The Image of Christ through Biblical Theology, with Joshua Sherman (Image Series, Part 2) - Episode 012

**Carey Griffel:** Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we get to raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel and I get the awesome privilege of welcoming Joshua Sherman on today in order to talk more about what we might call imaging in the Bible, and specifically we're going to get into this in relation to Christ.

Last week I introduced the topic of the image of God from Genesis one, and I diverged away from biblical theology into systematic theology talking about what we might see the image of God as being. There are a number of ways people have looked at this through the centuries from us  representing physical characteristics in some way to ideas surrounding the image as separating us from animals to the image being a particular quality or set of attributes that humanity has, which we share with God.

And I ended with talking about the images being related to status, function and representation. Kind of wrapping all those up in one as I don't personally see how the, how we can separate them. And I didn't really go into this, but wrapping those up together I think also wraps up some of the other suggestions of what the image of God is. For instance, we can't function without cognition. We can't represent without morality and so on. But let's get started and introduce Joshua. All right. So welcome Joshua, and I appreciate you coming on. Would you like to introduce yourself? I've never had a guest on my show, so you're just super lucky to be my first one.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yes. Well, and, and I'm doubly lucky because you're talking about one of my favorite topics, which of course is why we were talking about this stuff. So, my name is Joshua
Sherman and I host the attending our next podcast. Haven't put out new content in a little while here, but I do have some stuff that I've been developing, so I'll be looking to do that pretty soon.

And that is part of the Raven Creek Social Club, which is part of what Carey is part of. So we're kind of, uh, brother sister stations, if you will, on this podcast network, and also both, you know, deeply involved in the Divine Council Worldview Facebook group that's centered around the works of Dr. Michael Heiser and talking about things there. And then, like I said, image of God is one of my,
one of my all-time favorite topics. And I think we've been chasing a parallel trail on this for a while. So it's really fun to come together and have those little explosions of discovery that are like, oh, I, that connects to this and this connects to this and this connects to this.

And that's where conversations like this, I feel like are sometimes even more fun than just doing everything yourself, which we're both kind of used to because then it's just like, oh, like
the, the chemistry comes together of, of all the different things that we've seen. And I [00:03:00] know you've read many books I have not. So there are lots of thoughts in each of our heads to kind of throw together and see what

**Carey Griffel:** happens. Right. And what's exciting is just to see how parallel our paths have been in this topic. That's, that's amazing to me because I'll come up with these ideas and I'll think, I don't know if I am on a trajectory here where I should be. And then you'll come along and say something and I'll be like, yes, I had a thought that was okay.  It was awesome.

**Joshua Sherman:** It, I mean, it's definitely like, there are things in life that are crazy-making and there are things that kind of make you go, oh, good. uh, yeah.

**Carey Griffel:** And I'm not totally nuts. All right.

**Joshua Sherman:**  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I definitely have those moments, you know, with you and a number of other people that is just like very grounding for me to feel like I'm not just off on the weeds. (Right) because (Exactly.) Yeah. And it, (Right) some of this stuff really helps too because what we're, what we're largely doing is connecting into [00:04:00] biblical theology that that really spans all of scripture and ties all these things together in really big ways.  That can also be very grounding because it gives the structure to where you can go, okay, does this fit this big arc that I see? Okay. Then it's probably a pretty good bet, right?

**Carey Griffel:** right? (You know?)  Exactly. Yes. And so in my last episode, I went into that
systematic theology question of what is the image of God?  Because that's kind of where we often start with. And so today we're going to be getting into the biblical theology side of things and trying to start tracing the pattern of the image through the Bible to see where it hits and the points that we can see of those connections from the Old Testament all the way through the New Testament.  So I've started in Genesis one as far as all of humanity being created in the image of God. And so today we're going to get, we're gonna jump really far ahead of ourselves in biblical [00:05:00] theology so that we can get ourselves kind of grounded in:  here's what we have to start with, here's where we are kind of trying to get to.  And then we're going to be following the path in between. So today we want to kind of define, or I don't even wanna say define, but look into what the image of Christ is and how we can look at that in the New, in the New Testament.

**Joshua Sherman:** And I, I love that approach because it, it does, it brings so much structure to the ideas and then things, you know, again, you can kind of fit them in and say, this fits, you know, I
think about the image of God in Eden, right?  Right. And it's like, oh, well if, if what we see in Revelation is like, new, matured, global Eden…there's probably connections here, you know, and if there are connections there, then what do we see in between? And so many of the patterns that I feel like we see in between, you know, the Sunday school answer is the correct one, right?  It all pivots around Jesus.

**Carey Griffel:** [00:06:00] Yes, it absolutely does. And so that's why we're going to be jumping forward so that we can move back and see it through that correct lens as Christians.  So just jumping right into, uh, Christ as the image, we have a lot of passages in the New Testament, which says that Christ is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, says Col 1:15.

The question here is, if he is the image of God, then how do we image God?  And that's going to be a very deep rabbit trail that we're going to be getting into. So we're not gonna finish that conversation by any means today, but we're gonna jump in and see where we can head.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yeah.  So another one of those passages that talks about this, that we see in, uh, 2 Corinthians 4:4, talking about seeing the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, right? So that's, that's another, I think, pivotal thing. And as we get more into this [00:07:00] conversation, we're gonna start seeing these, the, this pairing or this rhyming of image and glory and, and these kinds of things are, are tied together very tightly. And we'll see that in both the Old and the New Testament to where, you know, it becomes pretty obvious. Like, this isn't just like a one-off thing or, you know, this only applies in this part of the Bible or anything else. It's, it's, it's, again, one of those through lines that helps us to kind of see more clearly. So very excited to kind of get into some of that language tonight, and I know you have some things that you, you brought to the table as well.

**Carey Griffel:** Yes. So, Joshua, how would you describe the, how we see the image of Christ? As far as the ways that the text talks about it, metaphors, terminology, things like that.

