The Image of God and the use of our Bodies
By Jay Wegter
If you could remove all the water from a human body and reduce it to its basic chemical components of carbon, sulfur, iron, etc., it would be worth less than $2.95 of powdered chemical compounds. When I was eighteen years old I remember slouching on the couch at my girlfriend’s house and telling her, “Wow, we are sitting here—just two pieces of meat.” That’s what evolutionary biology had taught me: that human life was a cosmic accident, and even my gender was a coincidence of nature. In the name of science, philosophic naturalism had hammered home that this is an unplanned universe with meaningless creatures in it.
If that were actually the case, then morality, dignity, value, and purpose would all be but fiction in a chance universe. This materialistic view of reality has permeated the academy today and with it, far reaching consequences. Think of the despotic regimes that have murdered millions of their own citizens. The ideological starting point for the carnage was always a worldview which rendered human life valueless. Nihilistic worldviews have always been the predecessors of holocausts. From Hitler to Stalin, the butchers of the 20ᵗʰ century have paid their grateful respects to Darwin for giving them a “scientific” reason for their politically inspired genocides (Note the DVD, “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy” by James Kennedy).
Today there is a different kind of holocaust—a spiritual holocaust. The evil one is fighting this battle with lies that murder the soul (John 8:44). These include lies about our sexuality and gender differences. These lies are intended to radically deconstruct the moral structures which govern us, to disintegrate biblical theism, and to destroy the doctrine of God and of man. These deceptions come at us as in the form of entertainment, but also as democratization, as anti-discrimination causes, as freedom of choice, as true love and romance, and as social justice. No small amount of discernment is necessary to recognize and expose these soul-damning lies.
At the heart of worldview is how one uses his or her body, and at the center of that is sexuality. My generation, the ‘boomers,’ ought to fall on their faces before God and beg for the mercy needed to repent. Writers and producers from my era have filled the entertainment industry with countless dramas and films which tell young people that sexual immorality is a noconsequence game—that the value and purpose of sexual relations is its own end (that there is no higher or divine purpose).
Members of the rising generation walk into a movie theater and let their guard down in the name of wanting to be entertained. The emotion of the drama catches them and resonates with their own experiences of life. So, without intense discernment exercised by a filmgoer, the movie presents a believable picture of life as it is. Thus, fornication is life as it is. Adultery is life as it really is. In the mind of the viewer, homosexual activity is the equivalent of heterosexuality—and is life as it truly is.
The prevailing worldview of materialism (philosophic naturalism) has so effectively shattered theism that the dominant view in our culture is that we are the rightful definers of ourselves. The tragedy is that to attempt to create your world (when actually you live in God’s world) is a formula for wasted and broken life. Ultimate reality upheld by God Almighty will sooner or later hit like a sledge hammer.
The ancient lie in Eden which offered mankind independence from God did not create a new reality. When man defected from his Creator, he did not transcend his creational identity, what he lost was the knowledge of God—the very foundation for meaning, glory, and dignity (Jer 17:23-24). Once the lie was believed, it ushered in radical spiritual darkness (Eph 4:17-19).
God is prime reality. This is a personal universe because God is absolute personality. All self-consciousness comes from His creative hand and purposes. Therefore God reserves that absolute infallible right to define our entire existence. He demands the rightful purpose to completely shape our lives by the inerrant truth of His Word. That is what it means to be created in the image of God: we exist to know, love, enjoy, worship, obey, serve, and reflect our Creator. That is our creational identity. God is not a magnificent religious category, He is ultimate reality and we are His creatures, therefore He demands the right to define every square inch of our existence.
This is why the use of the body is at the heart of the culture war, for how one uses his or her body is a direct reflection of what we worship and serve. Our Creator has formed us for His purposes. Our ‘bounded-ness’ (the limitations set by His good and wise laws) is closely tied to our creational identity as the image and likeness of God. The moral limits God has put upon us not only safeguard love in our relationships but also protect the honor of God.
Sexual politics (making laws to normalize and protect sexual perversion) is a wicked power play by the progressives to redefine mankind, to answer the question of human existence their way, and to take that role away from God and give it to the sociologists, the biologists, and the psychologists. It is through this destruction of the dam of truth that the floodgates of sexual immorality and perversity have been flung wide open (Rom 1:18-26ff.).
Our culture is engaged in a pitched battle with God over the issue of the use of the human body. God has established good, wise, loving moral boundaries upon mankind. These boundaries and limits are inseparable from the first and second tablet of the Law of God, which tell us precisely what it means to love God and neighbor, and precisely what it means to be truly human. God’s moral law is His character ‘in code’ governing all of our relationships. Sin is anything contrary to God’s holy and righteous nature—therefore all sin is lawlessness (1 Jn 3:4).
