Christ is the eikōn of God. Humans were made in the eikōn of God.
It is the same Greek word.
That repetition runs from Genesis to Colossians, and it tells us something English translations sometimes hide. The word for the image humans were made to bear, the image we lost in the Fall, and the image we are being remade into — is the same word as the word for Christ. Christ is what we were supposed to be. Christ is what we are becoming. The Greek does that with one word.
The Word
εἰκών (eikōn), pronounced AY-kone. A feminine noun, third declension. The word from which our English icon descends.
In ordinary first-century Greek, an eikōn could be many things: a portrait, a statue, the image of an emperor stamped on a coin, the likeness of one person reflected in another. When Jesus asks “Whose image is this, and whose inscription?” (Mark 12:16, NET), He is using the everyday sense. Caesar’s face is on the coin. That is the eikōn.
But the word carries more weight than English “image” does. In Greek philosophical and religious usage, an eikōn was not merely a picture of something. An eikōn participated, in some sense, in the reality of what it imaged. A statue of a god, in Greek thought, was not just a stone object that looked like the god. It made the god present in a way a bare description could not. The later Eastern Christian theology of icons builds on this — icons of saints are means of contact with the saints they image, not just pictures. The Lutheran tradition has been more cautious about that development; we do not need it for the New Testament use. But it is worth knowing that eikōn always carried more substance than English “image” suggests. When the New Testament calls Christ the eikōn of God, the word is not saying “Christ resembles God.” It is saying Christ makes God present.
Range of Meaning
In its New Testament usage, eikōn covers a wide field:
- A portrait or visible representation. A statue, a painting, a likeness.
- A coin’s image. Caesar’s face stamped onto silver (Mark 12:16). The everyday political-economic sense.
- The image of God in humans, from the creation account. “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.’” (Gen 1:26, where the Septuagint uses eikōn for the Hebrew tselem).
- The image to which humans are being conformed. “Predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom 8:29, NET).
- Christ Himself as the image of the invisible God. The dominant theological sense in Paul’s letters.
- An idol, when the image is worshiped instead of what it images. This is the negative use — the same word in moral inversion.
The word’s range is unified by a single idea: an eikōn is something that represents something else. The variations are about what is being represented, by what, and whether the representation is being honored or distorted. Context tells you which sense is in play, and the sense almost always matters theologically.
Where You’ll Meet It
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.’ God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26–27, NET)
The first use, and the one all the others reach back to. The Hebrew is tselem; the Septuagint translators chose eikōn. By the time the New Testament was being written, eikōn was the word a Greek-speaking Christian heard when he read Genesis 1. Paul’s later uses are not innovations. They are unfoldings.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,” (Colossians 1:15, NET)
The verse where Paul makes the connection between the Genesis image and Christ explicit. Christ is the eikōn of the aoratos (invisible) God. What you cannot see in God directly, you see in Christ. The invisible God has not left Himself unimaged. He has imaged Himself in His Son.
“among whom the god of this age has blinded the minds of those who do not believe so they would not see the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:4, NET)
Paul again. The good news is, specifically, the good news of “the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God.” Where the eikōn is seen, God is known. Where the eikōn is hidden, blindness reigns.
“And we all, with unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, which is from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NET)
The image is also our destiny. When we behold Christ — through the Word, through the means of grace — we are being transformed into the same eikōn. The Christian life is image-restoration.
“because those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” (Romans 8:29, NET)
The same point, on the largest scale. The endpoint of God’s saving work in us is conformity to the eikōn of His Son. The image we lost is being restored through the image who is Christ.
“So they brought one, and he said to them, “Whose image is this, and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were utterly amazed at him.” (Mark 12:16–17, NET)
A pastoral footnote to the larger argument. The coin bears Caesar’s eikōn and so belongs to Caesar. The implication, often missed, is that humans bear God’s eikōn and so belong to God. We are God’s coinage. We bear His image, and so the question “what do we owe God?” has the answer the question always had: ourselves.
What Confessional Lutherans Hear
There are two things confessional Lutherans hear in eikōn that tend to go quiet elsewhere.
