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Redeemer Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

The Christian Home, Lecture 3:

Male and Female in the Image of God
Selected Scriptures

Introduction
This morning I want to begin to address the reasons why God has determined that
men and women should be married. I want to start to answer the question, “Why is it that
we get married?” Indeed, why is it that we should get married?

Before we work toward answering these kinds of questions, I need to offer an

important caveat; namely, that what we will discuss should in no way be construed to
suggest that singleness is always reflective of a failure on the part of those who are not
married to fall in line with God’s intention for men and women. The Apostle Paul himself
says in 1 Cor 7:7-8: “Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am [i.e., single and
celibate]. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another
in that. But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain
even as I [i.e., single].”

Now I want you to notice very carefully that I have said that singleness is not always
reflective of a failure on the part of those who are not married to fall in line with God’s
intention for men and women. That word “always” is extremely important; for there are
people who choose to stay single without biblical warrant. Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians
7 is clear enough at this point to say that celibacy is a gift from God. Therefore only those
who have been gifted for celibacy should even consider staying single.

How can you know if you have been gifted for celibacy? Well, 1 Cor 7:9 seems to
contain the answer: “But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to
marry than to burn with passion.” If you burn in your desires for the opposite sex; if you
feel as if you lack self-control to keep yourself from engaging that passion, then you do not
have the gift.

In addition to having a special measure of self-control with one’s sexual passions, the
one who would desire to pursue singleness ought to do so for reasons of devotion to the
Lord. Listen again to the Apostle Paul:

But I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned
about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but one who is married is
concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his
interests are divided. The woman who is unmarried, and the virgin, is concerned
about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one

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who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her
husband. This I say for your own benefit; not to put a restraint upon you, but to
promote what is appropriate and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord (1 Cor
7:32-35).

So then, singleness does not always represent a dereliction of one’s duty as a

Christian man or woman. This means that sometimes it does. There seem to be two cases
in which a single person ought to be married: (1) if he or she burns with sexual desire; (2) if
he or she is remaining single for sinfully selfish reasons rather than for purposes of godly
devotion to Christ.

With respect to (2), even if you have the ability to control your sexual appetites, you
need to think of whether or not remaining single would work to advance your devotion to
Christ or detract from it. For example, if being companionless and without marital concern
would function to increase your tendency toward selfishness, then you should probably seek
to be married. For having a godly spouse can be an enormous motivator in spiritual things.

Finally, I should add that you may lack self-control and still not be married wholly
by the providence of God. You have been looking for a man or woman with whom to share
your life and you have not yet caught him or her. Or better, the Lord has not yet brought
you together. You are not sinning; you simply need to be patient and recognize that since
the Lord has not yet introduced you to your spouse, you can be confident that you will be
able to fight your passions in the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of Christ until you
meet your spouse.

Now having set forth my singleness caveat, we are nearly ready to get at the question
that goes to the reason for marriage. I say that we are “nearly ready” to address that
question because there is a preliminary consideration that is crucial for us to establish before
we can learn about God’s reasons for marriage: we need to establish who we are as man and
woman. I say this because God’s reasons for marriage are tied very closely with his
purposes for the sexes in creation. Therefore if we fail to apprehend why it is that God
made us in the first place, we will never be able to comprehend why it is that we should be
married. This will become more and more apparent as we progress.

Who We Are
So then let us begin with who we are—with the nature of man and woman—by
looking to Gen 1:26-27:

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;
and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the
cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
27
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male
and female He created them.

According to these verses, God’s purpose in creating male and female was for the
manifestation of his own image. In v 26 the Lord says, Let Us make man in Our image,
according to Our likeness; and in v 27 the narrator says that God created man in His own

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image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. The fact
that we as male and female are the bearers of the divine image could not be clearer. Three
times the word image is used and one time, the word likeness.1 Both words work together
to establish the unavoidable conclusion that we have been created to reflect God’s image in
the world.

Now in order to understand what it means to be made in God’s image and likeness,
jump ahead to Gen 5:3: “When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became
the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.”

