He Is the Unseen, the Son Is the Image
The Bearer · Chapter 2
How the unseen Father is made visible in the Son, His image — lost in the first Adam, restored in the second.
Whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.
— 1 Timothy 6:16
Open the New Testament to any verse that talks about whether the Father can be seen, and you find the same answer. He cannot be. Not by Moses. Not by the prophets. Not by the apostles. Not by anyone. The Father is invisible by nature — not because His light is too dim to see, but because His light is too pure for any mortal eye to look into.
1. Yahuah Cannot Be Seen
The unseen Father; the image that shows Him.
Paul is not saying no one has had the opportunity. He is saying no one has the capacity. The Father, in His native state, in the unapproachable light He inhabits, is past the threshold of created vision. Whatever a man would say he saw of the Father, the man could not have actually seen — because the Father in Himself is not visible to a being made of flesh.
No man hath seen Elohim at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
— John 1:18
John says it again. No man has seen Yahuah. Not in Genesis. Not on Sinai. Not in the temple. Not in the visions of Isaiah or Ezekiel or Daniel. What those men saw was not the Father in His native form. It was something else. Something that bore Him to their eyes without exposing them to what would have killed them.
And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.
— Exodus 33:20
Moses asked to see Yahuah’s kavod, and Yahuah told him directly: you cannot see my face. To see Yahuah unveiled is to die. The substance of who He is, in the fullness of who He is, is more weight than a creature can sustain.
This is why the Father needs an image.
Not because He wants to hide — but because no man, no creature, no being made of flesh and bone, can bear the full sight of who He is. He has to be borne by something. He has to be displayed through something. He has to be made visible by a vessel that takes the substance He has — the kavod, the character, the authority, the love, the wrath, the holiness, the mercy — and makes it small enough, walkable enough, touchable enough for a created mind to receive.
This is the role the Son was made for. This is what an image is.
And before the Son came, this was the role Adam was made for. The first man was the Father’s first attempt at a visible bearer of an invisible original. The story of the image is the story of that first bearer failing, and a second Bearer succeeding.
2. What “Image” Actually Means
The invisible original; the visible image.
Most modern Christians have been taught that when the Bible says Yahushua is the “image of God,” it is making a metaphysical claim — that the Son is somehow ontologically the Father, or that the two share an essence so completely that to be the image of one is to be the other. This is not what the word means. Not in Hebrew. Not in Greek. Not anywhere in Scripture.
Scripture uses four main words for image — two in Hebrew and two in Greek. Each one shows the same idea from a slightly different angle: a bearer that represents a source while remaining distinct from it. The image carries the form, the authority, and the dignity of the source. The image is not the source.
The Two Hebrew Words
Tselem (צֶלֶם, H6754). Image, statue, representation. The word ancient kings used for the statue they set up in a distant city to mark their dominion. The statue was not the king, but it bore his form and stood for his authority. To deface the statue was to dishonor the king. Tselem is the word in Genesis 1:26 — let us make man in our tselem.
Demuth (דְּמוּת, H1823). Likeness, pattern, resemblance. The word that lets you say “this is like that.” When Ezekiel sees the throne, he uses demuth again and again — what he saw was the likeness of a man, not the man himself. Demuth is paired with tselem in Genesis 1:26 — after our demuth.
When Genesis 1:26 says Yahuah made man in His tselem, after His demuth, both words are working together. Adam was the visible representation and the underlying pattern of the Father. Two angles. One bearing relationship.
The Two Greek Words
Eikon (εἰκών, G1504). Image, portrait, stamped impression. The same word used for Caesar’s face on a Roman coin. The coin was not Caesar. But it bore his face and his authority, and because of that it belonged to him. Eikon is the word the LXX uses to translate tselem in Genesis 1:27 — and it is the word the New Testament uses of Yahushua in Colossians 1:15 and 2 Corinthians 4:4.
Charaktēr (χαρακτήρ, G5481). Engraved impression, exact stamp. The mark a signet ring leaves in soft wax. Every line of the ring is in the wax. But the wax is wax, and the ring is metal. The impression and the engraver are not the same thing. Charaktēr is the word in Hebrews 1:3 — the express image of his person.
