image, likeness
The Greek word eikon carries the weight of visible representation. At its literal core, it means an image, a likeness, a portrait. But the ancient world heard something richer in this word than we do when we say 'picture.' An eikon was not merely a copy. It was a derived, dependent manifestation of the original. When a coin bore the emperor's eikon, that image carried the emperor's authority and presence. The coin was not the emperor, but it mediated him. You could look at it and know something real about who stood behind it.
The New Testament authors seized on this word with remarkable intentionality. Paul uses it in two directions that seem opposite but are actually two sides of the same confession. First, Christ is described as the eikon of the invisible God in Colossians 1:15. Not a rough approximation. Not a symbol pointing elsewhere. The full, accurate, authorized representation of the Father. When you see Jesus, you see what God actually looks like in the world.
Second, humanity was made according to God's image. Genesis 1:26 uses the Hebrew tselem, but the Septuagint renders it with eikon, and Paul picks up that thread throughout his letters. The vocation of every human being is to be a living, breathing, walking representation of God in the world, the way a coin represents the king.
The whole biblical drama can be read through this lens. The image was marred. Christ came as the perfect image to restore image-bearers. You were made to mirror someone, and the question the gospel presses on you is: which image are you conforming to?
Most of us have read 'image of God' so many times it stopped landing. I spent years treating it as a philosophical footnote about human dignity, the kind of phrase you say before moving to the passage you actually wanted to preach. But eikon is not an abstract category. It is a job description. A coin bearing the emperor's image was minted to circulate, to go places the emperor couldn't go, to make his authority felt in the marketplace. You were made to circulate the character of God into every room you enter. When Paul tells you in Romans 8:29 that God's purpose is to conform you to the image of his Son, he is not describing a self-improvement project. He is describing the restoration of a vocation that was lost and is now being recovered at great cost.
Eikon derives from the Greek verb eoika, meaning 'to be like' or 'to resemble.' It belongs to a family of words concerned with likeness and appearance. The related noun eikos means 'probable' or 'fitting,' carrying a sense of correspondence between two things. In classical Greek, eikon was used for portraits, statues, and metaphors. It shares conceptual space with the Hebrew tselem (shadow-likeness) and demut (resemblance) in Genesis 1:26, words the Septuagint translators chose eikon to render.
Where eikon appears in Scripture, and why each verse showcases it.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
Paul plants eikon here to make a stunning claim: the God no human eye can look upon has now become visible in a particular human face. Jesus doesn't merely point to God; he is the full representation of God.
In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Paul frames unbelief as a failure to perceive the eikon, a blindness that keeps people from seeing God accurately in the face of Christ.
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Eikon here describes the telos of salvation itself; God's end goal is not merely forgiveness but the restoration of image-bearers who genuinely look like his Son.
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Paul contrasts two eikons, Adam's and Christ's, placing every human life in the story of which image we are currently bearing and where that story ends.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Though written in Hebrew, the Septuagint renders tselem here as eikon, making this the headwaters of the entire biblical image-of-God theology that the New Testament draws from.
Words in the same semantic family.
Every video where Adam teaches on this word, in publication order.
This word is studied in depth in the following monthly Bible studies.
