Besides the many references to graven and molten images connected with idolatry, which the law strictly forbade the Israelites to make, the word is used in several important connections: for instance, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion....so God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him” (Gen. 1:26-27; Gen. 5:1; Gen. 9:6). The word translated “image” is tselem, which is the same that is used for idolatrous images, and for the great image in Daniel: (Dan. 2).
It might naturally have been thought that man at his fall would have ceased to be in the image and likeness of God, but it is not so represented in scripture. On speaking of man as the head of the woman, it says he ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as “he is the image and glory of God” (1 Cor. 11:7). Again, in James 3:9, we find “made after the similitude (or likeness, ὁμοίωσις) of God.” In what respects man is the image and likeness of God may not be fully grasped, but it is at least obvious that an image is a representation. The Lord when shown a penny asked “whose image” is this? They said, Caesar’s. It may not have been well executed, and so not have been a likeness. It may also have been very much battered, as money often is, yet that would not have interfered with its being the image of Caesar: it represented him, and no one else. So man as the head of created beings in connection with the earth represents God: to him was given dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth and in the sea and in the air. This was of course in subjection to God, and so man was in His image.
This is seen in perfection in the second Man, who has in resurrection superseded Adam, who was in this sense a figure or type of Christ (Rom. 5:14). Man may be a battered and soiled image of his Creator, but that does not touch the question of his having been made in the image of God.
Likeness goes further; but was there not in man a certain moral and mental likeness to God? He not only represents God on earth, but, as one has said, he thinks for others, refers to and delights in what God has wrought in creation, and in what is good, having his moral place among those who do. The likeness, alas, may be very much blurred; but the features are there: such as reflection, delight, love of goodness and beauty; none of which are found in a mere animal. With Christ all is of course perfect: as man He is “the image of God”; “the image of the invisible God” (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15).