December 6, 2023 Show with David Reece on “Defining the Image of God”

The Radio Show Introduction and the Iron Sharpens Iron Mission

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this sixth day of December, 2023.

As always, I am absolutely thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest who has proven to be one of my favorite guests, and a growing number of my audience members reflect that opinion. His name is Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reform Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

He is also a conference speaker and the CEO of Armored Republic. And today, we are going to be addressing defining the image of God, also frequently described as the Imago Dei. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor David Reese.

Brother, thank you for having me on. It's an honor to be here. I'm excited to be able to talk about the image of God and how it relates to knowledge, holiness and righteousness. And I hope it's of great practical use to our audience and is an honor, an honoring discussion for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen. Well, as we always do when we have you on, please, for the sake especially of our listeners who have not yet heard you on the show, give us an explanation of Puritan Reform Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

Puritan Reform Church is a church that holds to the Westminster Confession of Faith. We believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. We believe that every jot and tittle is inspired and preserved. And our desire is to teach the whole counsel of God to disciples and to evangelize.

And our goal is to make sure that we are teaching right doctrine, have right worship, and that the government of the church is ordered in accordance with the appointment of the king of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so our desire to apply all those things carefully and to see disciples raised, not just by having sort of a let's gather as many as we possibly can to get together, but rather to see the law order of Christ used and to see people discipled and to see that in depth and not just having kind of the gathering of people, but instead trying to disciple the people that have been given to us by the Lord.

And if anybody wants to find out more about Puritan Reform Church of Phoenix, Arizona, you can visit their website, puritanphx, an abbreviation for phoenix .com, puritanphx .com. Now tell us about Armored Republic, the company for which you are CEO.

Yeah, Armored Republic is a business that we manufacture body armor. Our desire to manufacture body armor, the way we think about it is body armor is a tool.

Of liberty.

So we think about wanting to honor Christ in all of life. And so the mission statement of the company is to provide tools of liberty to free men to defend their God-given rights to the honor of Jesus Christ.

And we think about the idea of your rights being something that can be taken by criminals, whether they be petty or whether they be grand tyrants. And so, and everything in between. And so the concern is to get into the hands of individuals the equipment they need to be able to resist evil.

And I think in particular, heads of household have a duty to defend themselves, but also to defend everybody under their charge. And so I would encourage men to be ready to be able to rally around the lesser magistrate to resist tyrants, and also to be able to be ready to resist petty criminals if anything were to come up.

And one thing that just, this is not meant to be some sort of a crazy reality, but I think sometimes people forget that something like 1 of people in the country have to deal with a violent crime or some sort of a threat of violence on a yearly basis.

So if you just take that out over your life, you think about the reality that there's a majority probability that in your lifetime, you're going to have to deal with some sort of a violent crime or a threat of violence.

And so having tools to be ready to deal with that makes it so that you have a greater preparedness and it's a reasonable risk to prepare for. And so I would just encourage people to be ready and equipped to defend themselves and.

Those whom they love.

And the website for Armored Republic?

ArmoredRepublic .com. It's ArmoredRepublic .com. And if you want to, it's easy to find both by simply checking me out on X, formerly known as Twitter, at real David Reese. So that's at real David Reese.

Great.

And I'm going to give our listeners our email address if they have any questions. If you would like to join the conversation with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Well, if you could please define for us the historically accurate definition of the image of God, and we have to obviously be careful not to abuse this glorious biblical truth by arriving at the conclusion that all men, regardless of whether they are saved or lost, are the children of God, and that all men and women are our brothers and sisters, even if they reject Christ and his gospel.

But if you could give us this definition.

The Image of God as Rationality, Knowledge, Holiness, and Righteousness

Yeah.

So the image of God, if we're going to get the shortest possible definition, the image of God is reason. And so reason is the ability to think, and thinking is distinct from just having some sort of an awareness or having feelings.

Those things are distinct. So animals, for example, have feelings or a sort of awareness. They operate off of innate structures that we could call instincts. And so there's this sort of, there's a distinction between simply being aware or what you might call sentient, being sentient, you have feelings.

And that's distinct from being a thinker. And so the image of God is rationality. And when we think about humans, humans are the image of God. And this ability to think, I want to run through a couple of things in scripture that would help you to see that the image of God is reason.

And I also want to explain what this means in more detail. So there's a lot to say here. And I think that if we spend some time meditating on it, we will find that it is highly practical. But when we think about, for example, in the beginning of Genesis, it talks about man being the image of God.

And then there's also the giving of authority, the dominion mandate is granted near there. And there's a commission to subdue the earth, to work and to keep. These things are associated. So sometimes people have talked about dominion being the image of God.

And dominion is not the image of God. Dominion is authority. And authority, when exercised with power, is the exercise of dominion. And so we are to subdue the earth. And it's necessary that you be rational.

But on the other side, if you are rational, it does not necessarily imply that you have authority. So you could be...