Sexual oneness is God’s gift. But, in order for it to serve as the God-intended blessing to us, and thus for it to be glorifying to God, it requires the moral context of the marriage covenant. The proper use of the sexual body is essential if we are to accurately reflect the moral character of God. Our fallen culture works overtime to shred God’s plan by ripping sexuality out of its God-given moral context and reducing it to a bodily function like eating or sleeping.
To use one’s body in a sinful way has the net effect of obscuring and deconstructing the knowledge of God. By contrast, to use one’s body in a holy way—as one redeemed by Christ—causes a person to reflect and mirror the knowledge of God. The Lord’s commandments are primarily about how we relate to one another. “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, YOU SHALL NOT MURDER, YOU SHALL NOT STEAL, YOU SHALL NOT COVET,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom 13:8-10).
So strong are these prohibitions against sinning against others that a person who sets aside God’s laws in these matters is described as hostile to God and an enemy of God (Rom 8:5-8). This means that by their sin they are not only rebelling against God’s righteous purposes but also against God’s righteous character—they are hostile to God Himself. And, as the Scriptures tell us, prior to salvation each one of us was an enemy of God and a foe of the knowledge of God (Rom 5:10; 2 Cor 10:3-5). Scripture is filled with warnings against allowing the flesh to set the standard for our behavior (Rom 8:5-8).
God’s will for believers is not merely to know truth in the heart; it is comprehensive— extending to how we use our sexual bodies. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. So, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thess 4:3-8). How we use our bodies is a declaration of who and what we serve.
The progressive policy-makers in our society have turned virtues into vices and vices into virtues. Isaiah tells us that in an apostate culture that has turned its back upon God the citizens of a society call evil good, and good evil (Is 5:20). Our culture has normalized and enshrined animal passions. Scripture tells us that to love pleasure more than God is to be an enemy of God (2 Tim 3:4). The one who lives for illicit sexual pleasure is dead even while he lives (1 Tim 5:6). But why would God say this about a person who simply wants to be sexually and romantically happy? That is the question on the lips of the rising generation when they hear the gospel. It is as if they cannot find a soul-thrilling reason to pursue chastity and sexual purity.
A century plus of secular psychology has only added fuel to the fire, for our culture gives praise to those who live autonomous lives. The ‘sacred self’ concept means that living for immediacy (or what one assumes to be in his or her best interest) is considered a positive approach to life. This soul-damning sentiment has quietly grown in the ‘soil’ of a materialistic worldview of the universe. What is the fallout of this life view? Simply this: ‘amputate the soul of man’ (by materialistic worldview) and all the reasons for self-control and the cultivation of virtue evaporate; animal passions rule the day. C. S. Lewis warned of this trend when he said, “It is folly to think that benevolent impulses will predominate on the whole if not cultivated by the education of the conscience. If you will not obey . . . [natural law], obedience to impulse (and therefore in the long run, mere nature [animal passions]) is the only course left open” (C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, p. 67).
God tells us in His Word that the soul expresses itself by means of the body and that the deeds of the body affect the soul (2 Cor 5:12). Your deepest loyalties of heart are expressed by the deeds of the body. The question is: what receives the best of your time, talent, and affection? For whatever does IS your functional god. If it is not God Almighty then it is an idol. The fact that we will serve what we worship is an unbreakable principle. We will always serve what we worship. You worship what you believe will deliver the most security, significance, love, purpose, happiness, and satisfaction. And we always serve what we worship.
Jesus said that it is impossible to serve two masters with equal loyalty (Mt 6:24). Christ tells us that only worship and service to God preserves our humanness and sets us free (Jn 8:31-36). All other worship and service is idolatry and bondage. Sin is filled with self-deception (Jer 17:9)—the great lie circulated since Lucifer uttered it in the Garden of Eden is the lie that service to God is loss of liberty and serving self is freedom. This lie is leading our culture down a road of licentiousness.
When a person brings their deepest needs to created things instead of to the Lord, he or she is attempting to fill what only God can fill (Rom 1:25). Only the power of the gospel can change our innate propensity for idolatry. The gospel displaces the edenic lie by removing the hostility and enmity in our hearts and reconciling us to God (Col 1:21-23). And the blessed result is that forgiven sinners repent of their independence (autonomy, self-determination, and self-directed lives). And they cast themselves upon the loving goodness of God Almighty and His care and promised provision. This is the essential gracious foundation for a life of doing God’s will—God must be regarded as our source Who is glorified in supplying all of our needs (Phil 4:19).