Four words. One pattern. The image bears the source. The image is not the source. Every one of these words preserves the distinction between the original and what carries the original into the visible world. Hold that in mind as the foundation of everything that follows. The trinitarian reading of image-verses collapses the moment you let the vocabulary do its own work.
3. The Image Is the Sonship
The unseen Father; the Son, His image.
The picture of a statue, a coin, a wax impression — these are the starting illustrations. They show you the bearing-relationship at its simplest. But the full biblical meaning of image is something richer than a statue or a coin. The image is sonship.
A statue does not have a soul. A coin does not have a nature. A wax impression cannot fall from righteousness. So how can Genesis 5:3 say Seth was begotten in Adam’s image — meaning Seth inherited Adam’s sinful nature — if the word image refers only to outward form?
The answer is in the Hebrew way of thinking. The biblical image is not merely a statue. It is sonship. A son bears his father’s image in every dimension at once — face, voice, name, nature, authority, inheritance, character. All of it together, in one word.
Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of Elohim.
— Luke 3:38
Notice what Luke does. He traces the line of Yahushua all the way back, and he ends with this: Adam was the son of Yahuah. Not figuratively. The same way Seth was the son of Adam — that is the way Adam was the son of Yahuah. The genealogy treats both relationships the same. Adam’s sonship to the Father and Seth’s sonship to Adam are the same kind of relationship at different levels.
Here is the key that unlocks everything. Genesis 5:1 says Yahuah made Adam in His demuth — Yahuah fathered Adam as His son. Genesis 5:3 says Adam begat Seth in his own demuth, after his tselem — Adam fathered Seth as his son. Father to son. The image is what passes from father to son. The image is the sonship itself.
The image is the sonship itself.
This means the bearing-relationship the New Testament describes between the Father and the Son is not just a representational analogy. It is a sonship relationship. Yahushua bears the Father the way a son bears a father — in face, in voice, in name, in nature, in authority, in inheritance, in character. He carries the Father in His person not as a coin carries Caesar but as a son carries his father — fully, in every dimension at once, and yet remaining a distinct person from the father whose image he bears.
This is what the image was always meant to be. The statue picture was the entry-level lesson. The sonship is the full meaning. And when you read every “image of God” verse in Scripture with this in mind, the bearer pattern blossoms into something far deeper than representational art. The image is the bearing of fatherhood through sonship. The Father is borne by His Son. The Son is borne by His sons. The whole architecture of the gospel turns on a single Hebrew word.
4. Adam, the First Image-Bearer
The image; Adam, its first bearer.
The doctrine begins where the Bible begins.
And Elohim said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So Elohim created man in his own image, in the image of Elohim created he him; male and female created he them.
— Genesis 1:26–27
Adam was made as the Father’s son in the garden. His body bore the form Yahuah designed. His glory shone outward — the same kavod-light the Father wears as His own garment (Psalm 104:2), draped over Adam’s flesh as a borrowed clothing. His role was dominion — ruling creation on the Father’s behalf, exactly as an image-bearing son rules in his father’s name. His communion was direct — walking with the Father in the cool of the day. His nature was righteous.
Body, glory, role, relationship, righteousness — all of it together. That was the image. That was the sonship. That was what man was made to bear.
This is why Adam and Eve were naked without shame before the fall (Genesis 2:25). They were not bare. They were clothed — in the same light their Father wore, in the kavod that came down from Him and rested on them as the visible bearing of the invisible original. Adam was the first me’or, the first creature made to carry the Father’s light into the visible world. The image of Elohim was a bearing-of-light, a bearing-of-kavod, a bearing-of-character.
This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that Elohim created man, in the likeness of Elohim made he him.
— Genesis 5:1
Notice what Moses does at the head of Adam’s family record. He restates the image. Whatever Adam passes down to his sons, the image is the inheritance. The very next verses tell us what happened to that inheritance.
Between Genesis 5:1 and Genesis 5:3, something has happened. The text does not retell it. It already told us in chapter three. The fall has occurred. Adam has eaten. The ground is cursed. The glory-covering has lifted. The communion has broken. Then Adam begets his first son after the fall. Watch the language.
And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth.
— Genesis 5:3
Read those two verses side by side. Genesis 5:1 — Yahuah made Adam in His own demuth. Genesis 5:3 — Adam begat Seth in his own demuth, after his tselem. The exact same two Hebrew words. The source has changed.
