Should professing Christians tell people at abortion mills that they are all “image bearers” or created in the “image of God” (Imago Dei)?

Question: Should professing Christians tell people at abortion mills that they are all “image bearers” or created in the “image of God” (Imago Dei)?

Answer: No.

When I first began laboring outside abortion mills, I followed the footsteps of almost everyone else in warning those at death camps that they and their unborn were “image bearers” of God. But often the pro-lifers were speaking or pleading more about the “image bearer” than the One True God that created them.   

Yes, in the beginning, man was created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27), but because of the fall (Gen 3) man no longer reflects or mirrors the likeness of God. We have become depraved and wretched. Satan who was created by God fell along with one third of the Angels, aka fallen Angels. And now we live in a fallen world and are all the biproduct of the fallen nature of man, because of the original sin in the garden.

The image of God that mankind was created in has been utterly defaced, marred, decayed, impaired, lost, replaced, or blotted out. Therefore, mankind became enemies of God (Rom 5:10), sons of perdition (John 17:12), and children of His wrath (Eph 2:3). A parent desiring to murder their unborn is bearing the image of Satan, not God.

We must inform and warn those at abortion clinics that they bear the image of the first Adam and his original sin, including the unborn fetus. The only way they can have a good standing before the LORD is through the imputed righteousness of the Final Adam – Christ, by being born-again. By God’s sovereign grace, as Paul said, because of Christ in salvation (Eph 4:20-21) we (the elect) “put off the old man (Eph 4:22) and “put on the new man” (Eph. 4:24).

We accomplish this by preaching or sharing God’s Law and Gospel. Our Holy Lord’s Law and Gospel must be heralded or shared at these death camps. If Christians place more emphasis on the “image bearer” than the One mankind was first created in the image of, then he is worshiping the creation over the Creator. Our worship must predominately be of His preeminence.

The church must bring orthodoxy (right thinking, right doctrine or straight belief), and orthopraxy (right practice), the practice of such to every place we evangelize.

We must strive to obey the First of the Greatest Two Commandments before telling others to obey the Second, lest we commit idolatry. The Triunity of the Godhead, His Law, the Gospel, and His Scriptures must be the Vanguard of the pro-life movement. Lest ‘the cause’ becomes a social justice gospel, or the fetus becomes idolatry.

For some more thoughts on “image bearers” from much brighter minds, read the below.

Heinrich Bullinger said,

“This depravation of our nature is nothing else but the blotting out of God’s image in us. There was in our father Adam before his fall the very image and likeness of God; which image, as the apostle expoundeth it, was a conformity and participation of God’s wisdom, justice, holiness, truth, integrity, innocency, immortality, and eternal felicity. Therefore what else can the blotting or wiping out of this image be but original sin; that is, the hatred of God, the ignorance of God, foolishness, distrustfulness, desperation, self-love, unrighteousness, uncleanness, lying, hypocrisy, vanity … ? This corrupt image and likeness is by propagation derived into us all, [for] … ‘Adam begat a son in his own similitude and likeness’”

– The Decades of Heinrich Bullinger, Third Decade, p. 394.

Richard Sibbes said,

“Therefore, when you read of the image of God in the New Testament [this would include I Cor. 11:7 and James 3:9], it must be understood of the image of God in Jesus Christ, the second Adam. Now this image consists in knowledge, in holiness and righteousness. If we compare Col. iii. [verse 10] with Eph. iv. [verse 24], this was perfect in Christ, who was the image of his Father, and we must be like Christ the second Adam in sanctification … When God set his image on the first Adam, it was rased, and decayed and lost, by the malice of the devil … For every man by nature carries the nature of the devil on him, till the image of God be stamped on, and the image of Satan rased out”

– Works, vol. 4, pp. 260-261.

Thomas Vincent said,

“Q. 3. Wherein doth consist the image of God, which was put upon man in his first creation? A. 1. Negatively, the image of God doth not consist in any outward visible resemblance of his body to God, as if God had any bodily shape. 2. Positively, the image of God doth consist in the inward resemblance of his soul to God, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. ‘Renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him’ (Col. 3:10). ‘Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness’ (Eph. 4:24). Q. 4. What is included in this image of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, as man had it at first? A. The image of God in man at the first doth include the universal and perfect rectitude of the whole soul: knowledge in his understanding, righteousness in his will, holiness in his affections”

– The Shorter Catechism Explained from Scripture, p. 48.

George Smeaton said,

“The image of God, in which Adam was created, was replaced by the entire corruption of man’s nature (John 3:6). His understanding had been furnished with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator and of spiritual things; his heart and will had been upright; all his affections had been pure; and the whole man holy: but, revolting from God by the temptation of the devil, the opposite of all that image of God became his doleful heritage; and his posterity derive corruption from their progenitor, not by imitation, but by the propagation of a vicious nature, which is incapable of any saving good. It is prone to evil, and dead in sin. It is not denied that there still linger in man since the Fall some glimmerings of natural light, some knowledge of God and of the difference between good and evil, and some regard for virtue and good order in society. But it is all too evident that, without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, men are neither able nor willing to return to God, or to reform their natural corruption”

– The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, pp. 17-18.

Robert Dabney said,

“This image [of God] has been lost, in the fall, and regained, in redemption. Hence, it could not have consisted in anything absolutely essential to man’s essence, because the loss of such an attribute would have destroyed man’s nature. The likeness which was lost and restored must consist, then, in some accidens”

– Lectures in Systematic Theology, p. 293.

Homer C. Hoeksema said,

“It is perhaps even well not to speak of the image of God in the ‘[f]ormal’ and ‘material’ sense, though this distinction is much safer [than that of the image of God in the broader and narrower sense]. For after all, the ‘image of God in the formal sense’ is, strictly speaking, not the image of God in man, but his capacity to be an image bearer. And as such, he may bear either the image of God or the image of the devil. It is well, therefore, to limit ourselves to the language of our Canons and to include in the image of God only what this article [i.e. III/IV:1] included, namely, the excellent spiritual, ethical gift which man forfeited through his rebellion and fall”

– The Voice of Our Fathers: An Exposition of the Canons of Dordrecht, pp. 433-434.

For a more comprehensive and technical article, read “The Image of God in Man: A Reformed Reassessment” by Angus Stewart of the Protestant Reformed Church (PRC).

https://www.cprf.co.uk/articles/imageofgod.htm

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