Eternity (either in heaven or hell) will be an extension of what you worship and serve here and now (Rom 6:23). For the impenitent it will be eternal death and separation, but, life, glory, peace and blessing for believers (Rom 2:5-10). Isn’t it interesting that the unsaved regard service to the Lord to be an interruption to their self-directed lives? But true believers count it all joy to serve the Lord. In the glory to come the bliss of the saints is expressed in the fact that they will serve God perfectly day and night forever (Rev 7:15).
In Romans 6, the Apostle Paul makes it unavoidably clear that how we use the members of our body is a declaration of who and what we serve. In other words, our master is known or revealed by how we use our bodies. What we do by means of our bodily members is a declaration of our loyalties to our functional god. Thus, despite our religious claims, the deeds of the body belie any false claims. Your deepest actual loyalties are expressed in your bodily service.
Who and what you love and how you think, speak, and act will reveal what you regard as your true ‘treasure’. The body and soul unity of the human being is designed to operate so fully in tandem so that both affect the other (the material acting out and expressing what resides in the immaterial soul). That means that the deepest affections of the soul will find their shape and expression in the deeds of the body. AND, the deeds of the body also radically shape the spiritual and moral condition of the soul. But this defining truth is being lost in today’s society.
The sacred canopy of transcendentals (God’s universal truths) supported by biblical theism is completely obscured by today’s false worldviews. We live in an age of radical individualism and self-fulfillment. Society has been seduced by the claims of psychology. “Duty to self” rules the day—it produces self-absorption. The ethic has become “Be true to self.” The new ‘Holy of holies’ is the ‘sacredness’ of the self (Ron Hawkins, “Marriage and Family Counseling” Totally Sufficient, Hindson and Eyrich, eds, p. 171). The cultural ethos of selfism has produced a new anthropology which has crept in through backdoor of the church (the church tends to catch the society’s diseases).
A society’s view of truth functions as the ‘intellectual gatekeeper’ in the public arena, determining which ideas are taken seriously and which are never taken to the table. Where do people get their philosophy of truth and knowledge? In our age of global internet information and social networks, ‘truth’ can be instantly accessed. The ability to instantly access potentially billions of bits of information is conditioning our view of truth. By instantly offering us ideas from anywhere on the planet, the internet winds up pluralizing everything and (without intending to do so) erodes the confidence that there is one totalizing authoritative worldview (the Bible) to the exclusion of all other total truth claims (David Wells).
The matter of knowing anything with certainty is further complicated by two hundred years of exalting reason and science above divine revelation. The age of reason gave us empiricism as our functioning epistemology (method of knowing). Empiricism suggests that all knowledge is derived from the senses—even morality. According to our senses, things are therefore good when they give us pleasure and not good when they are not pleasurable. This reduces morality to nothing more than taste and sentiment. Transcendent truths become only preferences. Religion as the ultimate source of morality is discredited. The result is that the Christian concept of truth as a unified coherent worldview has been shattered by secular humanism’s assumptions about reality. Now the major assumption concerning truth is that knowledge is only possible in the realm of empirical facts and therefore morality and religion are regarded merely as values (likes and preferences) (Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo, p. 24).
With empiricism as the accepted gatekeeper of knowledge, our young people are left with a pitiful method of knowing. “Whatever works for you” is the mantra of the rising generation. But “whatever works for you” is the polar opposite of Christianity, which is rooted in non-negotiable truth. BUT, the Bible is not merely a collection of individual truths; the Bible also teaches the nature of truth: namely that all things were created by a single divine mind. All truth forms a single, coherent, mutually consistent system anchored in the character of God Himself (Pearcey, p. 25).
Theologian David Wells of Gordon Conwell Seminary provides additional observations about our culture’s abandonment of the transcendent God as our foundation of truth, source of truth, and anchor for truth. Notes Wells, from the perspective of selfism, human nature may be corrupt, but self is not. Self is innocent, they say—self provides an accurate vantage point from which to interpret the world. With an ever-increasing number of seminary students, contemporary assumptions have more control over the inner life and over world view than the Word of God (David Wells, God in the Wasteland, pp. 211-212).