**Joshua Sherman:** This term of glory is one that definitely connects in. So we get into Romans 8, which I know is one of the ones that you'd noted as well. When we talk about, and, and of course this passage, people get [00:08:00] distracted with this one cuz everyone wants to argue over soteriology. So the Calvinists get excited and everyone else gets excited and, and then people get distracted. Yeah. (It's Romans, all right.) Right, but you know okay, in, in Romans 8, right? We have, and we know when that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose, for those whom God for knew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. That language then immediately starts to pull us into the picture as well. Right. In some ways. Right. and we'll, we'll save some of that for later, too, cause there's, that's a huge, huge thing. But this idea that, that being conformed to the, the image of Christ somehow, brings us back more into being properly oriented or properly acting in, or properly displaying what it means to be the image of God, to be reflecting God's glory, to [00:09:00] be representing him, to be declaring his rule and reign over creation, to be operating as priests. All of these are connected into this as well. And so you can see like each of those is a another  center of a spiderweb that could go out into many, many places in Scripture, too.

**Carey Griffel:** Yeah. And this is why I get really confused why people think that the image of God is a boring topic, or that there's just not much there to talk about. Like the threads that it has through Scripture is just incredible to me. And, and what the, like, there's so many confusing parts, too, like….how are we being conformed to the image of Christ when we already are the image of God?  Those two things, those are two things that I have wrestled with a lot because in a lot of ways it seems like what it's saying is that suddenly there's a new thing on the board for us that [00:10:00] has never existed before.  And I'm not sure that that's exactly the right way to look at it. The more that I study, the more it seems like that's an entirely wrong trajectory to be going down.

**Joshua Sherman:**  Well, and that has some really interesting implications depending on how you read Scripture, too, right?  So if you read this more in, in, in kind of an Arian context where Jesus is a creation and he's not God, then that brings a whole different kind of, it's, it's like it skews something. And this is a place where I think the image of God and understanding the connectivity all the way through Scripture can really help us to see that through-line and to not walk off the wrong side of that, that narrow path.  Because we can say, you know, if it's not a different thing, actually it's like the fullness or the perfection of what the image of God was meant for in the first place. Right.

**Carey Griffel:** Right. Yes, exactly. Because it's this whole trajectory of, well, [00:11:00] did we lose the image in the fall? And I said in my last episode, we didn't, and I didn't really get into that too much. But we could look at that for a moment in Genesis. So we have the image of God in Genesis one. Then we have the creation of Adam. Then we have Adam creating his own children. Genesis 5:1-3 says, “This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God, male and female. He created them and he blessed them and named them man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.” Okay, so we have this whole thing where, where, it's  interesting, we still have the male and female image imagery that's connected with the image of God.  And here people think, oh, well Seth is in *Adam's* likeness, not in God's likeness. Right? So suddenly there's this disconnect, but that can't be if for a lot of [00:12:00] reasons.  Once you get to Genesis 9, after the flood, there is the warning that “whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image.” So, right, it's not qualifying anybody there. Like if you murder somebody, you are murdering an image, an image of God, but what does connect with Genesis 5 and what we need to look at more closely is the idea of the lineage and the kinship that Seth has with Adam. And I think that's one of the keys that we've often talked about.

**Joshua Sherman:**  Yes, yeah. And that's something that Catherine McDowell brings out in in her book, quite a bit. The image of God in the Garden of Eden. And I think it's a really important aspect to this, that that gets missed in a lot of the conversations that are had, especially if people are so focused on the image of God is the soul or self-consciousness or conscience or, or whatever, you know, some attribute of humanity that we have that we somehow is different than the animals. And we have to make sure we, we have that really [00:13:00] careful because really what we're focused on is evolution, and we just have to focus on that. And, and not fully being, like those kinds of things can be a distraction from understanding really what the, the true connections and disconnections are here.

**Carey Griffel:** Right. Because, I mean, once you, once you trace the whole theme through scripture, you get to Christ, Christ isn't the image of God because he's not a horse or he's not a crocodile. Like there's nothing about him relating to an, an upper echelon of creation in any way because he actually is God. So in some sense, we have to be looking at this in that holistic way of who is God?  Who is Christ, and who are we? And those are essential questions for everybody to be wrestling with.

**Joshua Sherman:** Well, and we'll get into it a bit later on too. But, you know, there's very much connectivity between the concept of embodiment and the concept of imaging, too. Not necessarily [00:14:00] in saying that, you know, God has a body that looks like this, so we have a body that looks like this, but the sense of, of being an image of God, there is a sense of embodying there, of making visible on earth in a physical way, something about God.

**Carey Griffel:**  I didn't really make any mention of this in my last episode, but I did put down the idea of us as physical representations of God as copies of God in a physical sense.  But that doesn't mean that our physical natures has nothing to do with being God's image. In fact, I think it's very relevant to the conversation, but there's different ways and more nuanced ways you can think about it other than, well, God must have had a body so that we can have bodies. I mean, there, there can be different ways to think about that.

**Joshua Sherman:** So this is a rabbit trail, but you get into to things like *Reversing Herman*, Michael Heiser's book, the thesis that he runs with behind, that's Amy Richter's, *Enoch on the Gospel of* [00:15:00] *Matthew*.  There are are things that very clearly start to, the more you look at it, the more you kind of see this, this delineation between, you know, this is what people do and this is how people reproduce, and this is how the gods of the nations were understood by the people that wrote things about,  you know, whatever they believed about the gods of the nations. This is how they reproduce and how they create, and then what Scripture says about God. And there's very much a difference there, right? We procreate and the gods of the nations are understood by people, were understood by people to do the same thing. They either did it with each other or they did it with humans or whatever. Like, that's how the ancient world kind of understood that is like, if you're gonna create life, then that's how you do it, right?  Where in Scripture it's like very clearly like, no, no, no, like, God creates, and he breathes life, and there's none of that stuff going on. You have, you know, Abraham and Sarah, you have Zechariah and Elizabeth, you have Mary and the Holy Spirit, like all of [00:16:00] these things are happening where God is the one who brings life out of barrenness, out of death. And he can do that, you know, without needing to resort to essentially the natural way to do things, because he's beyond all of that, right?

