THE IMAGE OF GOD

"PAUL THE APOSTLE IN HIS WRITINGS associates "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ" with the fact that Christ is "the image of God". If the former phrase recalled his Damascus road experience, what about the latter phrase? Is there something about the appearance of the risen Christ which instantaneously impressed him as being the image of God? For example, see "I like this as it were of the human form" as Ezekiel did when he saw "the likeness of the glory of the LORD" (Ezekiel 1:26, 28) and recognize that it was Jesus by the words which he heard Him speak? 

We cannot be sure, it is difficult to know what meaning the expression "the image of God" would have had for Paul. Yet when he speaks of seeing "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" he uses language which practically amounts to saying in Christ the image of God.

"Paul is not the only New Testament writer to present Christ in these terms: John, the apostle, records the progressive revelation of God in the ministry of the incarnate Word, until its climax on the cross; and the writer to the Hebrews speaks of the son of God as "the effulgence of His glory and the very stamp of His being" (Hebrews 1:3). 

But it is in Paul that the presentation of Christ as the image of God is worked out most fully and consistently, with its corollary of the increasing transformation of the people of Christ into the same image by the power of the indwelling Spirit," until nothing remains of their earthly image and those who finally display the image of the heavenly man. (Romans 9:28--29)

Man, according to the Old Testament, was made in God's image (Genesis 1:26) and for his glory (Isaiah 43:7): in in the order of creation he has, as Paul says, "the image in the glory of God" (one Corinthians 11:7). It is difficult to disassociate Paul's portrayal the image of God. 

In the Alexandrian book of Wisdom, which was evidently known to Paul, wisdom is not personified, but described as the "image" (eikon) of God's goodness. "

Consider the word of God as Christ--we have the full image of God--we have God made manifest, THE GOD CREATOR of all the universe.