In the Image

Once, when the Pharisees came to question Jesus, they had crafted a question about taxes. Matthew 22: 15 cites their intent: “Then the Pharisees went and plotted together how they might trap Him in what He said.” The question seemed simple enough: “Is it lawful to give a poll-tax to Caesar, or not?” (Verse 17b) The catch of the question was that the Jewish law already had the people paying significant taxes to the temple in addition the foreign superpower of Rome. Rome had shredded every source of identity for the Jews, by invading and controlling their culture and religion. Paying Roman taxes was a hot issue, which was why the ‘tax collectors’ were hated in their society as betrayers. There seemed no way for Jesus to answer in a way that wouldn’t upset someone. Either way he seemed to have to take a political side, and the Pharisees were hoping that he would say not to pay taxes to Caesar in order to get him arrested.

He asked to see a coin and addressed the crowd, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” (Verse 20) The coin bore the image of Caesar, so Jesus said give that coin back to Caesar. But then He finished by saying: “and {render} to God the things that are God's.” (Verse 21) The first thought in a Jew’s mind was that...God owns everything because He created it. But then my mind goes back to the first question he asked: “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” (Verse 20) James 3:9 says of men that we have “been made in the likeness of God.” You bear God’s image and that comes with rights and responsibilities. Elizabeth Elliot wrote this to her daughter on the eve of her wedding: “You are, Valerie, by the grace of God, a woman. This means you have responsibilities. You are fully a woman, and this means you have privileges. You are only a woman, which means you have limitations. ...Thank God for this, and live it to the hilt!” (Elliot, 151)

Studying what the image of God means is necessary, because the fact that we have been made in his image as women, means that we have responsibilities as women, just as we have moral or rational responsibilities because of having been given a conscience and a mind. Genesis 1:26 is the first mention of image in the Bible, and is the verse that comes before the famous “male and female He created them” section. Verse 26 links image with authority and opportunity: “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them ...”” Genesis 1:26 is called the creation or cultural mandate, and the emphasis’s on taking dominion of the earth and on gender in the next verse, are interestingly paired. Genesis teaches that we bare God’s image as we shape the earth in all forms: in music, art, education, government, law, economics, agriculture, family, and academic pursuits. Any activity that takes raw nature, and orders it, or shapes it to create something new, is what dominion is about. “We are God’s royal stewards, put here to develop the hidden potentials in God’s creation so that the whole of it might celebrate his glory.” (Bartholomew, 37) The fact that God gives the creation mandate right as He finishes created is like Leonardo da Vinci handing you paint brush when the Mona Lisa is mostly finished, and asking you to paint her smile. Unbelievable.