And unfortunately, my guest is beginning to break up a little bit. We apologize for the technical difficulties. Are you back now, Pastor Reese?

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay.

So the image of God is rationality, and it's not dominion. People often associate it with dominion because of the fact that in Genesis 1 and 2, when the image is talked about, there's a close association with dominion.

There's a grant of dominion. But dominion is authority. And it is the exercising of authority, but subduing is how that's accomplished. So we subdue the earth. We work. We keep. The working is the positive building.

The keeping is the preserving of the gains that have already been attained. And so dominion presupposes rationality. But being rational does not necessarily mean you have authority. So those things are distinct.

For example, the fact that I have rationality is sometimes used by people to say, therefore, I should have authority over animals. Well, God owns all the animals, and He defines the authority that we have.

And for example, Chris, if you own a dog, I don't have authority over your dog just because I'm rational. It's your property.

Right. Of course, you have authority over it if it's attacking you.

Of course. Right. That's right. But you think about, like, for example, man was not granted the right to eat animals until Genesis 9. So in the beginning of Genesis, there's no in the garden, there's no eating of animals.

And that's because one thing is there's no death, right? And so this idea that then after the fall, there's still not an immediate grant of the right to eat animals, even though animal sacrifice is instituted.

And so it's not until Genesis 9 that we have the right to eat animals. So this authority is still defined by God. Dominion is not just a broad grant to do whatever we want with the things that God has made.

It is a specific defining of power, a defining of rights that we have. So image of God is not dominion. The image of God is rationality. And one of the things that's really helpful to see this is, for example, in both the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Greek text of the New Testament, you have places where people that are equated to animals or to unreasoning beasts.

And the idea here is that when somebody begins to go against the law of God or if somebody is doing something that is destructive to their own good, it is irrational. And so, for example, in 2 Peter 2 .12, heretics and people that are engaged in gross sin are equated to brute beasts is how the English is normally translated.

But that word brute is actually eloga, which is unreasoning. The eloga, like logos, and a being like not, like atheist. Like an atheist is somebody who believes in no God, right? A being no. So this idea of eloga is the brute beast, the unreasoning beast.

So we have animals on one side that are unreasoning. When Nebuchadnezzar, for example, has his reason taken away, he becomes like a beast. So we have the difference between man and beast being shown for us in terms of this idea of reason.

Furthermore, we find other texts where in the New Testament we are told that we are being renewed after the image of Christ and what we're told in those passages is that we are renewed after the image of Christ in knowledge, holiness, and righteousness.

And you can find that being listed, for example, in the Westminster Shorter Catechism or Larger Catechism when the image of God is discussed. And so man is made after the image of God. Man is the image of God.

And that image is rationality. And rationality implies knowledge, holiness, and righteousness. I want to unpack that some. But the idea here on a basic level is that if you're rational, you inherently are someone who has thought content.

You have beliefs. And so if those are rightly formed beliefs, it's going to be knowledge. If they're wrongly formed beliefs, it's going to be ignorance or error.

And you've froze again.

If you're thinking about it. You can't be a thinker without thought content. Furthermore, if we deal with the idea of holiness, holiness is purpose. When it's rightly formed, its purpose is holiness. Improperly formed purposes are unholiness.

And so to be unholy. And then we deal with choice. So rational beings necessarily have thought content that they're thinking about. They have purposes they're pursuing. And they have choices that they make.

And the choices, the purposes they have. Rooted in the knowledge or the thought content that they have. So the choices. And if they're improperly formed, they are unrighteous. I'm sorry Chris, am I cutting out?

You cut out a little bit. But they were very short cut outs.

Okay.

So again, knowledge, holiness, and righteousness are properly formed rationality. If you have knowledge, it's because you have thought content that's properly formed. If you have holiness, it's your purposes that are properly formed.

If you have righteousness, it's choice properly formed. And so righteousness is going to be applying the means that God has given in terms of the law. Holiness is the goal of glorifying God. And knowledge is truth that you believe that you can show to be true.

And that showing ultimately comes down to showing it from the word of God. And so that's the properly formed image of God. And so what we want is to be renewed after the image of God in knowledge. So we want to learn what the scriptures teach.

In holiness, we want our goals to be focused on the glory of God. And in our choices, in righteousness, we want to make choices that are rooted in glorifying God based upon what He has revealed. And so that would be the matured, the renewed man after the image of Christ.

And so the goal is for every Christian to manifest that maximally in this life. And also that when we are glorified, that will simply be the way it is. And we'll just be growing in knowledge more and more and be finding more and more effective ways as we mature further in the glorified condition.

And as we are resurrected, we will be able to then exercise in the new heavens and new earth in that consummate form. We'll be able to enjoy a labor that has no toil, no strife, and no old age, sickness, or death.

And so that is sort of what we have to look forward to is this constantly enjoyable, fulfilling work glorifying God in enjoyment together in the presence of our Lord, Brother Christ. And that is, I think, a glorious thing to think about.

So there's more to go into in detail on these, but that's sort of the flyover.