After 1960, the veneration and fulfillment of self replaced an assessment of one’s personal moral failure in need of rectification. The new ideology of “be true to self” has taken command: we can find meaning only to the extent that we can get in touch with the self. Self-expression has eclipsed self-control. The mystical and the individualistic have created the soil of the therapeutic. Therapy is the belief that all the disordered self needs is a chance to fulfill its yearnings. Theology (the study of God and how to live rightly unto Him) has been displaced in favor or therapy. Therapy functioning as religion removes the need for repentance (Ibid., pp. 198-201). This is a monstrous distortion of what it means to be human, for according to psychology the ‘real you’ is the self, ego and subconscious. But, according to Scripture the ‘real you’ is your worshipping heart—serving what it worships!
This central truth about our moral existence expressed through our bodies is rapidly slipping away in our neo-Gnostic culture. The attitude born today of dualism is: personal desires alone matter—private faith, opinions, and convictions will trump ethical behavior any day. That is the world in which our young people are growing up. The actual thought that our present life is but preparation for the next, and that virtue as defined by God is absolutely essential if we are to live with Him in heaven, is a non-existent concept among today’s youth.
How can a sinner come to Christ? Salvation is by the grace of God in Christ. When Christ spoke with the rich young ruler, the conversation revealed that this unsaved man maintained the attitude: “I can do everything, I don’t need a Savior. My idea of salvation is joined to how I can obligate God by who I am and what I have done.”
Jesus indicated that a person cannot enter the kingdom of God unless he becomes “as a child,” admitting his helplessness and dependency (Mark 10:15). A child comes on God’s terms, admitting he can’t do it. In child-like faith he clings to the cross, knowing there is no other way to come to God and be forgiven and accepted (there is no such thing as ‘religious entitlement’).
Those who do not come as a child actually believe that their religious activity makes them a prime candidate for eternal life. Christ shot an arrow at the pride of the rich young ruler (Mark 10:17-22). Christ said, “One thing you lack.” The young man no doubt thought: “just tell me what it is and I will do it.” Christ went all the way into the man’s system, letting the man think that he was 90% there in terms of what was needed for heaven. Then Jesus drops a bomb, “Sell all, and give it to the poor.” The young man went away deeply saddened because he was very rich. He thought he could measure up. Christ exposed the man’s source of trust: his supposed law-keeping. His attitude, “I can do that,” revealed that he was not coming as a child in huge utter dependence.
Perhaps you’ve heard the gospel presented as an easy way to gain the blessing of eternal life. Yet I tell you from Scripture that there is nothing easy about the gospel. If you are under the notion that you just do such and such and you can become a Christian—that is not biblical. Making saving contact with God is humanly impossible. We, as spiritually dead creatures, do not have the ability to lay hold of God. Our depravity and pollution shut us out from God. It is impossible for man to connect with God (it is only possible for God to connect with man).
That doesn’t mean that millions don’t make some type of attempt to come to Christ in order enjoy some of the benefits He possesses. Millions do pray and go to church and hope God favors them.
In Scripture, Jesus addresses our spiritual darkness and blindness. Sin so permeates us and we live in such a sin-permeated environment that we are oblivious to its seriousness (like the goldfish that does not know it is wet). Therefore the first part of receiving God’s grace is to come face to face with the disaster of your sin. The beginnings of divine grace are manifested when you are devastated by your sin, begin to contemplate God as He really is and understand the eternality of your soul. Plead with God to open your eyes to see your sin as God sees it. You will know your view of sin is changing once you begin to be crushed over your sin, to be sickened by it, and crave to be delivered from it.
This is the condition necessary (by grace) to see the beauty of Christ and His cross. To be smitten by the seriousness of your sin is to be so stunned by your moral deformity that you are amazed God would want someone like you. That’s the way God begins grace in a person. Your hope is not in some prayer that you have treated like a magic spell that suddenly makes you right with God. No, in genuine grace, there is acceptance seen only in Christ.
The truly convicted sinner sees that his only hope is in Christ. His attitude is, “make me a new person in you.” Do you see how radically different this is from a person who still has self-righteousness? A person who has never seen the ruinous nature of their sin uses religion to attempt to do it themselves. But, that is not becoming as a little child. The self-righteous man trusts self and what self can do rather than abandoning himself in trust to Christ alone.
Because God created us in His image and likeness, our creational identity IS the image of God. Christ died to restore us to the image of God. As His image, our purpose is to reflect, represent, and serve God. Our job description is to live and be the image of God. Your whole being is described in Scripture as a “vessel” (1 Thess 4:4; Rom 9:21-23). The individual parts of your vessel are biblically called “members”—the members of your body (Rom 6:13). Your members express and act out what is in your heart, that is, your soul.