Here the identical language is used to describe the relationship between Adam and
his son, Seth. Seth is called a son in Adam’s own likeness, according to his image. So this
should give us some insight into what it means that we have been created in God’s image
according to his likeness. We can set it forth in terms of an analogy: just as a son is the
likeness and image of his father, so we are the likeness and image of God.

Now, then, what can we say about what it means to bear God’s image, to be made
according to God’s likeness? Well, on the analogy of parents and children, we can say at
the very least that humanity is in some ways like God and that humanity is in some ways
different from God. We show forth something of the nature and character of God by our
very existence. This was God’s intention for humankind alone. Animals do not bear God’s
image. Plants do not bear God’s image. The moon and stars do not bear God’s image.
Only people do.

And why is it that God would desire his nature and character to be especially evident
in the world he had made? Well, we can certainly say, in light of the events of the fall, that
man has not been given the exalted status of God’s image bearer so that he would become
self-reliant and autonomous. He did not make us to be little gods without him. So his
reason for making us is so that we would reflect the glory of our creator whose image we
bear. God made us to be windows through which the world may see him. This is why he
made us. This is why we’re here.

So reflecting God’s image is not primarily something that we ought to do—it is who
we are. And it is true of believers and unbelievers alike. We cannot help but manifest to the
world that we are God’s offspring, that we are God’s children by creation, that our very
existence sheds light on the nature and character of the architect of our design.

Now in case you are thinking that the fall has absolutely shattered the image of God
in us, let us turn to Gen 9:5-7.

“Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And
from every man, from every man's brother I will require the life of man. 6 "Whoever
sheds man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He

1
In Hebrew are the words ~l,c,ñ and tWmD. respectively.

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made man. 7 "As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and
multiply in it.”

In this passage, the Lord establishes capital punishment on the basis of man’s being
made in the image of God well after the events of Genesis 3 and even after judgment of the
flood of Genesis 7 & 8.

So then, our existence before and after the fall has been defined in terms of bearing
God’s image. This is not to say that the fall has had no effect on our image bearing
capability; for it has been corrupted in Adam. This is why Jesus, the second Adam is said to
be the image of God par excellence.2 And as believers we are being renewed not after the
corrupt image and likeness of Adam, but after the perfect and glorified image of Christ.
Colossians 3:9-10 says, “Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its
evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge
according to the image of the One who created him.”

So although the fall has corrupted our capacity rightly to reflect God’s image, it does
not mean that we do not reflect it at all. And yet, because it has been corrupted in Adam,
we are in need of a renovation after the glorified second Adam.

Think of it this way: In photocopying, you can make copies from another copy as
long as the latter is not flawed. If, however, you make copies from a defaced one, you will
get defaced images every time. The only recourse is to go back to the original and start
copying again. So it is with Jesus Christ. He is the original and the perfect copy and he
begets “children” in accord with his original and perfect image. Therefore although fallen
human beings still possess the image of God, it is only Christians who can manifest that
image as God intended as we are conformed more and more to the image of his son.3

All this is to say, that as God’s creatures we were created to bear God’s image and
we continue to do so after the fall. We exist to manifest the image of God in the world.

God’s Image, Male and Female

What is most significant about the image-bearing quality of humanity for our
purposes is that it is inextricably linked with our maleness and femaleness. Look again at
1:27: God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and
female He created them. The word translated man is used in this verse as a collective noun
referring to the entire human race. And it is used identically in v 26: Then God said, “Let
Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule,” etc. Let us
make man and let them rule. God created man; male and female he created them.

The implications of this are profound. At the very least it means that from God’s
perspective being male and female is not at all something arbitrary or otherwise disposable.

2
See Col 1:15.
3
I owe this illustration to John M Frame, “Men and Women in the Image of God” in John Piper and
Wayne Grudem (Eds), Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism
(Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991), 226.

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Being male and female is part of what it means to bear the image of God. Gender
differences have their meaning in the being of God. Of course, this is not to say that God is
both genders, but it does mean that there are ways in which our maleness and femaleness
manifest what God is like. Here are three examples by which sexual differentiation mirrors
God4:

1. It mirrors God’s creativity by which he brings forth both men and women.

2. As we learned in our first lecture, it also works to glorify the relationship between
Christ and the church.

3. Although Scripture sets forth God in male terms, it also describes him in female
terms. The male imagery manifests his authority and the female imagery his
willingness to serve. He, like the woman, is called “helper.”