Creation, Adoption, and the Difference Between the Elect and the Reprobate

Now, going back to something that I said at the outset, how do we biblically make sure and differentiate between the fact that all of humanity universally is made in the image of God against or distinguish it from the error that many have come to conclude by that fact that we are all brothers and sisters and that God is the father of all of humanity?

Yeah, so in one sense, we can talk about the idea that God is the father of all humanity in the sense that he's the creator of all. But he's obviously not the father of all humanity in the sense of he has not adopted every human being.

And so we need to differentiate between creation and adoption. And so the image of God is an important thing for us to realize. This is about the nature of man. Man is a rational creature with a body.

And that differentiates us from angels who are rational creatures without bodies. And obviously that differentiates us from God because God is a rational spirit. The three persons of the Trinity are rational spirits, but they are not created.

And so they are without body and also without being created. But yet the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit are rational spirits, they're rational minds. And so rationality being shared by God and the angels and by men.

Now, we have to realize that when we look at, for example, the angels, there are the righteous angels and there are the fallen angels. And both are rational, but the fallen angels suppress their rationality and suppress the knowledge of the truth.

And they have rejected truth and have rejected God as the highest good and have lied to themselves and they deceive themselves even in their pursuit of their own divination. And that's why they seek their own worship, for example.

Worshiping idols is demon worship. And so when we think about this idea of the race of man, we need to remember that there are elect and reprobate men just as there are elect and reprobate angels. And though rationality is shared, that rationality is not the basis of God's election.

God elects and reprobates and holds us all accountable using our rationality as a part of our accountability. But he does not elect everyone who's rational. And so just being the image of God is not sufficient for our salvation.

Salvation is not by being human alone. Instead, what we find is that being human makes us so that we are able to be held accountable. But what we find is that God has made all men, but he has adopted only those who are represented by Christ in the covenant of grace who are given faith by the work of the Holy Spirit.

So the Holy Spirit gives faith to all the elect. Christ has paid for the sins of all of the elect. And we are all adopted. All of the elect are adopted after they are given faith. So they're given faith, and that instantaneously results in them being justified in the righteousness side of God and in them being adopted, counted as sons, in the sight of God.

And so there's a legal possession, a legal right, a legal inheriting of the good things of God. And that would include, for example, our renewal. A part of our adoption is a promise that we will possess the renewed, restored image of God, that we will be renewed after the image of Christ.

That's one of the glorious things there. So hopefully that makes clear the difference, the image of God versus adoption.

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break right now. And if you'd like to join the conversation, send in your email to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

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Don't go away. We're going to be right back with David Reese right after these messages.

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Puritan Reformed is a Bible-believing, kingdom-building, devil-fighting church. We're devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in scripture alone. Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image-bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

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Because we have no idea when they're going to pull the plug on this amazing offer to us. That's worldiadem .com. We're now back with our guest David Reese pastor of Puritan Reform Church in Phoenix Arizona conference speaker and CEO of Armored Republic and we are discussing the image of God.

And we do have uh a listener in Thunder Bay Ontario Canada who is actually asking a question about something that you and I Pastor David briefly discussed before the show started.

Uh fits.

In Thunder Bay Ontario Canada says about 4 or 5 years ago Chris Arnzen had a 2 part interview with a Reformed pastor in Northern Ireland who is trying to make the case that only the elect of God are made in the image of God.

How do you respond to that? Yeah.

So I would say that um in one sense.

I agree.

In one sense I disagree. So let me explain that. So first of all in the sense that I disagree I disagree that only the elect are the image.

Of God.

Because everybody has rationality.

But then there's this.

Deforming of their rationality in the following senses the content the thought content people.

Have.

Um.

There is.

We're told in Romans 1 that um.

That the that the.

Eternal power and divine nature of God.

Is um.

Is a part of.

General.

Revelation um.

And so.

What happens.

Is uh.

The the definition of God the divine nature is something.

That we.

Suppress and we take the attributes.

Of God.

And we take them and apply.

Them to other.

Things so we might worship the universe we might.

Um you know.

Have some some ridiculous you know demon false.

God.

Besides that whatever.

Um.

And we.

We we.

Take.

The.

Attributes.

Of God.

And apply them.

We.

Attribute them.

We.

Impute them into something other than.

God now.

In that way we are both the image.

Of God.

We're being rational we're thinking and then we're also.

Destroying.

The image.

Of God.

And that we are destroying knowledge um.

And so.

Our purposes.

What we know if we're.

Pursuing the glory.

Of God.

We have holiness if we're.

Pursuing.

Something.

Else.

We're.

Unholy.

And.

Same with righteousness you have.

Our.

Choice unrighteousness being you know breaking the law.

Of God.

Righteousness.

Keeping it.

So if we are.

If we.

Are.

You know.

If we.

Instead of.

Knowledge we have.

Error.

Instead of.

Holiness we have.

You know.

Profanation or vulgarity and if.

Instead of.

Righteousness.