Yahuah made Adam in His image. Adam made Seth in his.
Notice what the text does NOT say. It does not say Seth was made in Yahuah’s image. It does not say Seth was made partly in Adam’s and partly in Yahuah’s. It says one thing only — Seth was made in Adam’s image. The image-bearing line has shifted. The source Adam reproduces is himself, not Yahuah. The sonship that flowed down to Seth was sonship of Adam, not sonship of the Father. Until the Second Adam came, the line of sonship to Yahuah was broken at Genesis 5:3 and was never re-established by natural generation.
This is what David grieved over in Psalm 51:5 — Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. This is what Paul declared in Romans 5:12 — by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men. The entire human race after Adam was born in Adam’s image, not Yahuah’s. Every man bears the resemblance of the fallen father, not the original Father. That is the condition we are all born into.
Three later verses are sometimes used to argue that fallen man still bears Yahuah’s image. Genesis 9:6 forbids murder for in the image of Elohim made he man. James 3:9 forbids cursing men which are made after the similitude of Elohim. 1 Corinthians 11:7 says a man is the image and glory of Elohim. Do these verses overturn what we have just seen?
Look at the verbs. All three reach back to the original creative act. Genesis 9:6 uses the Hebrew verb asah — made. James 3:9 uses the Greek perfect participle gegonotas — those who have been made. 1 Corinthians 11:7 grounds Paul’s discussion in the way man was originally created. None of these verses says fallen man is currently bearing the image of Yahuah in the way Adam did before the fall. What they say is that the original design carries dignity, and that dignity is the basis for the rule. You do not murder a man, because of how Yahuah originally made him. You do not curse a man, because of how Yahuah originally made him. The verses ground a present command in a past creative act. They do not contradict Genesis 5:3. They presuppose it.
The first bearer failed. The kavod he was made to wear withdrew. The sonship he was made to display broke. And the man who was supposed to be the visible image of the invisible Father became, instead, the source of an image-line that bore only himself — a fallen man fathering fallen men, all the way down the centuries until a second Man came and put the bearing right.
5. The Counterfeit: The Image of the Beast
A counterfeit image; a false bearer.
Scripture does not leave the fallen image unnamed. The apostles and prophets give it a name. They call it the image of the beast. This is not just a future statue in a future temple. It is the corrupted image humanity has been bearing since the fall, and it stands in direct opposition to the image of Yahuah.
Because that, when they knew Elohim, they glorified him not as Elohim, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible Elohim into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.
— Romans 1:21–23
Paul describes what fallen humanity did with the image. The Greek word translated “changed” is allassō (G236) — the word for a transaction. Something given up, something received in its place. The original glory was traded. Man took the image he was meant to bear and exchanged it for an image like corruptible man, like birds, like beasts, like creeping things.
Now look at the categories Paul lists. Man, birds, four-footed beasts, creeping things. Those are the exact categories of created life over which Adam was given dominion in Genesis 1. The hierarchy inverted. The would-be image-bearer began bearing the image of what he was meant to rule. This is the image of the beast at its root — the corrupted Adamic image that wears the form of the creature instead of the form of the Father.
Daniel chapters 2 and 3 show the same principle worked out in politics. Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a great image — the Aramaic word is tselem, the same word from Genesis — representing the kingdoms of men. Four kingdoms in succession, all built on human empire apart from Yahuah. The original image was Adam, ruling under the Father. The corrupted image is a metal statue, ruling apart from the Father.
Then in Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar sets up a golden tselem and commands every nation to bow. This is the prototype of every image-of-the-beast event in Scripture. A counterfeit image is set up. Worship is demanded. Those who refuse face the furnace. Daniel’s three friends refuse — and the same Yahuah who delivered them in the fire is the One who delivers His faithful remnant in every age. The pattern repeats wherever the beast system rises.
Revelation gathers every thread. The beast and the false prophet set up an image of the beast and demand worship (Revelation 13:14–15). Those who worship the image receive the mark of the beast on their hand or forehead (Revelation 13:16). And those who refuse — the faithful — have something different on their foreheads.
And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads.
— Revelation 14:1
Two images. Two marks. Two destinations.
