loved because of Christ or the imago de

Does God love us because we are in his image or because we are in Christ? Yes i.e. both.

Outside of Christ, God infinitely values us because we are in His image, like Him.

In Christ God loves us both *freely and infinitely.

What is the difference?

Paul said we are all the offspring of God.

Act 17:28 for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

We all come from God and we are all **like God. Because of this, we are able to enter into and participate in the community of God as Father, Son, and Spirit with the capacity to respond in love and uniquely reflect him out to others. This is why Paul could invite his hearers to return to God. Nothing else in all of creation is offered or called to willfully enter a relationship with Him.

However, until our rebellion is addressed we are alienated from God and are His enemies. Even though God has not abandoned us or ever stopped pursuing us, we have gone astray, everyone to his or her own way. No one seeks after God, not one. God is not in a relationship with us because He refused to be, but the other way around; we refused to be in a relationship with Him and still do.

To remedy this, He had to make a way to restore us back to himself.  Left to our own devices, it would never have occurred. He had to remove the consequences of destruction and harm caused by our not acknowledging him for who he truly is. As well as not acknowledging our fellow image-bearers for who they are, i.e. not treating our fellow image-bearers as we would have them treat us. He had to provide for us the goodness we were designed for but missing. He had to turn our hearts of stone, cold and dead to Him, into hearts of flesh, alive and responsive to him. We could not do any of these things by ourselves.

Once he made a way to restore us and we accepted his offer, he treats us as if we never rebelled; as his perfectly loved and cherished offspring that bear the family resemblance. 

Act 17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,

Act 17:25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Act 17:26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,

Act 17:27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,

Act 17:28 for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Act 17:29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

Act 17:30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

Act 17:31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” 

For a further discussion of how we operate contrary to our design click here

                                                                                                                                            


* In Christ there are no more obstacles or barriers blocking his love.

**Gen 9:5  And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. 6  “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. 

Because we are like God, to harm and disregard an image bearer is to disregard God.