apostate West, all human rights, so zealously guarded and promoted by the atheistic ‘progressive Left’ of politics are founded on this principle. No other foundation has been found for such a collection of the rights of an individual.
Chapter two of Genesis gives a different take upon the Creation process, giving greater detail and focus especially upon the creation of mankind (Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 – 24).
18 And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” 19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to [a]Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He [a]made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
23 And Adam said:
“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called [b]Woman,
Because she was taken out of [c]Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.3
The female is taken from the side of the man as a companion helper, leaving Adam solely male and incomplete, wholeness and completion is then restored by the re-union of the male and female as husband and wife. Though both are equally and individually made in the image of God something greater is re-made in that union. This union of male and female in Genesis and enacted by humanity down the ages also pre-figures a greater fulfilment in Christ and the Church, the Divine husband and his Bride. As in the account in Genesis, Christ leaves the house of the heavenly Father to be united with his bride. As in the Genesis account Christ, the last Adam4, has his side opened, on the Cross by the centurion’s spear, from which flows blood and water mixed, figurative of the blood and the Holy Spirit by which the Bride is redeemed and by whom she is regenerated. The union of the same-but-different is in the warp and weft of both the old and new creations. Male and female, Christ and the Bride are complementary parts of a whole, male are female are not identical and inter-changeable units any more than are Christ and the Bride.
It is important to remember that male and female are both made in the image of God. The male is not more or less of the image of god, the female not less or more of the image of God; masculinity and femininity are both rooted in the nature and being of God. Though the female is described by God as a ‘helper’5, this is not to be interpreted as some kind of junior assistant of lesser worth. To be a Helper is an attribute of God in itself and a character trait that is broad and powerful in it application. In much the same way the male could be described as a ‘fixer’, a characteristic of problem solving that is often attributed as some kind of ingrained response mechanism in men.
What then is the image of God in which mankind is made? The text of the first chapter of Genesis itself gives us great, though not exhaustive insights into the nature of God. First, He is creative, from outside time and creation He called everything into being7. Secondly, He is life-giving, imbuing what He has created with life itself7. Thirdly, He is relational, existing within Himself as diverse persons8. Fourthly He is orderly and reasonable9, fifthly authoritative as His Word speaks10, sixthly nurturing as the Spirit broods11 and seventh He is one who completes His purposes to His satisfaction12. All these, and many more are attributes and characteristics of God which are replicated in mankind; when we fall short of these we fall short of living to our full potential as human beings, fall short of living out the image of God in us, falling short of the glory of God in us.
Against these criteria we see in homosexuality and homosexual marriage two areas where same-sex relationships clearly fall short of the image of God in us. Firstly in the matter of life-giving, of pro-creation. The creating of new life requires the joining together of two strands of DNA, one from the father and one from the mother, into the double-helix spiral that we see in every cell of our beings; it is the biological enactment of the re-union of the male and female described in Genesis chapter 2. With same-sex partners this is impossible and this inability to pro-create, to create new life, is a failure or a rejection of, the image of God in us. It is also a renunciation of the very first words and blessing that God spoke over newly created humanity, ‘ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number;’.13 To live out a same-sex attraction is to place oneself outside the first blessing upon mankind. Secondly, homosexuality is a rejection of the relational nature of God that is replicated in mankind. Homosexuality and its offspring of non-binary, queer and trans gender ‘identities’ reject the complementary male / female duality of human nature and see all humans as unitary, atomistic beings, identical and interchangeable. We see in Genesis chapter 1 how God speaks the Word and the Spirit of God acts in response. Three persons of the Godhead together creating and forming the Earth. In chapter 2 we see how the human male and female are meant to re-unite through marriage, through intimate and covenanted life-long relationship to represent the original undivided Adam on earth, yet in homosexual relationships we see the pairing of like with like. This is not only rejection of a sexual nature but also one of character. Men and women are not only physically differentiated but also psychologically. Our characters are formed by the nurture of our nature, that is the environment and lived experiences acting upon our inherited person – whether that inheritance be physical from our DNA or psychological from our parentage. We are not and cannot be separated from our physical beings. The homosexual relationship reinforces the maleness or femaleness of that relationship, or forces one of the partners into the role of the other sex, rather than complementing and completing the relationship by pairing male with female. Both are psychologically harmful and destructive of the image of God in that pairing. By rejecting re-union with the other sex the homosexual rejects that relational aspect of being image-of-God human. Ironically, by rejecting or refusing union with the other sex, the homosexual is implicitly denigrating the worth of the other sex and thereby committing ‘sexism’, one of the cardinal sins of the new morality that has gripped the West in recent decades. Even by its own moral criteria homosexuality stands condemned.
In conclusion therefore homosexuality, same-sex sexual pairing, denies true value and part to the other sex, misunderstands the true nature of mankind as a complementary relational being and thereby degrades the image of God in the persons who espouse and embrace it. The first chapters of Genesis lay out a picture of mankind that is fuller and greater than that perceived through the lens of homosexuality, one to which we should all aspire as individuals and in community, aiding one another as we see those who stumble and fall short of the glory of the image of God for which we were created and to which we are called.
1Genesis Chapter 1, verses 27 and 28; New International Version
2Romans Chapter 3, verse 3
3Genesis Chapter 2, verses 18 to 24; New King James Version
41 Corinthians 15, verse 45
5Genesis Chapter 12, verse 18
6Genesis Chapter 1, verse 1
7Genesis Chapter 1, verses 21 and 24
8Genesis Chapter 1, verses 2 and 3
9Genesis Chapter 1
10Genesis Chapter 1, verse 3
11Genesis Chapter 1, verse 2
12Genesis Chapter 1, verse 31
13Genesis Chapter 1, verse 28