This is the working out of the principle Moses first showed us in Genesis 5:3. Every human being bears one image or the other. The natural birth puts the fallen Adamic image on every person. The new birth puts the Father’s image — restored through the Son — back onto every believer. There is no third option. Every man is becoming a son of someone. Every man bears a likeness. The only question is whose.
6. Yahushua, the True Image-Bearer
The Father’s glory; the Son, His true image.
When the Second Adam came, He came bearing what the first Adam had lost.
Several New Testament verses call Yahushua the image of Yahuah. Trinitarians lean on these verses to argue that Yahushua is Yahuah Himself, or shares Yahuah’s essence as a second Person of a triune godhead. But these verses, read in light of the word-study we have just done, teach something very different. They teach that Yahushua is the Second Adam — the man who succeeded at the image-bearing role the first Adam failed. He is the perfect bearer of the Father’s image. He is not the Father.
We will walk through four of the most important passages. For each one, what trinitarians read goes alongside what the text actually says, so the difference is clear.
Colossians 1:15 — The Firstborn
Who is the image of the invisible Elohim, the firstborn of every creature.
— Colossians 1:15
The trinitarian reading. Yahushua is called the image of the invisible Elohim and the firstborn of every creature. This proves He has always existed — the eternal second Person of the godhead, of the same essence as the Father, who was there before all creation.
What the text actually says. Read three verses further. Paul defines his own word. He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18). Firstborn here means resurrection priority, not pre-existence. Yahushua is the first man of the new humanity, the prototype of the resurrected — the perfect image-bearer the first Adam was supposed to be.
And the verse itself confirms the distinction. The image of the invisible Elohim. Two beings, side by side in one phrase. The Father is the invisible one. The Son is the image. The image is not the invisible one. The image bears the invisible one. The Greek word for “image” is eikon — the same word the LXX uses for Adam in Genesis 1:27. If “image of God” makes Yahushua deity, it makes Adam deity too. There is no honest way to give the phrase one meaning in one place and a completely different meaning in another.
2 Corinthians 4:4 — The Face of Messiah
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Messiah, who is the image of Elohim, should shine unto them.
— 2 Corinthians 4:4
The trinitarian reading. Yahushua is the image of Yahuah — His face is Yahuah’s glory made visible (v.6). To see Yahushua is to see Yahuah Himself, because He is Yahuah in human form.
What the text actually says. Paul is contrasting two image-systems. The god of this age blinds men so they cannot see the Father’s glory shining through the Second Adam. To look at the face of Yahushua (v.6) is to see the perfect image of the invisible Father — not the Father Himself, but the man who finally bears the Father’s image without corruption. The next verse — For Elohim, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of Elohim in the face of Yahushua Messiah (2 Corinthians 4:6) — places the kavod on one side and the face of Yahushua on the other. The face is the bearer. The kavod is what is being borne.
Hebrews 1:3 — The Engraved Impression
Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
— Hebrews 1:3
The trinitarian reading. Yahushua is the express image of the Father’s person — the exact representation of His being. This proves He is co-equal, co-eternal, of the same divine essence as the Father.
What the text actually says. Look at the Greek word — charaktēr. That is the impression a signet ring leaves in wax. The wax bears the exact form of the ring, every line and every detail. But the wax is not the ring. The impression cannot be the engraver. And the verse confirms this in its own words — Yahushua sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. The engraver and the impression are not the same Person. They sit beside each other. The image is at the right hand of the One it bears. Two distinct figures, in two distinct positions, after the work of redemption is complete.
Philippians 2:6–7 — The Form of Elohim
Who, being in the form of Elohim, thought it not robbery to be equal with Elohim: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.
— Philippians 2:6–7
The trinitarian reading. Yahushua existed in the form of Yahuah before His incarnation. He gave up His divinity to become a man. This proves the pre-existence of the Son as a second Person of the godhead who temporarily emptied Himself.
What the text actually says. The Greek word for “form” is morphē. It means outward form, not divine essence. Mark 16:12 settles this — the risen Yahushua appeared in another morphē. His nature had not changed. His appearance had. Then look at the next clause. He thought it not robbery — harpagmos in Greek, the word for grasping — to be equal with Yahuah. This is the direct opposite of the first Adam, who DID grasp at equality (Genesis 3:5 — ye shall be as Elohim). The Second Adam refused to grasp. And the Father exalted Him for it (v.9 — Wherefore Elohim also hath highly exalted him). You cannot exalt someone already at the highest possible position. The very fact that the Father exalted the Son after His obedience proves the Son was not already in the Father’s position.
