Tag Archives: Jesus

Created in God’s Image: The Royal Calling of Humanity (The Kingdom of God, part 3)

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This is part 3 of a series of posts on the kingdom of God. Part 1 can be found here. Part 2 can be found here.

The kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus is a distinctly Jewish idea, rooted in Israel’s Scriptures. To understand the significance of this kingdom we will need to explore some of the biblical backstory—especially the theme of “rule,” a royal metaphor for the exercise of power.

Imago Dei: The Royal Calling of Humanity

The opening chapter of the Bible recounts the creation of humanity (male and female) with the vocation or calling of being God’s “image” on earth (Gen 1:26–28). Genesis 1 here draws on (and interacts with) the royal ideology from the cultures of the ancient Near East (such as Mesopotamia and Egypt), which viewed kings (and sometimes priests) as the “image” of their gods. These human leaders were thought to have a function similar to that of the “image” (or cult statue) of the god, which was located in the temple. Just as the cult statue was thought to mediate the presence and power of the god from heaven to earth, kings (and some priests) claimed to be the gods’ unique earthly delegates, exercising power over the people on the gods’ behalf (a royal function), by which the gods’ presence was made manifest in their society (a priestly function).

Genesis 1 draws on this ancient, highly elitist notion of the “image of God,” but radically democratizes or universalizes it, applying it to all people, male and female (irrespective of their social status). This biblical vision of all people sharing the “royal” status of the “image of God” (imago Dei in Latin), with equal dignity in the sight of the Creator, helps explain a well-recognized historical fact: when the people of Israel came into existence as a nation (after their exodus from Egypt), they existed for centuries without a monarchy—something entirely unique in the ancient Near East. The idea of all humanity created to be God’s image functioned as a radical critique of—and form of resistance to—the royal ideology of the ancient societies among which Israel lived.

In Genesis 1:26–28, the image of God is manifested in the ordinary human exercise of power or agency in earthly life, involving “rule” (or “dominion” in some translations) over the animal kingdom (equivalent to animal husbandry) and “subduing” the earth or land (equivalent to agriculture). In Genesis 2, the human vocation is portrayed (without using the term “image”) as working and protecting a garden of fruit trees that God planted (Gen 2:15). Since God planted the garden, God is portrayed as the first gardener and humans implicitly image God as they continue tending God’s garden. Psalm 8 echoes the theme of animal husbandry from Genesis 1, when it describes humans as created a little less than God (similar to being God’s image in Genesis 1) and granted rule over various forms of animal life—on land, air, and water (Ps 8:5–8).

The image of God (imago Dei) is both a gift (humans are granted the status of being VIPs in God’s world) and a calling or vocation (we are commissioned as God’s ambassadors in the world). Every person is both gifted with royal dignity and also authorized to represent God’s rule in the ordinary practices of earthly life. Whereas Genesis 1 and 2 focus on caring for animals and farming the land, Genesis 4 extends this by mentioning that humans invented and developed cities, nomadic livestock herding, musical instruments, and metal tools (Gen 4:17, 20–21). This suggests that God is imaged by all forms of legitimate cultural innovation, as people develop the potentialities of earthly life.

But Genesis 3 portrays humans rebelling against their Creator (transgressing the limits God instituted) so that the gift of human agency or “rule” becomes distorted and twisted, with corrupting effects on the social order.

Life, Death, and Violence in Human History

In the Garden of Eden narrative, humans are warned that “death” is the consequence of disobedience to God (Gen 2:15–16). This death was not the introduction of mortality, as if humans had previously been immortal and only now would have an ending to their life; the idea of original immortality is an idea imported by later interpreters into the text. Rather, humans are created from “dust” (Gen 2:7), a term used throughout the Bible as a metaphor for mortality (see especially Ps 103:13–14). The “death” warned about in Genesis 2 is best understood as the constriction and diminishing of life, where “life” refers to the fullness of earthly flourishing.