**Carey Griffel:** That's a perfect point. So and, and this connects to Adam and Seth being the image as well, because God could create Adam the way he created Adam, but Adam had to then populate the world through the human natural means. So there's a very big distinction there, but through the actual human means of creation, God is still perpetuating the world to his glory, to his actual purposes through using that mechanism after the supernatural invent, or yeah, supernatural intervention, I guess is, yeah.

**Joshua Sherman:** And I think [00:17:00] a really interesting thing to do, if you wanna start thinking about Jesus, and you're asking questions about, you know, especially if you're wondering about what people usually consider to be the core of Christology, of Christian theology about Jesus, and saying, well, you know, was he, was he really, you know, God, was he really human? Was he, how did that work and all of that? Some parts of that are definitely a mystery to us. We don't really understand how it works to be fully God and fully human together, right. That's a mindblower. We don't experience that directly. So it's, it's like us trying to pretend like we're a fish and then we take our brain with us and we're like, oh, this is what I would be like, no, it's not, it's not what it's like to be a fish. It's not what it's like to be a bat. Right. I'll do a little head nod to the Lord of Spirits audience there too, cuz they've talked about that. But yeah, I mean, like, we just, we just don't know. But if you wanna start to follow some of this stuff through, even just looking at John 1, you have this, you know, huge, you know, kind of passage about who Jesus is being the Word of God [00:18:00] being the Word become flesh. And as part of that, you get to the like verse 18 in this introduction and you have, no one has seen God, but the, the one and only son, the *monogenesis*, right?  Who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father has made him known. Right.  And so there's a sense of the image of God being about revealing God in a visible way, which is something that, you know, especially, you know, Michael Heiser and others have really talked about, and you see it in the church fathers too. I mean, they're, they're all over the, the map in, in terms of, you know, here's Jesus in the Old Testament, there's Jesus in the Old Testament. There's, you know, and we don't wanna rush into that too far, but I feel like once we start to have this structure and we've gone through the end to end, and people can see the through-lines and everything, then what the church fathers were doing there makes sense because all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's all connected.  And that means this is this and this.  Like, you're not making equations, but you're, you're connecting these [00:19:00] dots of, of these resonances of meaning and, and things that connect in. And, and so with John 1, it's like, here is Jesus being, you know, the eternal logos of God. in the flesh, right? And then you get down to Luke 3 and you start reading through the genealogy and it's like he gets baptized and you know, the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descends on him in bodily form like a dove. And the voice from heaven says, you are my son, whom I love with whom I'm well pleased. And then now Jesus himself was about 30 years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Eli, and it goes through the whole genealogy. And then you get down to the, the part where we were talking about earlier, right? The son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God, right? So if you want to talk about what it means to be made in the image of God, and you look at Adam and you're like, well, Adam was made in the image of God. I wonder what that means. Here's one of the things it means! [00:20:00]

**Carey Griffel:**  Right!  Yes. So I, I went through all of the systematic theology concepts and in my last episode, and I kind of cheated towards the end and brought them all together into these
ideas that I have found that you need this kind of tracing through Scripture in order to discover what the image of God is. Because if you're just using Genesis, if you're just using these little spotty places, you're not getting a whole picture. You're not understanding how it all works together. And so that, that's why tracing these themes, tracing these elements are important. But the hard thing, is finding out how to do that because nobody really teaches you that from the pulpit, from your Sunday school. How to trace these themes, how to look at them and how to see how they interconnect and play off of one another, as well.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yeah, I think that's one of the things that, that the Bible Project has really kind of taught now, now a couple of [00:21:00] generations of people that have come up at different parts of their life engaging with what they're doing and going, oh, There's nothing particularly wrong with exegetical preaching through a passage, but there's only so much that can do, and it misses a lot of things like this, that if you don't, then, take the time to go through, you can kind of, you can miss a ton of stuff and you can assume that you know the context to the passage that you're exegetically preaching through because you are tradition or your systematic theology has told you that, and you may not necessarily see all of the ways that, that the, that interconnects with other parts of Scripture that would actually help you to see it more in living color, more in three dimensions, you know, pick your metaphor for “this is much deeper than you thought.”

**Carey Griffel:** It's just, it's this building the concepts that you need to have in your head. Because we don't just think about words, we don't just think in definitions, we think in terms of concepts, and so if you're going to look at a concept, [00:22:00] you have to build a whole complete picture.  It's like a jigsaw puzzle basically, but it's like a 3D layered jigsaw puzzle, because you'll find the term that kind of fits here, and then you'll find other things that will build off of that term. So did you wanna go into some of like the, the Greek terminology of image that we can kind of look at?

**Joshua Sherman:** And you know, it’s very simple.  You know, thinking that, recognizing that we think in concepts that's kind of how we approach this. I think what that can help to do is to pull back a little bit from this idea that what we can do is bring a dictionary or lexicon with us and instantly know what a word means. Like that's just not true, right? All of those things are doing is collecting examples of the way that a word is used so that you can look at the ways that a word is used in that point in time, in that society, and go, I think when I heard it in this context, this is the [00:23:00] most applicable one.  You notice that context is immediately having to inform that before you can actually pick which one. Right, you know, like, it's obvious enough to us, but it, it's so, it is very weird to see the way that a lot of people end up trying to study the Bible, where it's like, Jesus talked about sheep here and he talked about sheep and the goats here, and he talked about sheep over here and I'm just gonna pull all these together and everything, every single place he talks about sheep, it, it's connected and it means the same thing. It's like, hold on, you know, we do love dot connecting, but we do, we also have to think of it in terms of the context that it's in and not just pull everything together and think it's all the same. Right. With this really, I just wanted to underscore the point that, that what we're not doing right now is saying, “In my Bible in English, it says, Adam and Eve were made in the image of God. And in my Bible in English, it says, Jesus is the image of God. Therefore, I know that these mean exactly the same thing because in English, right?” [00:24:00] In this case, it's true. Right? But I want to go to just that layer deeper and say, okay, if we look at the way that that the Jewish scribes translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek, about two or 300 years before Christ, they used the term “icon” and, and we would spell it like E I K O N if we're, we're transliterating it, right?  They used that word for “image” in Genesis 1 26 and 27, and it's the same word that we see used in the New Testament, that when it talks about Jesus being the image of the Father, the express image of the Father, the image of God, right? So we're not just building something on our definitions, our favorite translated Bible. We're building it on connections that are actually there in the text that people that understood this more than we do had in front of them and said, you know, yes. When, when the New Testament is talking about this, part of the reason they're using that [00:25:00] language is because it connects back into these concepts and the Old Testament.