Hold these four passages together and the picture is plain. The first Adam grasped at equality with Yahuah and lost the image he had. The Second Adam refused to grasp at equality with Yahuah and was exalted by Him. He is the perfect image-bearer the first Adam was supposed to be. He bears the Father’s whole likeness — outward and inward, form and nature, glory and obedience. And He does it as a man, distinct from the Father, sent by the Father, exalted by the Father.
The Father is the invisible original. The Son is the visible image. Two figures. One bearing-relationship. The vocabulary preserves what trinitarian theology has tried for sixteen centuries to dissolve.
7. Believers, Lesser Image-Bearers
One image; many lesser bearers.
The image does not stop at the Son. The same bearer-pattern that runs from the Father to the Son runs from the Son to those who believe on Him.
Yahushua came as the sinless Second Adam to restore the image of Yahuah onto every man who trusts Him. The sonship that broke at Genesis 5:3 is re-established through His work. But here is what most Christians miss. The restoration is not a slow self-improvement project. It is not a gradual climb toward holiness that gets you the image at the end. It happens at the new birth. All at once. The moment a man believes.
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of Elohim, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of Elohim.
— John 1:12–13
Read those words slowly. The believer receives power to become a son of Yahuah. Not by a physical birth. Not of blood. Not of the flesh. Not of the will of man. By a different kind of birth — born of Yahuah Himself. The natural birth makes a man a son of Adam. The new birth makes him a son of Yahuah. Sonship restored. Image restored. It is the same restoration.
Therefore if any man be in Messiah, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
— 2 Corinthians 5:17
Paul does not say the believer is gradually becoming a new creation. He says he is. Present tense. Done. The moment a man is born again, the old Adam dies with the Messiah and a new man is raised with Him. The fallen image goes in the grave. The restored image is put on. This is what Paul means when he says, I am crucified with Messiah: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Messiah liveth in me (Galatians 2:20). Two images, one exchange — traded in the moment of trust.
And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.
— Colossians 3:10
Notice the wording. The image of him that created him. That is a direct echo of Genesis 1:26. The new man is renewed after the same image Adam wore in the garden. Not a partial image. Not pieces of an image. The full image, restored at the new birth.
If the image is fully restored at the new birth, what do the verses about being changed from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18) and being conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29) mean? They are not the slow assembly of an image. They are the walking-out of an image already given. The believer learns to think, speak, act, and trust in line with the new image he has already received.
Think of a son adopted by a king. The moment of adoption is decisive — he IS the king’s son, fully and immediately. But learning to walk like a prince, speak like a prince, live in the palace as he ought — that takes a lifetime. The status is instant. The lived expression takes time. The image is the same. Restored fully at the new birth. Worked out from glory to glory.
There is one more piece. The image was lost in two ways at the fall — the spiritual (broken communion, sinful nature) and the bodily (mortality, decay, death). The new birth restores the spiritual image now. The bodily completion comes at the resurrection.
And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
— 1 Corinthians 15:49
Paul speaks in two tenses. We HAVE borne the earthy image — past, completed. The fallen Adamic image of mortality and corruption. We SHALL bear the heavenly image — future, promised. The resurrection body of the Second Adam. This is what Revelation 20 calls the first resurrection. Your spirit has already been raised with the Messiah at the new birth. Your body waits for His return.
Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power.
— Revelation 20:6
The believer has already shared in the Messiah’s death and resurrection at the new birth. He has already passed from death to life. So the second death — the final judgment — has no claim on him. The bodily completion at the first resurrection makes visible what is already true. The image was fully restored the moment he trusted. The body just has to catch up.
The chain is Father → Son → believers. The Father is the invisible original. The Son is the perfect image. The believer, born of Yahuah at the new birth, is being conformed in his walk to the image he has already been given — the image of the Son who bears the image of the Father. Three positions. One bearing-relationship. The same architecture that Day Four built in the heavens, that the menorah preached in the holy place, that John saw fulfilled in the New Jerusalem — runs through the gospel from the new birth to the resurrection.