First, the image of God in humans was lost in the Fall — not merely marred. Confessional Lutherans distinguish between the image of God in the narrow sense and the broad sense. The Augsburg Confession Article II describes humans as having been created with fear of God, with trust in God, and with original righteousness; original sin is described as the loss of these. The narrow sense of the image — the things that mattered most, the things that constituted the relationship between God and the human creature — is what was lost. The broader sense — rationality, language, moral agency, dominion over creation — remained, but became distorted and bent inward by sin.
This is the place where Lutheran anthropology parts company, gently, with some Reformed and Catholic readings that frame the image as a continuing possession of fallen humanity in the relevant sense. We affirm that humans retain something of God’s image after the Fall — the broad sense — but we deny that what remains is the image that saves. The image that saves was lost. It can only be restored, not enhanced or recovered by effort. It is restored through union with Christ, who is the image.
This matters pastorally because it shapes how Lutherans hear “being remade in the image.” We are not polishing a marred but intact reflection. We are being given back what we did not have. The new creation is genuinely new — not just the old creature with the dust wiped off.
Second, Christ as the image is the access point to God. When Paul calls Christ the eikōn of the invisible God (Col 1:15, 2 Cor 4:4), he is doing more than making an abstract christological observation. He is telling us where to look. The invisible God has made Himself visible in Christ. To know God, look at Christ. To hear God, hear Christ. To see God act, see Christ act. The image is the access — and the access is reliable, because the image is not a faint approximation. He is the substance of the One imaged. Where you see the eikōn, you see God Himself.
This dovetails with everything Lutherans say about the means of grace. God comes to us in visible, accessible form — first in the incarnate Christ, then in the Word preached, the water of baptism, the bread and wine of the Supper. The image principle is at work in all of them. The invisible God meets us through visible, tangible, audible means. He has chosen to be imaged, and so He can be found.
The pastoral payoff: when you ask “what is God like?”, the Christian answer is not philosophy. It is Jesus. Christ is the image. What He did, God does. What He said, God says. What He is, God is. You do not have to speculate. You have a face.
Where People Get It Wrong
Three common ways.
The first is treating the image as a faint reflection. The English word image lets in too much shadow. An eikōn in Greek is not a copy that falls short of its original; it is a representation that makes the original present. Christ as the eikōn of God is not God-lite. He is the visible presence of the invisible God. Underplaying the substance of the word costs the chapter its christological weight.
The second is treating the imago Dei in humans as merely rational capacity. Some modern theologies define the image as “what makes us different from animals” — language, reason, moral choice. The fuller (Lutheran) reading is that the image is, in its essential sense, a relational reality: knowing God, trusting God, fearing God, loving God. We lost it. Reducing the image to thinking misses the salvation-historical point. The image that matters is the image that has to be restored.
The third is the eikōn-to-idol slide. The same word that names humans as bearers of God’s image, and Christ as the image of God, also names the idol that humans make when they bow to an image of something else. The Septuagint and the New Testament use eikōn both ways. The category shift is not in the word but in what the image is doing. When the image is functioning as God intends — pointing to God, making God known — it is good. When it is worshiped in God’s place, it is an idol. This is not a problem with images themselves. It is a problem with what humans do with them. The negative association (“eikōn → icon → idol”) sometimes gets read backwards into all uses of the word. It should not. The New Testament uses eikōn positively for Christ and for humans on most occasions.
So What
The image is the access point. When you want to know what God is like, you look at Jesus. The eikōn is reliable. The invisible God has not left Himself to speculation.
The image is also your destiny. Romans 8:29 says we are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. The arc of the Christian life is image-restoration — the slow remaking, through union with Christ and through the means of grace, of what we lost in Adam. We will not finish this work in this life. We will finish it in the resurrection, when “we will be like him because we will see him just as he is” (1 John 3:2, NET). But the work has begun, and the One it conforms us to is the One in whose image we were made.
For Sunday school teachers: when you teach Genesis 1 and the children hear “made in the image of God,” you are teaching them the first half of a sentence Paul will finish in Colossians 1. The Genesis image, lost in Genesis 3, is the image restored in Christ. The story has one shape because it has one word.