So then, Gender differences are not to be trifled with. Though certainly not less than
biology, gender is more than mere biology. The biological differences exist by divine fiat, by
divine intention and work to shine forth God’s image in a way unique to male and female.

This is what allows Paul in Romans 1 to single out homosexuality as a particularly

striking example of what it means to have exchanged the glory of God for an image in the
form of corruptible man. Rather than embracing the glory of God, in our sin we become
idolaters. And at its essence, idolatry is an exchange. We trade the glory of God for our
own glory. What could more clearly manifest this fact than the sin of homosexuality? We
exchange the glory of God literally for a man. Men trade God for other men; women trade
God for other women.

So we bear God’s image as male and female. To undermine these differences, to

fight against them, and ultimately to throw them off is a sin of great magnitude. If killing
another person is worthy of death because another person has been made in God’s image,
then certainly we are worthy of death to tamper with the very image of God inherent in our
sexuality?

What We Are to Do
So then, getting back to the issue at hand, who are we as men and women? We are
the image-bearers of the true and living God. And it is from this starting point that we are
to understand the mandate that the Lord has placed upon the human race, male and female.
Look again at Gen 1:26.

Closely connected with our possession of the divine image is the mandate for our
rule, for the exercise of dominion: and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that creeps on the earth.

4
Ibid., 229-30.

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Clearly then, the exercise of dominion is something that is an integral component of

our humanness, of what it means to be man and woman. God created us for rule, to
exercise dominion over the creation that he had made for us. And as with the possession of
the divine image, you need to keep in mind that the office of rule over the created order
belongs to men and women alike. When it comes to our position in creation, we occupy the
same space, if you will.

Now then, connecting rule to our possession of the divine image means that we
exercise rule not for ourselves, but so that we may reflect the image of the one who made us,
that we may magnify the God who alone has the rule of the entire universe. We have
dominion that we might reflect the dominion of the one who has shared his absolute
dominion with us.

And what it means for us to exercise rule as man and woman is found in v 28: God
blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and
subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every
living thing that moves on the earth.”

Notice that just as there is a very close association between image-bearing and rule,
so there is a very close connection between exercising rule and procreation. God tells the
man and woman to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over
the fish of the sea, etc.

So subduing the earth, bringing it under our authority, and exercising rule is part and
parcel of being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth. Therefore we cannot exercise
this rule as individuals. God never intended it to be so. It is not good for man to be alone in
large part because the task to which humanity has been called cannot be undertaken alone.
Fruitfulness, multiplication, and the filling of the earth cannot take place apart from the
family. It is through families that God intended his rule to come to bear in the world. It is
through the fruitful proliferation of the human race.

So then, here is an especially clear way that male and female manifest the divine
image—through procreation. We create for God. Like God we create—we create offspring
and we create the social structure in society that makes for the subduing and ruling of the
earth. This is why it is no laughing matter when we say that the family is the foundational
human institution. To undermine the family, to fail to take it seriously as an institution is a
grievous sin; not in the first place because it brings instability to cultures, but because that
instability fails properly to reflect the glory the God who made the institution to magnify his
creative genius and ruling power.

We hear much today about how the threats to the family by unbelievers and
unbelieving institutions will bring about the demise of American culture. We hear how
threats to marriage through so-called gay marriages will work to bring about our undoing
and we are strongly encouraged to do something to stop it.

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I feel very uncomfortable with this thinking—not because I believe that there is such
a thing as a gay marriage (the very notion is biblically speaking), but because the rhetoric
seems to place a higher premium on our way of life as Americans than on the glory of God
being trampled upon by living in such a way as to overturn God’s intentions in the creation
of humankind.

For it is not only homosexuality and homosexual marriage that threatens a nation, it
is the entire list of unnatural behaviors provided for us in Rom 1:29-31. For it is not only
homosexuality that works to undermine the glory of God, it is not only an overturning of
gender that slaps the true God in the face and turns to idols, it is all unrighteousness,
wickedness, greed, evil; envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; gossip, slander, God-hating,
insolence, arrogance, boastfulness, inventing evil, disobedience to parents, ignorance,
untrustworthiness, and the absence of love and mercy.