**Carey Griffel:** And then by doing that we can understand a little bit more of their thought processes. And they already have built up a whole lot of information that is connected to that word
image, but we're not in their world. So we need to now build up that concept’s framework in our minds in a way that at least as close as we can get that's close to what they have; we're never going to like spot on get it because we're so far away from them culturally with language.  We can start building this framework that we have in our heads to have the same concepts in mind. So when, once we have kind of that kind of a direct connection, which we can say is between Genesis and the New Testament, then we can look into the New Testament and see where it uses other words to connect with the image.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yes, and not just other [00:26:00] words but as we continue to, to kind of dig into this in weeks to come, however you want to do that, there are, there are so many layers to this, and it goes so deep that if you're sitting here wondering, okay, is this really a connection? Like, we're gonna go four or five layers deeper into why this is a connection, and it's just one of those things that it's like the surface layer is there and it, and it's, it's relatively obvious. But then if you're really looking at saying, you know, how can I know for sure? Why are you just making this up? Any of those kinds of questions, you can start to step a layer deeper and a layer deeper and a layer deeper and go, oh my, like, not only is this all connected in that way, but there are actually ways that the connectivity that I now see illuminates a lot of parts of Scripture that I would not have understood with as much clarity and depth as I do now, because I can see this whole picture and it's really cool and really amazing and it, it's, I know it's, it's part of [00:27:00] why I'm so passionate about biblical theology because right, once you start doing this and, and looking at it, it's just like, wow.

**Carey Griffel:** It's one thing to say you have this same word and you're doing a word study and you have this word here and that word there, and they kind of connect and they have the same meaning maybe. But once you layer it down into the different concepts it becomes an undeniable connection. You can no longer say that there's no connection because it's so richly done.  And that's the genius of the biblical authors.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yeah, like the three-fold cord, right? Like a tapestry where you can say, like, this thread, I'm not sure this red thread is the same one, you know, at the top and the bottom of this tapestry. But when you look at the whole tapestry, you know, you can say like, wow, you know, and and one of the things that's kind of fun with that, that illustration is you think about looking at the back of it and it looks nothing like whatever the front looks like.  So you can look at all the technical  details and you can dig into all the, all the, everything behind the scenes. If you don't have the larger framework for, for what's going on there, [00:28:00] it's very easy to then take those details and proof text with them or get confused with them or turned around.  When you have that whole tapestry, it makes it much easier to say like, oh, look at that thread. I can follow it all the way through. Like it's, yeah. So I keep using metaphors. I should probably get to what you want to talk about.

**Carey Griffel:** But the metaphors, I mean, they help me to understand and kind of wrap my head around all. Yes. And I think that's probably why the Bible uses so many metaphors itself. I was listening to another podcast today and they were like, oh, why can't, why can't it just come out and say what it wants to say? It's really because we don't really think like that. We think we do. Like once we have thought out a concept, we'll get to that point.  But metaphors really, they insert themselves into our brains far earlier in our thought than we think. And by under, by having a metaphor, it does the same thing as just saying it out loud, but it enables deeper connections [00:29:00].

**Joshua Sherman:** Yeah, you just reminded me of, uh, shoot, is it, um, looking at relevance theory, right? That we, we don't think literally first, we actually think in idiom, and then these other kind of concepts, metaphorically and imagistically first. And then we kind of narrow down to the like, oh,
that doesn't have a, an idiomatic meaning for me in my situation, oh, contextually that, well, that wouldn't make sense. And then we get down to the like, oh, you must mean that you're actually sitting on the fence. Right.  One of the terms that that connects into this is glory. Uh, we talked about Romans eight a little bit. Yes. And if you go into Romans 8, and we'll get there, there's definitely talk about glory that connects in with, with God and with humanity and, and all of this, but the first place I think that maybe it's good to start is in the Psalms. And one of the reasons for this is because there's so much connectivity that's explicitly [00:30:00] about humanity and that's explicitly about, you know, what God did when he created us, that is then explicitly used about Jesus later by the author of Hebrews, and you go, oh, like they're making connections. I should probably make those connections too. 

**Carey Griffel:** Yeah. And it's this concept of glory that I think is really essential to help us connect things. But it's not a concept that is native to what, how we think. I think.  Not in the same way that the ancient person would've thought of glory.

**Joshua Sherman:** One of the books that really helps pull that out quite a bit is Hayley Goranson Jacobs, Conform to the image of the Son, re reexamining Paul's glory or Paul's theology of, in
Romans, I think it's specifically in Romans off the top of my head. I'm hoping I remember the title. But yeah, she talks about that quite a bit and goes into a survey of the language around glory in, in the Septuagint specifically because you can tie the [00:31:00] Greek in that, to the Greek in the New Testament and kind of go across the whole corpus of Scripture and tie it together. And recognizing that there are a lot of ways in which, you know, yes there is this sense of glory as a invincible thing, but a lot of times when Scripture is talking about it, it's more about a sense of status or honor. I'm talking about an image of God than you're talking about displaying God's glory in a way by saying like, God rules here, right?