Redemption is what God is doing on planet earth; we could designate it the mission of God. God is revealing Himself in redemption by how He answers our ruin head-on—decisively by Christ. The power of God in the gospel ‘recalibrates’ a believing sinner to his creational identity as the image of God. How do you stand in relation to God’s plan to restore sinners to the image of God through Christ?
When Christ was born, it was the first time in 4,000 plus years that the perfect image of God was back on earth (since prior to the fall of Adam and Eve). The Son of God as the perfect image of God came to earth for a great purpose: to restore rebellious helpless sinners back to the image of God. Countless people within Christendom imagine that Christ merely gave us a wonderful example of love and sacrifice, but that was not the central purpose of His mission. By Christ’s work of substitution and righteousness, He purchased redemption, justification, and reconciliation for all who believe and repent.
To be the object of Christ’s redemptive work is to be a vessel of mercy and not a vessel of wrath (Rom 9:22-24). Those who truly belong to Christ serve Him and follow Him as His disciples. They reject the lie (the pagan idea) that only the heart matters. They know that to live as the image of God is to make one’s election and calling sure.
Christ died to restore the believing sinner to his creational calling to live as the image of God. That means that every true Christian IS the image of God restored through Christ. That miracle of being a new creation is going to show up dramatically in deeds of your body: your thoughts; deeds; speech; friendships; loyalties. If you indeed are a vessel consecrated to God, your life will reveal who your master really is (whether you are a vessel of mercy or wrath).
To live as the image of God is to be on the narrow way. To be a pilgrim on the narrow way is to diligently think upon and meditate upon the truth—to cling to the truth in faith. It is to put to death the deeds of the flesh (Rom 8:12-13). To mortify the corrupt deeds of the flesh is to refuse to allow the lusts of the flesh to set the standard for your behavior. We are created to worship and serve—we cannot NOT worship and serve.
Countless individuals imagine they are fine because they have ‘believed on Jesus’ and therefore grace covers everything, every misdeed. Well, in reality, how you use your body IS the declaration of who you serve as master, revealing who your functional god really is. To be Christ’s bond slave—His disciple—means that you regard your friendships as existing so that you may help others move closer to Christ. That is the normal Christian life. Are you an example to your friends? Are you completely committed to do spiritual good to those in your social sphere? Are you conscious each day of presenting the members of your body to Christ for His service? This is what it means to live as the image of God.
As was just said, how we use our bodies is a declaration of who our master is. Sexual impurity, gluttony, suicide, substance abuse, cutting, and self-mutilation are all sins against the body. These sins dishonor and disgrace your body. The Christian must take note that his or her body is the dwelling place of the Spirit. Your body has a glorious destiny when Christ returns. Therefore we are to treat our bodies accordingly, refusing to defile the Spirit’s shrine. The repentant person who has come to know God through the grace of Christ has the deeds of his body (works) revealed as having been wrought in God. “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God” (Jn 3:21).
When a person defiles their body (especially by sexual immorality), it is a departure from living as the image of God. Scripture teaches us that we are not the proprietors (or owners) of our bodies. “You are not your own; for you have been bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19b-20a). So, if your body belongs to the Lord, and you are on your way to heaven, and you have been made a new creature destined for Christ, then you cannot bestow your body upon whatever desires your flesh may have.
In the lie in Eden, man sought to be free from God and to be his own master. As a consequence, he became a slave to sin and death reigned. Salvation in Christ is freedom from bondage by means of the ransom price paid by Christ (He bought our freedom—we are to live as free people). Whatever you do in your body must be able to be done to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). Your physical members are to operate in such a way that God is to be served by your deeds. The Lord gave His body for us and now we belong to Him—we are His members.
When Paul addressed the Corinthian Gnostics, he was confronting the idea that “the body is perishable; therefore its acts are insignificant.” But “Not so!” was his cry. God’s law still stands though we are saved by grace through Christ’s justifying work. The Christian’s freedom is limited by the regard he must have for others (the law is the safeguard of love to God and neighbor).
If you truly know Christ, then your resurrection body will be a transformed body—a glorious unity of soul and body perfectly suited for a heavenly existence. Even now your mortal body is NOT merely a complex of physical organs (pure matter). No, your body has eternal value. My body is myself—that means that sexual acts are acts of the whole person (C. K Barrett, 1 Corinthians, pp. 142-148). We must take care what appetites are controlling us for the spiritual body is coming. Our bodies are intended for the Lord’s service.
Doing the will of God is all about presenting our bodies daily to Christ the Lord who is our rightful Master. “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:16-23).