Man Is God’s Image — Before and After the Fall

God is the Lord of all; He made man in His own image and He made him the lord of creation; He made him king and prince over all the animals and everything that is in earth.  God put into man something of that which characterises Himself.  Man’s very body supplies evidence of this.  God made man upright.  The animals are not upright.  God made man upright, to show that he had this dignity, this regal quality about him.  Man does not go on all fours, he stands erect; the very uprightness of a man’s body is a part of the image of God in him.  Still more important is the fact that God made man, originally, righteous.  He gave him a moral and an intellectual integrity.  Man, as he was made by God, was righteous and holy and true.  There was no sin in him, there was no defect, he stood before God a morally righteous creature, fit for communion with God, and one who enjoyed communion with God.

Why is the world as it is? you say.  The answer is that man fell.  And when man fell the image of God in man was defaced.  I do not say that the image was destroyed or altogether lost, because when man sinned and fell he did not cease to be a man, he did not become a beast, he was still man.  And that is the tragedy of man, that he still bears some of the marks of the image of God.  He can still think; he can still reason; he still stands erect and upright; he still has psychic powers in that he can reason about himself and contemplate himself.  These traces remain.  But what was really the crowning gift of the image — the righteousness, the uprightness, the holiness, the truth — was lost, and man was driven out from the presence of God and became a stranger to Him.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17,” pg. 177