**Carey Griffel:** And this, this is one reason why I connect the ideas of status and function and representation together, because I think all of those go into the concept of how the ancient
person would have thought of glory.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yes.  Absolutely. Absolutely.  So Psalm 8, you have, you know, Lord, Lord, our Lord, Yahweh, our Lord, right? How majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory in the heavens, and it goes through this whole kind of thing of God creating, you know, the heavens and the [00:32:00] sun, and the moon and the stars. And then you get down to this, you know, what is mankind? What, what is humankind that you're mindful of them, human beings, that you care for them.  You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands. You put everything under their feet, all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sea, and fish in the sea. All that swim, that pass in the sea. Yahweh, ah, Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth? Right? So there's something about humanity that is meant to display the glory of God, and that's tied into glory and into crowns and into honor and into being part of how God orders the world. That's, that's what we're supposed to be doing.  Yeah. So, I mean, we were talking about Psalm 8 and the fact that that connects, you know, humanity in with glory language, right? And that's something that [00:33:00] we then see carried into Romans eight, right? So we're kind of going both ends here and working toward the middle. But if we talk about glory in Romans 8, we have Paul writing this.  He says, for those who are led by the spirit of God, are the children of God, right? And he keeps going and, and he says, the Spirit himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his  sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory.  Right? So, once again, connecting humanity and glory. But now Christ is also part of that equation. And so we have a little bit more of an explicit sense that being related to Christ in the proper way is part of what helps bring us into that sense of glory. And if we read through the whole, you know, the whole narrative of scripture, it's bringing us back into that sense of being co-heirs, of actually acting in that, that function that we were created [00:34:00] for in the first place, instead of being part of the problem, actually being part of how, you know, God is ordering and administrating creation with us, cooperating with him as his loyal servants.

**Carey Griffel:** Right. Do you think this connects in to the idea of being conformed to Christ's image as far as a transformation process?

**Joshua Sherman:** Absolutely. Yes. And, and it, it's a, there's a conforming and there's also a transforming. So we see both of those languages. in the New Testament. 

**Carey Griffel:**  Do you think there's a difference between the two?

**Joshua Sherman:** Oh, that's one I haven't thought about before. Well, it's crossed my mind, but I haven't gone down the rabbit trail. Um, that's a good question. ,

**Carey Griffel:** We like good questions cuz then we'll be able to talk about 'em later. 

**Joshua Sherman:** Right?  I mean, I, I think what I would probably say, given what we see in Scripture, is that, that by being transformed, we become conformed.  Does that make sense? (Okay.) There's [00:35:00] also this sense of glory where, boy, I'm really gonna jump around now, but we look at Moses right when he's up on the mountain with God, and he comes down and his face is shining, right? His, he's in, in a sense, has this kind of transformation moment in Exodus 34. And that's, uh, 29 through 35. And then we get into the New Testament, and we very much have this sense of connection around that in 2 Corinthians 3 when, like Paul is literally talking about Moses, right? And then he gets into the fact that, you know, you know, Moses had to veil his face when it came down from the mountain, so that, that it wasn't too bright for the people, right? And so they were, they were like, this is unpleasant. We need something. We need you to do something about this, right? And then {We don't like this.) Paul literally uses that. Yeah. Paul literally uses that and he says, okay, so, you know, people's minds were made, made dull, right? And, [00:36:00] and, and so this veil remains over them when they're, when the old covenant is read, they haven't, it has not yet been removed because only in Christ is that veil taken away. And he continues on with this same kind of language to the point where then he says, “we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory.” Oh, glory again, “are being transformed into his image.” Ooh, glory and image connected together with ever increasing glory. Oh, there's more like, which comes from the Lord, transformation, who is the Spirit, right . So it's a work of the Spirit. It's transforming and in that, transforming within our conformed to the image of the Son.

**Carey Griffel:** Yeah. It's a beautiful picture that if you're not following all these paths, you're just, it's such a sad thing to miss if you're reading Scripture and you don't see this kind of thing. Because it, it relates so much to who we are as Christians, and it relates so much to our, just the way we can differently live our lives on this [00:37:00] side of the cross. I mean, Moses came down from the mountain. He, the people didn't have to complain, but they did . They didn't, they didn't want to be faced with that. It was something that they couldn't handle at the time somehow. And now because of Christ, we can, yeah. And, and not only just the way Moses was, but the way Christ is, which has got to be about a million gajillion times more than what Moses is. Right. So it's like that's just this amazing thing that if we're not seeing that we don't realize the monumental structure of it in our lives, I think, and what it can mean to how we live our lives.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yes.. Yeah. And it even connects into, you know, this sense of a prophet like Moses being expected, right? Oh, a prophet. You mean a prophet that came down from the  mountain of God who's, who's shining of the glory of God [00:38:00] was too bright for people and they didn't like it. , you know, Jesus came to his own and they did not receive him?  Hmm?

**Carey Griffel:** Oh, kind of like that. Yeah. Kind of like Moses, who went up to the mountain and, and interceded for the people and said, kill me instead of all of the people God. Right? Hmm. That Moses, maybe?

**Joshua Sherman:** Yeah. Which, and that one is a super interesting one when it comes to discussing atonement because Moses makes the offering and God doesn't take him up on it.  So then you kind of go, (God's like, no, never mind, you’re fine.) So did that, was atonement accomplished without that? Oh, do we, do we need to maybe reexamine some of our framework for how we understand some of these things and, and have more context and color to that maybe we do, right?

**Carey Griffel:** Just maybe ,

**Joshua Sherman:** So that, you know, Psalm 2 is, is one of those, one of those things that connects in, as well. And and that is kind of spoken in the voice of, of the king. And you can also, [00:39:00] you know, really look at it as in the voice of the Messiah, right? Talking about the kings of the earth  That are rising up, uh, against, against the Lord and against his anointed, His Messiah, right? *Mashiach* there. The one in enthroned in heaven laughs and the Lord scoffs at them.  And then, later on I will proclaim the Lord's decree. He said to me, you are my son today. I have become your father today. I've begotten you ask me and I will make the nation's your inheritance, the ends of the earth, your possess, right? Again, this sense of sonship, the sense of being an heir, the sense of dominion, the sense of glory, all of this being tied together, this is part of what it means when we start talking about the image of God because of all the connections here.