All of these sins, indeed, all sin reflects that we have exchanged the glory of God for
an image in the form of corruptible man. All our sin reflects that we have turned the created
order on its head.

Yet at the same time I do not mean to minimize the sinfulness of homosexuality and
sins that particularly work to undermine the family. For they are the more striking
examples of the waywardness of our hearts.

Embracing Procreation
At this point we should pause to say that although most people in evangelical and
Bible-believing churches do not advocate redefining marriage according to the whim of the
homosexual community and its advocates; I am afraid that we often work against the
created order by failing to see the integral relationship between our possession of the divine
image, exercising rule, and procreating.

And what I mean by this is that many evangelicals treat the bearing of children with
the same contempt as the unbelieving. We have become worldly in how we understand the
blessing of children and the high privilege of bearing them to the glory of God. Throughout
the Bible, for example, children are considered a blessing from the hand of God. Psalm
127:3-5 says, “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the
man whose quiver is full of them; They will not be ashamed When they speak with their
enemies in the gate.” God is to be praised, the psalmist says, because “He makes the barren
woman abide in the house As a joyful mother of children” (Ps 113:9).

Children are a blessing and our having and rearing of them is one of the most
significant ways we participate in what it means to be human beings, in what it means to
bear the image of God. They are not a burden, they are not an inconvenience, and they are
not a curse.

On the contrary, biblically speaking, it is barrenness—the inability to have children—

that is thought of as a curse and a trial and a difficulty and a burden. This is why the

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promises of God are often conceived in terms of fruitful wombs and the curses of God are
often conceived in terms of barren ones. Deuteronomy 7:12-14 says,

Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and
do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you His covenant and His
lovingkindness which He swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you
and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your
ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your herd and
the young of your flock, in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you.
You shall be blessed above all peoples; there will be no male or female among you or
among your cattle.

And Hos 9:14 says, “Give them, O LORD—what will You give? Give them a miscarrying
womb and dry breasts.”

It is very regrettable that we have forgotten not simply that children are a reward
from God, but that procreation is part of what it means for us to be engaged in our
fulfillment of our divine mandate as bearers of the divine image. It is an extremely
important sphere for living out what it means to be the image-bearers of God.

Contraception and Image-Bearing

As I’m sure you can tell from what I have shared with you, I am not inclined toward
the use of contraception. Though I am not prepared to say that all contraception is wrong, I
will say that we are hard-pressed biblically to find a reason for it. You will never see a
woman crying out to the Lord that she has too many kids. “Oh, Lord, I do not want your
blessings any more! I have enough blessing! Please stop blessing me!” Barrenness is no
blessing.

Now, of course, this does not mean that men and women who through no fault of
their own cannot conceive are necessarily under the curse of the Lord. Sickness is much the
same. Health is a blessing of the Lord and sickness is not. Nevertheless, sickness may be
the product of God’s judgment for sin in one’s life (note the Corinthians who had taken the
Lord’s Supper unworthily) or it may be simply that the Lord has ordained one’s sickness
apart from their sin (take Job, for instance). Nevertheless, barrenness, like sickness is not at
all desirable; it is considered a trial, a difficulty, a curse, a complication of the fall.

I should also add that I understand that the Bible is an ancient document and as such
we should not expect to see explicit directives concerning the use of birth control as we
know it.

Some appeal to the sin of Onan in Genesis 38 to “prove” the illegitimacy of birth
control. You will remember that he spilled his seed so as not to perform the levirate
marriage. Such an appeal is spurious; for the Lord did not punish Onan because he used the
form of birth control we call coitus interruptus, but because he was disobedient to the law of
the levirate marriage. This is a kind of wanton proof-texting that seeks to find something in
the Bible that simply isn’t there.

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On the other side, I am also aware of arguments in favor of birth control that appeal
to the agrarian nature of Ancient culture and suggest that the only reason why large families
were considered a blessing was owing to the amount of labor in which they could engage.
Some argue from this that the blessing of numerous offspring is a convention of a by-gone
era and does not apply directly to a post-industrialized context like our own.