Immediately upon disobedience, the original harmony in the garden begins to be distorted, as the primal couple cower in fear before God and in shame of nakedness before each other (Gen 3:7–8, 10), while ordinary human relationships, like marriage, childbirth, and farming, became disharmonious (Gen 3:16–20). Ultimately, humans are exiled from the garden, losing access to the fullness of life (symbolized by the Tree of Life in the center of the Garden) and the intimate presence of God. These consequences are various ways of describing the “death” that results from sin.

Yet humans retain the dignity of being God’s image and the call to represent God is not rescinded (see Gen 9:6). But violence (the misuse of the power or agency associated with the image of God) is introduced into human history, evident in Cain’s murder of his brother out of jealousy (Gen 4:8) and Lamech’s revenge killing of a young man who injured him, while boasting about it to his two wives (Gen 4:23). Distorted human “rule” then spirals out of control, until violence fills the earth and life becomes corrupted (Gen 6:5, 11–12), which generates the flood to cleanse the earth of this corruption.

But the respite is only temporary and human violence culminates in the story of Babel (the normal Hebrew word for Babylon), an empire that tries to dominate others and impose its will (and even language) on conquered peoples (Gen 11:1–9). The tower of Babel is likely a ziggurat, a series of giant steps for the gods to descend from heaven to their favored city, thus providing religious legitimation for the empire. With the rise of every “Babylon” in history, every imperial legitimation of violence in the name of law and order (including Rome in the time of Jesus), God’s purposes for life and flourishing are impeded. In the “Babel” of Genesis 11, God’s purposes for blessing seem to have come to a dead end.

How will God respond to this imperial violence? That is the topic of part 4 of this series (The Story of Israel from Abraham to the Exile).

My Signature Course on “Biblical Worldview: Scripture, Theology, Ethics”

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This Fall (beginning August 26, 2025), I will be teaching my signature course on the Biblical Worldview as a radical, liberating vision for the church and the world. The course has had a number of different names over the years, including “Exploring the Christian Worldview” (the undergraduate version at Roberts Wesleyan University) and “Biblical Worldview: Scripture, Theology, Ethics” (the graduate version at Northeastern Seminary).

I’ve taught non-credit versions of this course since I was a campus minister in Canada (at the University of Toronto, McMaster University, the University of Guelph, and Brock University) and in the US (at the University of Rochester, Cornell University, and Syracuse University).

My first book, The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View (IVP, 1984), which I co-authored with Brian Walsh, was based on this course.

When I began to teach the course for graduate and undergraduate credit at the Institute for Christian Studies, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Roberts Wesleyan University, and Northeastern Seminary, I was able to develop the content further with a deeper dive into Scripture and further analysis of our changing cultural contexts.

This Fall the course will be offered as a dual modality course, which means that it may be accessed in person (in the classroom) or remotely (by Zoom link). It may also be taken for undergraduate or graduate credit.

Although the term “biblical worldview” has been used and abused by Christians with a rigid, absolutist stance, I want to reclaim the term for the Bible’s liberating vision of shalom and flourishing. That’s the orientation of this course. 

I am planning a complete rewrite of my earlier book The Transforming Vision along these lines. It is tentatively entitled Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws: The Bible’s Liberating Worldview (to be published by Baker Academic).

I have been authorized by Northeastern Seminary to invite anyone interested to register for the course (in either modality—in person or online) for credit or for audit.

Auditors receive all the same resources as those taking the course for credit, without submitting any assignments. These resources include links to the professor’s weekly video lectures, along with links to PDFs of readings and handouts.

The course will meet for fourteen weeks on Tuesdays at 7:00–8:30 pm Eastern. The format will be a flipped classroom. Participants view the video lectures and do the readings in advance (auditors are encouraged to do as much or as little of the reading as they desire).

This weekly preparation gives participants a chance to formulate thoughtful questions that arise from the lectures and readings, which they are invited to bring to our hour-and-a-half synchronous meeting each week. These weekly meetings are a rich time of discussion and sharing, as we explore matters of biblical interpretation, worldview, theology, culture, and ethics, and their bearing on our lives.