**Carey Griffel:**   Right.  And, and we read the Psalms, and it's so tempting to just think, oh, that's beautiful poetry. Well, it is absolutely beautiful poetry, but there's so much behind it and so much meaning [00:40:00] packed into that poetry, and that's what's beautiful about metaphor. Is that it has that ability to have those layers, that reading a science book is not going to get that kind of level. It's, you know…

**Joshua Sherman:** well, and, and Matthew Bates talks about this in his book, on the Birth of the  Trinity.  And some people look at that and they're like, that's weird. And it's like, no, it's talking about the, the people understanding the ideas, like the them are starting to  understand the Trinity more, and having more of a sense of that.  And he, he goes into what he calls prosopological exegesis, which is basically just looking at it and looking at those psalms, almost like a play, right? Where it's like, oh, now the Psalmist is speaking as if they are in this voice or this character. and then in this voice of this character.   And you can see that there, like, you know, God said to me, you know, today, I, you know, and you'll sometimes see things in the Psalms where the voice that's speaking really changes and (Oh, it changes all the time.) Yeah. And you have to pay attention or you lose it.

**Carey Griffel:** [00:41:00] Right?  Yeah. That's one of those things that I'm like, oh, you're
supposed to pray the Psalms, and then you read the Psalm and you're like, this isn't the same person talking.  How  am I supposed to use this for prayer ? 

**Joshua Sherman:** I wanna put it in the first person. How do I do that?

**Carey Griffel:** I do that? Yeah, right? . Exactly. Yeah. But by doing that, like you, so you really have to pay attention to those changes. And, and it's not like, it's not obvious who's talking where, because it is. There's you, and then there's you, and then there's you, like, but there, there's all the different kinds of you and they're used differently. Like God is going to be addressed in a way that David's not addressed. Mm-hmm. and so on. So it's not like it's that difficult, it's just we are not used to reading things like that. We're not used to reading it

**Joshua Sherman:** We’re not used to reading it with multiple layers.

**Carey Griffel: “**Hamlet said” and that kind of thing.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yeah. And, and we're not used to reading with multiple layers. We want this to be the meaning. You know, it's like, yeah.

**Carey Griffel:** And then we're, we're done. I'm, I understand that now. [00:42:00] Oh, oh.

**Joshua Sherman:** Ohh.  So another one of the (I wish) another one of the psalms that we have that  connects into this as Psalm 110. Right. And so this one you have, the Lord says to my Lord, right? And much hay is made of that later on in the New Testament, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a foot stool to your feet. The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion saying, “Rule in the midst of your enemies.” Right? That's kingly language, right? Okay. So maybe, something about the kingship is involved in what it means to be the image of God. And then we get a little bit further down in the psalm: The Lord is sworn for sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek, maybe priesthood is also connected into this. And then we get into Moses. And, in Exodus there's a couple of different places where, and I may be getting ahead of my notes here, but, there's a [00:43:00] few different places here God talks about Moses and, um, You, you have Moses basically saying like, oh, you wanna send me to Pharaoh? Isn't that nice?  I'm scared. And, and my excuse is also that I don't talk well. Right? So now you have someone that, and we'll tie some of this together a little bit more with the prophecy, the prophet aspect of it too. So this isn't just pulling it down a thin air, but, um, you have this, these ideas of prophet, priest, and king that are all kind of tied up somehow together in this idea of this ideal image of God.  And we look at Jesus and we're like, well, gee, that makes sense. Um, but Moses literally being like, I can't be a good prophet. I can't speak on your behalf, and God being like, *fine*, okay, Aaron's gonna do that. . Right. Um, I also, I'm not so sure about some of the priestly things. I'm gonna do some stuff that's gonna be a little bit maybe off and you're gonna be like, I think Aaron's the one to do that job, too. [00:44:00]  Right?  And, and I, I forget actually that that's, that's one of the threads I was gonna double check before, but I, I think that may even partly have to do with some of the aspects of, of Moses and, and the shedding of blood, like at Sinai and other things.  But I may be also blending in themes with David and the temple there in my head.  So, um, grain of salt with that, that line of thought.  But yeah, this idea, prophet, priest and king being connected, and you have Moses in Exodus, uh, and you look at like Exodus 4, Exodus 6, exodus 7, this progression of, you know, this is, this is going on and, and God being kind of like, dude, like can you just, can we go with the plan?  No, fine... And you get to the point where, where God, you know, literally is like, you know, you know, I, I'm going to make you like God to Pharaoh, right?  And you know, obviously we're not talking like, I'm going to make you the omnipotent all creator of the universe to Pharaoh. No. [00:45:00] But to be like God in that situation, in, in relational relationally to Pharaoh, it is, you know, **I am going to make it obvious that you are the image of God. You are the one who is speaking into this situation on my behalf. You are my representative.** You are the one who is declaring my, my reign over Egypt. You are going to do that with Pharaoh. and you'll kind, you'll do it with, with Aaron because you're not quite ready to do it on your own, but that's fine.

**Carey Griffel:** Yes. Yes. And we'll get there. It'll take a, it'll take a few days journey and a trip up the mountain, but eventually you'll get some of that anyway. But yeah. And, and it, yeah, I think that, um, the, the idea that Moses was actually supposed to be all three things and he just dropped the ball on most of them is an interesting idea.  It's one I haven't delved too much into myself, but, you know, the, but that's [00:46:00] what the Old Testament is all about. We have people just dropping the ball right and left, and they're just like, we can't do what you want us to do, God. And God's like, fine, we'll do it a different way. It's okay, I understand. Until we get all the way up to Christ and the ability to actually pull all of this together.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yeah. And I mean this again, layers and layers and layers and layers. Right.  So if, if we want to, um, I can, we can connect into Hebrews 1 and 2 , if that sounds good. So this is bringing us forward now and looking at how authors in the New Testament, people proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, understood these Old Testament passages to be about Jesus or to also be about Jesus. Right. Because you, or to, archetypally be about Jesus and also be about humanity.  Right. There's a few different ways you could arrange [00:47:00] that thinking and, and it's good to kind of have that a little bit flexible as we look at it, so we can understand wh which it really fits into. (Right.)  But Hebrews one is like all about, you know: No seriously *Jesus is it*. He is above all, he is greater than, you know, the angels. He's greater than Moses, he's greater than the Torah. He's greater like it's this, this litany of all these things that are amazing and all these, you know, people and prophets and, and everything else.  But then going like, but, really, seriously, pay attention because Jesus is it, you know? And in part of that you have this, in verse three of Hebrews one, well after, you know, the son being appointed the heir of all things. So of course we have heirship again. The son is the radiance of God's glory in the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful.  Okay. An exact [00:48:00] representation. That sounds like a pretty exact image to me, you know, right?