Unlike the abuse of Genesis 38 that I’ve just mentioned, this approach seems to
ignore what the Bible clearly links procreation with bearing God’s image. Such a linking
makes cultural arguments for preventing offspring lose some of their force. As I have
already suggested, there seems to be a rather strong argument on the basis of creation for the
significance of procreation in terms of expressing dominion and possessing the divine
image.

All this is to say that I do not think it right for me to bind a couple’s conscience with
respect to birth control since all we are left with in Scripture is a purely inferential argument
either way. As a result, we are left in need of wisdom to discern which inferences are the
soundest.

And although perhaps we can’t say with unwavering dogmatism that contraception
is a violation of Scripture, we can say with absolute certainty that all forms of birth control
that cause abortions are absolutely forbidden. Some forms of the birth control pill are
known to do this and the intrauterine device (IUD) is also a likely culprit. “Morning after”
pills should also be avoided since they can cause abortions. Condoms, the so-called
“rhythm method,” spermicidal creams, diaphragms, vasectomies, tubal ligations, and coitus
interruptus are forms of contraception that certainly do not cause abortions.

In addition, for couples who may be having a difficult time conceiving, in vitro
fertilization (IVF) can create a problem in that more eggs are harvested and fertilized than
needed. This is because of the high failure rate of IVF. At the best infertility clinics the
success rate is 25-50 percent.5 If the couple has success for as many children as they want to
have, the fertilized embryos are most often destroyed. So you need to exercise caution.

Guidelines for Contraception and Infertility

By way of some practical instruction let me give you some guidelines for couples
concerning contraception:

1. Take the time to study the Scriptures and pray diligently that you might develop your
own convictions concerning the issue. It is not to be taken lightly. It seems to me
that until you are convinced from the Bible that you are at liberty to use it, you
should abstain from using it. This is to err on the side of caution. I say this because
there is no doubt that it is righteous for married couples to have children. Whether
or not we are free to prevent pregnancy is not as certain.

5
John Van Regenmorter, “Frozen Out” in Christianity Today, Vol 48, No 7 (July 2004), 33.

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2. As you are studying and praying, be sure to probe your motives. If you are inclined
toward using contraception, with the Spirit’s help, ask yourself why you want to use
it. The same is true for couples or individual husbands and wives who are not so
inclined. If you are motivated by sinful selfishness or a sense of spiritual superiority
then you need to address those issues as well. It is not enough to address behavior if
you are not also looking to its root in the heart.

3. If you choose to use a form of contraception, be sure to do significant research from

reliable sources so that you do not unwittingly select an abortifacient instead.

4. Seek counsel from godly couples in the church; take advantage of the board of elders.

For infertile couples…

1. Pray diligently that the Lord would grant children. It is ultimately the Lord who
opens and closes the womb.

2. Search your heart and the Scriptures to see if the Lord is not bringing barrenness into
your life as a form of discipline. But be careful! It is not sin that brings the Lord’s
discipline; it is unrepentant sin. As Paul tells the Corinthians, “But if we judged
ourselves rightly, we would not be judged” (1 Cor 11:31). And if it is unrepentant
sin, then sins about which we have no knowledge do not count. The Holy Spirit
intercedes for us with the Lord in our ignorance.

3. If you choose to see a fertility specialist, be sure to do significant research from

reliable sources so that you do not unwittingly find yourself in a situation in which
the lives of your unborn children are seriously threatened.

Conclusion
For now, let us sum things up. What we have seen in Genesis 1 is that we have been
created male and female to bear the image of God. And who we are as God’s image-bearers
informs what we do: we exercise dominion together through procreation and thereby image
forth God’s creative power and sovereignty.

While there is more to imaging forth God through our maleness and femaleness than
exercising dominion through procreation, we begin with this most basic of ideas. Next time
we will address more of what we do as the image-bearers of the true and living God.

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com

The Christian Home, Lecture 3: Male and Female in the Image of God © 2004 by R W Glenn
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www.redeemerbiblechurch.com

The Christian Home, Lecture 3: Male and Female in the Image of God © 2004 by R W Glenn