In the beginning, God created human beings in His image. The apostle Paul states that Jesus "is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation" (Col 1:15). How is man an image of God? Is it a visual representation or something more?

1. Carefully observe the creation of man. What do you see?

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Gen 1:26-27, LSB)

Then Yahweh God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and so the man became a living being. (Gen 2:7, LSB)

2. What is an idol? If God created human beings in His image, what is God saying here?

You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. (Ex 20:3-4, LSB)

3. What else do you observe of this passage that tells you how man is created in the image of God?

Then Yahweh God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us to know good and evil; and now, lest he send forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever"⁠— therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. (Gen 3:22-24, LSB)