Christ Is A Perfect Image Of God

Christ is a perfect image of God because He is sinless. In the scriptures, He is referred as the Adam before the fall or the “last Adam” (King James Bible, 1 Cor. 15. 45). Christ came after the Fall to bring humans back to the original state, the pre-fallen state, which was a state that Adam and Eve were living in the presence of God; they were so close to God, they could hear “the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden” (Gen.3.8). In the pre-Fallen state, Adam and Eve, like Christ, were both equally the image of God: “God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen.1.27-28). Rosemary Radford Reuther in her article ,“The Liberation of Christology from Patriarchy,”claims that man (Adam) here should be understood generically. Christ as being the pre-fallen Adam, also should be understood generically. The pre-fallen state, which is egalitarian, is the “original order of nature” (Reuther 145). Hierarchy, therefore, is a deviation from humans’ nature, and thus a sin.The coming of Christ is a “restoration of authentic humanity, “ in which both man and woman can be equally the image of God (Reuther 145). Christ being the image of God reflects God’s desire to avoid any kind of social hierarchy and, in particular, a gender hierarchy. For human beings to be closer to God, hierarchy must be destroyed. Being Christlike, both Reuther in her article, and Emily Dickinson in her poem “Over the Fence” deconstructs the