**Carey Griffel:** Right? Yes. And, and over and over we see the image of Christ being talked about in relation to creation, which I find fascinating because we have, you know, the original creation and then we have this new creation that we are supposed to be in Christ. So there's a very one-to-one correspondence there, and yet it's also different because if it wasn't different, Christ wouldn't have come. (Right.) So I, I think this, this is kind of one of those things that gets to be harder to wrap your mind around on how they connect and exactly what that means. (Yes.) Like, are they exactly the same?  Are they mostly the same? Is is what Christ did perfecting it or, you know, this, all of these different ways of thinking about it.  And probably multiple ways are [00:49:00] right, because that's usually the way it goes.

**Joshua Sherman:** Yeah.  And I think what we usually see, if you look at in, in some of the church fathers, they're gonna talk about image and likeness, and they're gonna play off of that quite a bit.  What I, what I see in, in discussion, Carmen Imes talks about this more in terms of glory and like the restoration of that, and taking that a little bit more, you know, more in the direction that, that Haley Gordons take. Jacob takes it, in the sense of the restoration of the dominion and, and the, co-rulership and, and, and the proper kind of servant leadership that we're supposed to have, in relation to God in relation to creation and, and that being part of the restoration of all things, which Paul talks about in, in Romans eight.  It's like, you know, creation is waiting around for this. They really want this to happen. They're waiting for us . Why are they waiting for us? Well, it's because of Psalm 8. It's because of why God's set up in the beginning in Genesis. It's because of all these things, and we definitely get a sense that while the image was not lost, [00:50:00] there's something that happened there where it's like, we still have this status, but we're not able to do it.  And we're not able to perform the functions that are connected to that status as well as we should.  And, we get caught up in that and we think, oh, now immediately my head goes to, what about, you know, people with, with some form of disability that can't do this physical thing, but in Scripture it's very much a different focus. It's more around the functions of actually representing God, of acting in a sense of as priests and ambassadors in the world, right?  So it's different. And, that gets into some of the stuff that we, we get into in Hebrews where it, it repurposes these things that we see in Psalm 8 that are about humanity and says, I'm gonna quote that and I'm gonna say this is about Christ. Right. And because it's about Christ, then that brings us back into that relationship with this. So we get [00:51:00] into Hebrews 2, and I can read a little bit of that, and it's, it's literally like, you know, it is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come about, which we are to speak. But there's a place where someone has testified, what is mankind that you are mindful of them. So
he quotes this, right? And then he says after this quote of Psalm 8, he says, in putting  everything under them, and you're like, okay, under them, so plural, we're talking about humanity. God left nothing that is not subject to them yet present. We do not see everything subject to them. So something broke. Right. What needs to happen to restore that?  But we do see Jesus who has made lower than the angels for a little while now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. And then he talks about the fact that that is involved in bringing many sons and daughters to glory.  Ooo, hey, glory language again. Right? It's all connected.

**Carey Griffel:** Yeah. And glory and the new [00:52:00] creation with the original creation. Yeah. I think most often you see this just, people just say, well, it's just a perfection of the image, and they're not wrong, I think, that's maybe the simplest way to come about it, but if, if you're just saying, we were created and then we are have the new creation, now let's just move on with our day-to-day lives. Like, it's like, no. Like this permeates everything that you do. (Yes.) Literally. So as, as far as everybody being the image in some way, like, think of any story that you have with anybody that maybe doesn't follow Christ, but who has blessed your life in such a major way. Like they are functioning as the image of God around them in spite of not knowing that this is exactly what they're doing, why they're doing it, how they're doing it. But once you're in Christ, you are able to [00:53:00] do that in a way that you couldn't before. (Yeah.) In a way that just is. Is beyond yourself. Like you literally could not do that before. (Yes.) And now you can. Uh, that's, that's like a huge concept in my mind.

**Joshua Sherman:** It absolutely is. And, and it, it, it, what this reminds me of is getting, getting into Dr. Carmen Iims book, bearing God's name. And you know, she has new book coming out on being God's image. So it's tying the two, two together. That'll be out in June, but you know, when you talk about bearing God's name…

**Carey Griffel:** Super excited about that.

**Joshua Sherman:** Serious. I'm trying, I'm trying not to be too loud for the recording, so I'm  containing myself, but yeah, I'm very excited about it. And what she does in, in talking about burying God's name is this idea of burying God's name like the priest does in Exodus 28, that he has the name of Yahweh, actually on a medallion, on his forehead. And, bearing the name of God and also bearing the 12 tribes in the ephod, in the gemstones that are on, [00:54:00] on the ephod. And then in doing that, there's a sense of that representation again. Right. So what are priests? They're representatives. You know, and what are we called? You know, what was Israel called? They were called a kingdom of priests. And what are we called by? By Peter. Oh. Like we're part of that too. Like all of that connects in. All of that is about this representation and, then the idea of bearing the name of God and and representing him, being his image is all connected. And that's even connected in with the glory language. Because if you look in, in Exodus uh, I wanna say it was in 28. Yeah. I think it's also in 28. Yeah 28:2. The high priests garments are, are quote, unquote four splendor and glory, and then repeats the same words. applying to the priestly garments for the people that are a priest, but not the high priest. So it's like, hello, hello. This is the, like, literally when you walk into, you know, the, the temple, like what it should be screaming at you is,
this is an image of God here. This priest that is living [00:55:00] and functioning and doing these things, a living image of the living God. Like, wow, . That's so cool!

