R.C. Sproul

Not only do we have to do with Jesus touching His deity, but the humanity of Christ shows us what the human race was supposed to be.

This has restored mankind.

This is the image of God in its fullest manifestation

in the life and in the person of Jesus.

So much so that even in his humanity, Jesus could be properly theologically correct to say, he who has seen me has seen the Father.

I don't mean to suggest that he's denying his humanity there or only speaking of his humanity there, but I'm saying that if Jesus' humanity is a perfect humanity and he is in the image of God in his fullest sense, then to look at that

is to behold the glory of the Creator, because that's what an image does.

It reflects.

It mirrors.

It shows a likeness, a similitude of the original.

Now I said in our last session that there is this theological dispute over whether or not the words image and likeness refer to one thing or two different things.

And I said that historic Roman Catholicism is located in two aspects, and Protestantism tends to disagree, but Protestantism is still left with this difficult question.

As I mentioned earlier, are we still in the image of God, and if so, to what degree?

And I went to Genesis 9 and showed that even fallen man in the days of Noah, as corrupt as the human race had become by then, is still considered creatures bearing the image of God.

So, historic Protestantism has made a distinction, we always make distinctions in theology, between the image of God in the narrow sense and the image of God in the wider sense.

Some make this a distinction between the image in the formal sense and the image in the material sense, but those are words meaning basically the same thing.

To be the image of God in the wider sense simply means that after we have fallen, after sin has had its influence upon us, that we still retain our humanness.

Your mind has been affected by sin.

Your body has been affected by sin.

We age.