“Biblical Worldview: Scripture, Theology, Ethics” (GBHT 5210) is a 3-credit course. The tuition is normally $575 per credit hour (thus $1,725 for the course). The fee for auditing is only $199.

If you are interested in taking the course (for audit or credit), you may use the NES Fast Application link (Fast App for short) to submit some preliminary information about yourself. Auditing students (and those desiring credit, yet not registering for a degree program) should select “Non-Degree Seeking” on the drop-down menu under “Application Type.” You don’t need to fill in all the information boxes in the app, just those with an asterisk.

When you have filled out the required information, you should email Jess Newcomb (Asst. Director of Recruiting and Admissions for Graduate, Professional Studies, & Seminary) at admissions@nes.edu to let her know you have completed the Fast App and that you want to audit the Biblical Worldview course; she will take you through the next steps for registering as an auditor. You can also call or text her at 585.565.6533.

You can read a full course description here.

You can see the course outline and topics covered here.

Here are the course objectives.

This is the list of core readings.

What Did Jesus Mean by the Kingdom of God? (The Kingdom of God, part 2)

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In my last post, I addressed the reversal of power dynamics in the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed. But beyond that, what did Jesus mean by this term?

The Nazareth Manifesto

To understand Jesus’s use of the term “kingdom of God,” it is helpful to turn to Luke’s Gospel, which does not use the term “kingdom of God” in Jesus’s opening message. Along with Matthew and Mark (the other Synoptic Gospels), Luke tells us about Jesus’s baptism by John (Matthew 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22), followed by his temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4: 1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13). Then all three Gospel writers note that Jesus returns to Galilee and begins his preaching (Matthew 4:12–16; Mark 1:14; Luke 4: 14–15).

But whereas in Matthew and Mark, Jesus announces the coming of the kingdom in a short, succinct statement (Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15), Luke has an extended account of a synagogue message that Jesus delivered in Nazareth, his hometown (Luke 4:16–30), without, however, any explicit mention of the kingdom.

Yet we know that Jesus was expounding on the nature of the kingdom in Luke’s account, since a bit later Luke notes that after Nazareth, Jesus moved on to Capernaum, another town in Galilee. And when he was about to leave Galilee to continue his mission in the province of Judea, Jesus explained: “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose” (Luke 4:43). In other words, Luke’s account of Jesus’s sermon in Nazareth is an example of his preaching about the kingdom of God.

It is likely that Luke gives us this more extended example of Jesus’s preaching instead of the succinct summary about the “kingdom” found in Matthew and Mark because he wanted to clarify the nature of the kingdom of God (a distinctively Jewish concept) to non-Jewish readers. Luke addressed his Gospel to “most excellent Theophilus,” who may have been a high-ranking gentile (Luke 1:1–4).

The way Jesus unpacks the nature of the kingdom in Luke 4, then, is particularly helpful for us—living in the twenty-first century—in cultures very different from first-century Galilee.

After his testing in the wilderness, Jesus began teaching in the synagogues of Galilee (Luke 4:14–15). When he arrived in his hometown, Nazareth, he attended the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom (Luke 4:16). He stood up to read the Scripture and was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the scroll to Isaiah 61 and read these words:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
       because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
       and recovery of sight to the blind,
       to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18–19)

Quoting Isaiah

The Scripture Luke quotes Jesus reading is Isaiah 61:1 and part of verse 2, with a line inserted from Isaiah 58:6 (“to let the oppressed go free”). In their original context, both Isaiah 61 and 58 were addressed to those Jews who had returned to their ancestral land, after having experienced exile in Babylon. Following a devastating series of attacks by the Babylonian empire in the late sixth century, which killed many Jews and destroyed the city of Jerusalem—along with the temple, the center of Jewish religious life—the Babylonians took a portion of the remaining population into exile, relocating them in the center of the empire.