8. What This Does to the Trinity
Not the source; only its image.
The trinitarian apologist reaches for “image of God” verses as proof that the Son is the Father, or at least the same essence as the Father. The bearer-pattern destroys the argument at the level of the vocabulary itself.
If “image of God” makes the bearer God, then Adam was God. Genesis 1:27 says it directly: In the image of Elohim created he him. The Hebrew is unmistakable. The same phrase, the same vocabulary, the same construction the New Testament uses of Yahushua. If “image of God” establishes deity for the Son, it establishes deity for Adam. No theologian believes that. The reductio collapses the argument before it leaves the page.
If “image of God” makes the bearer God, then every man is God. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of Elohim (1 Corinthians 11:7). Paul applies the exact same vocabulary to all men. If image-language is identity-language, then humanity is divine. It is not. The argument has no floor.
And if “image of God” makes the bearer God, then believers will become God at the resurrection. We shall also bear the image of the heavenly (1 Corinthians 15:49). If bearing the image of X makes the bearer X, then believers will become Yahushua. They will not. They will be conformed to His image, downstream of Him, displaying His character, but they will remain creatures bearing a likeness — not the original whose likeness they bear.
The bearer-pattern preserves what the trinitarian framework collapses. Three positions, three roles, all real, all distinct, all in a single architecture. The Father is the original — the invisible One whom no man hath seen. The Son is the image — the perfect bearer in human form. The believer is being conformed to the image — a lesser bearer, downstream, growing into the role Adam was originally made for. Three different beings. Three different positions. One Father. One mediating Son. Many sons being shaped into His likeness.
The lamp is not the flame. The Son is not the Father.
The trinity tries to make the image equal to the original. Scripture refuses. Scripture preserves the bearing-relationship at every level. The image is not the original. The bearing-language built into the words tselem, demuth, eikon, and charaktēr will not let you make them mean what trinitarian theology needs them to mean.
9. Two Images, One Choice
One image to bear; one to refuse.
Every human being alive today bears one of two images. There is no middle ground. The natural birth puts the fallen Adamic image on every person without their consent — the same image Seth inherited from Adam in Genesis 5:3, the same image Romans 1 says man exchanged the Father’s glory for, the same image Revelation calls the image of the beast. Until a new image is put on, the fallen image remains.
The new birth puts the image of Yahuah back on the believer through union with the Second Adam. Not in pieces. Not gradually. Immediately. The old man dies with the Messiah. The new man rises with Him. The believer is a new creation in that moment, and the image he bears is the same image Adam wore in the garden before the fall. What follows in his life is the working-out of an image already given. The final bodily completion comes at the first resurrection, when this mortal puts on immortality.
The end of history brings a counterfeit. The beast has an image (Revelation 13:14–15). The beast’s image is given life. The beast’s image is to be worshipped. And every man who refuses to bear the mark of that image will be killed. The image-bearing pattern that began in Genesis is the pattern the enemy is trying to corrupt at the end. Every man bears one image or another. There is no neutral position. Either you are being conformed to the image of the Son — a bearer of the Father’s kavod, light, character — or you are being conformed to the image of the beast, the counterfeit image, the bearing of a different father. Every man is becoming something. Every man is bearing someone.
The mark of the beast is not a microchip. It is not a barcode. It is the visible bearing of allegiance to a counterfeit god. The image of the beast is what mankind chooses to become when mankind chooses anything other than the Father. And the Father, who made Adam to bear His own image, has set the question in front of every soul: whose image will you bear?
Here is the heart of it. The image is the sonship. Adam was Yahuah’s son in the garden. Adam fell, and his son Seth inherited a fallen sonship — sonship of Adam, not sonship of the Father. The Second Adam came as the perfect Son to put right what the first Adam broke. And every man who trusts Him is born again as a son of Yahuah, bearing the image of the Father once more.
Stamped in Eden. Lost at the fall. Counterfeited by the beast. Restored through the Second Adam. Worn forever by every man who trusts Him. That is what “the image of God” means in the whole Bible. The Father is the invisible original. The Son is the visible bearer. The believer is the lesser bearer being conformed to the Son’s likeness. And once you see it, the whole gospel makes a kind of sense it never made before.
As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.
— Psalm 17:15