**Carey Griffel:** Yeah. Yeah. And, and what a beautiful thing that we get to also participate in that. We get to be that to people around us, to anything around us, like as far as the creation and our purpose in it.  Like what, what better, what higher level could there be in what you're supposed to be doing in life. And, and this isn't about, oh, I'm supposed to be checking my boxes. I went to church this week and, and I am in a ministry. And I mean, those are great things and they are part of what you're doing, but it's like an everyday, boots-on-the-ground, this is how you live your life. This is how you're interacting with humanity. This is how you're interacting with, just, non-human creation itself, because that's part of what this is all about too, when you look at Genesis 1. So it's, [00:56:00] it's just, it's so wrapped up, it's so layered, it's so beautiful.

**Joshua Sherman:** And, this is how you're representing God to your kids and your coworkers, and your friends and your enemies and all of it. Right. I mean, it's, it's, it's very, very deeply woven in and, you know, you want to talk about the every day, I mean, Jesus called the religious leaders on the carpet when they tried to trap him, right?  We focus on, on what they tried to do and, and the clever answer that he gives, and we kind of forget the rest of it, but when, when they basically are just like, “So should we pay taxes to Caesar?  Ooo, we're gonna get him this time?” Right? Now they figure, you know, if he says we shouldn't pay taxes now Rome will arrest him, and if he says we should pay taxes, the people will be mad. Right? So now we've got him.  And Jesus is just like, okay, show me a, a denarius, right? Whose picture, whose inscription and picture, whose image and inscription are on this? Oh, it's Caesars. Okay, then give that to Caesar. Right? The by extension for anyone that was paying attention to the Hebrew scriptures, [00:57:00] which these people should have been , right? Right. That's like literally their whole focus in life. Right? And like the idea there, the parallel there, that's unspoken, but very, very loudly unspoken is:  **you bear the image and the inscription of God. Do, do likewise, do the thing you're supposed to do with that. Right. Render yourself to God.** And, and like that's what he's calling them too. And so when we talk about the everyday life that we're supposed to live, I feel like that's a very good thing to keep in mind to, to recognize like, yes. You know, we bear the image of of God as humans. And if we have chosen to take up the name, if we have chosen to be loyal to Yahweh. If we have chosen to place our faith in Christ, then we also bear the name, the inscription. Right? **That's what we're supposed to do then, is to render ourselves unto God.** We're supposed to literally be [00:58:00] living sacrifices. Yeah, I could go off on a whole thing about sacrifice, but , I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause there.

**Carey Griffel:** Right? But the idea of the coin being the image and having the name, like, it's, it's just like, hello . It's right there. And it's just, it's amazing. Um, but yeah, we've, we've had a good  discussion. We're probably needing to wrap it up now. Is there anything you wanted to add here at the end, before we end for, before our next conversation, whenever that is?

**Joshua Sherman:**  Yeah.  I think, I think what I'll do is I'll just continue on in Hebrews two and just quote a couple of verses here. So this is, oh, I guess that's three verses. So, looking from Hebrews two, verses 11 through 13, so Jesus is not ashamed to call them to call us brothers and sisters. He says, I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters in the assembly. I will sing your praises. And [00:59:00] again, he says, I will put my trust in him. And again, he says, here I am in the children, that God has given me.  This idea of being children, of God, of being made in the image of God, of kinship, of function, of mission, of you know, this, the roles that we're supposed to have as priests and ambassadors and representatives, and like all of this is tied so tightly together and this to me, as being, you know, someone like my podcast is focused on the gospel. This is something I get passionate about. It's like, how do we then think about how to preach the gospel to other people? Right. I think this is one of the ways to do it, to say like, you know, **you are valuable. You are important.  You are all, you know, the good things that people like to say when they're self-affirming, like, a lot of those things are true. And yet there's also a sense in which you are called to something that is bigger than yourself. You are called to this, [01:00:00] this purpose because of who God created you to be. And we're inviting you to live into that and to live into that through Christ because he is the one that makes it possible.** Right. That to me is like, is this like, how can you make a more compelling presentation of the gospel than something like that? And then all of the other stuff that goes along with it, it's like, oh, like if that's what I'm supposed to be doing, then these other things don't fit and I need to let them go.  And you can work through that process with people as they're learning and growing and maturing and trying to, to really truly image God in a, in a better way. So, yeah, I think that would be kinda my closing thoughts.

**Carey Griffel:** That’s awesome. Yes. I, and I love it and I hope that people can see how this kind of flows Aw. From what I was saying in my last episode where, if you're only looking at the image of God as some unique little, tiny piece of [01:01:00] humanity, well, what's even the point of that? You know, like, how does that fit into the work of the Messiah? How does that fit into Christ coming and how he intersects with humanity and the abilities we're suddenly able to have because we have Christ, because we have the Spirit indwelling in us?  So it, you know, everybody can have cognition. Everybody can be a moral person if they want, but it's that difference of having the Spirit in us that **changes us from just being moral because we have this list of our own reasons for being moral and suddenly being moral, because that's just who we now are.**

**Joshua Sherman:** Yes. And, and that's, that's the precise kind of relationship that we see with Scripture and, you know, calling out people that are following the law for the sake of these
are the rules versus people that are following the law. because it's part of expressing their loyalty to Yahweh.

**Carey Griffel:** Right? [01:02:00] Yes. It matters so much. Yes. Thank you so much, Joshua, for coming on.  I'm really excited to having more conversations. Yeah. And I hope everybody enjoyed it. Thanks again for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with people you know who might also enjoy it. And if you would leave me a rating where you listen to podcasts, that would be great, too. These things help out tremendously in helping others find this podcast who might also enjoy it. If you've got anything you'd like to share with me, you can find me on Facebook, or you can email me at genesismarksthespot@gmail.com. Looking forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.