Now, after a hiatus of nearly seventy years, as a result of a regime change (Babylon was conquered by the Persians), some Jews had returned to their homeland. Yet their society was still in shambles, characterized by internal injustice and oppression. Speaking in a post-exilic context, to those who had returned to the land, the prophet announced the “good news” of a new era (“the year of the Lord’s favor”) when God will act decisively on behalf of the poor, releasing captives, restoring sight to those who are blind, and setting the oppressed free.

Why does Jesus draw on this passage? And what did he mean by these phrases: “good news to the poor,” “release to the captives,” “recovery of sight to the blind” and “to let the oppressed go free”? In what way do these actions signify “the year of the Lord’s favor”? And how do they clarify the nature of the kingdom of God, which is being fulfilled in Jesus’ ministry?

The Problem of Spiritualizing Jesus’s Message

It has been very common for Christians through the ages to spiritualize Jesus’s Nazareth sermon, reducing the message to one of freeing people from internal captivity (bondage to sin) and spiritual blindness. Even the term “poor” in “good news to the poor” has been understood to mean those who were “poor in spirit” (aware of their “spiritual” needs).

Now, Jesus certainly did bring internal restoration (the forgiveness of sins) and a fundamental reorientation of values; this is clear from his call to repentance—radical change is required to be aligned with God’s kingdom. But to reduce Jesus’s message at Nazareth (or the meaning of God’s kingdom) solely to something internal is to misread his words in terms of an unbiblical value distinction of sacred/secular, spiritual/physical, or personal/social.

This framework, derived from later Christian tradition, which downplays outward action and the importance of social realities in relation to the importance of the inner person (the “soul”), is often imposed on the text from the outside. But no-one in Jesus’s day would have understood his words in this sense.

This spiritualizing interpretation is blown out of the water by the phrase “to let the oppressed go free,” which is taken from a prophetic passage in Isaiah 58:1–14. Here the prophet pointedly challenges landowners and others with power who exploit their workers (which included withholding their wages); yet these powerful people attend religious ceremonies and perform religious rituals (like fasting), while continuing to act unjustly towards others (their religious rituals even end, the prophet says, in quarreling and fighting).

Biblical Spirituality and Justice

This passage is one of many in the Old Testament that critique those who attempt to practice a form of religion (or spirituality) that is contradicted by their actual way of life. By contrast, Isaiah 58 describes the form of spirituality that pleases God.

Is not this the kind of “fasting” I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
      and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
      and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
      and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
      and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
(Isaiah 58:6–7)

These are concrete actions to remedy social injustice, which involve meeting the real needs of actual people. Isaiah 58 goes on to promise that if the people fulfill God’s requirements for justice with their neighbors, then the social order will be healed:

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
      you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
      the restorer of streets to live in. (Isaiah 58:12)

A similar statement is found in Isaiah 61, just two verses after the section Jesus quotes: 

They shall build up the ancient ruins,
      they shall raise up the former devastations;
They shall repair the ruined cities,
      the devastations of many generations. (Isaiah 61:4)

The Kingdom and Social Transformation

It makes sense that Jesus (or Luke) connected Isaiah 61 and 58; both have to do with social renewal in postexilic Judah. So the insertion of Isaiah 58:6 at the end of Isaiah 61:1 further affirms the this-worldly nature of the kingdom Jesus was proclaiming.

Both Isaiah 61 and 58 were addressed to the dysfunctional social reality of post-exilic Israel and envision a new social order in which justice would be restored. Jesus draws on this message in his Nazareth sermon, applying it his own day, since centuries later Israel was still in a similar situation. Beyond Roman oppression, Jewish society was full of political jockeying and economic inequalities. But Jesus announced that things are about to change—the kingdom of God is coming! This kingdom refers, most fundamentally, to a world conformed to God’s standards, where that which is broken is healed and society is ordered according to God’s priorities of justice, generosity, and love.

But where did this idea of the kingdom of God come from? What are its roots, its origin?

That’s the topic for the next post.

This is the second installment of a longer piece I am writing on the Kingdom of God for a volume of essays introducing Christianity to a broad, international audience (to be published by Routledge). Part 3 may be found here.