Imago Dei Bible Quotes

Universal Blessing: You do not do elements that focus on negative feelings of shame or embarrassment. • General Revelation: You do not do elements that require some prior knowledge of God or the Bible (Bible drills, etc.). • Imago Dei: You do not do elements that require students to utilize the ungodly attributes within themselves (Yo’ mamma joke contest).

In a sermon entitled “The American Dream,” Martin Luther King, Jr., said: You see, the founding fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the imago dei, as it is expressed in Latin, the “image of God,” is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected. Not that they have substantial unity with God, but that every man has a capacity to have fellowship with God. And this gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: There are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God. One day we will learn that. We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers and to respect the dignity and worth of every man. This is why we must fight segregation with all of our nonviolent might.80

This understanding of God provides the key to understanding what the Bible means when it declares that humans are made “in the image of God.” The imago Dei means that humans, like God, are essentially beings who exist in relationship. We are created to exist in relationship with God and with each other. To the extent that we live in isolation from God and from each other, we are not fully human. The

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other,” both sides could not be right on the question of slavery. The side that was wrong about it was also wrong about the Founding—and, by extension, about Christianity, God, and human nature. If slavery were an affront to the Declaration, it was even more so an affront to the doctrine of imago Dei, and therefore an offense against God, a sin that cried out to heaven for vengeance

Because people made in the image of God were made to stand on equal footing alongside each other before the God of heaven. They were made to bow to Him and Him alone, not made to bow to and be cowed by the brutality of their fellow image bearers. And whether in a pamphlet, in a newspaper, in a speech, in the Bible, or from the voice of God Himself booming from heaven, this knowledge cannot be hidden from image bearers forever.