What does it mean to be created in the image of God? To be human is to be in the image, and being in the image, according to the image, entails a relationship to Christ, who is the image. Remember, the only image of God that we have is Jesus, the Christ. Certainly He is an image in virtue of being the Word of God, God’s self-manifestation; but this is something we can only fully understand through the Incarnation. Humankind is created according to an image – the Word of God – that we only truly know through the Incarnation. It is only through the Incarnation that we can truly understand what it is to be human. It is only in the light of Christ that we can grasp what is truly meant by being human.

What we know from our experience of being human is what it is to be “limited” in our understanding of humanity. To be in the image is, at the very least, to bear some trace of true humanity, unlimited humanity. We see the fullness of what humanity is in the Person of Jesus, the Christ. For the Word of God, in becoming man, became what we are meant to be! To be human is to have a nature with capacities, faculties, that are never properly realized in our present existence. We have a glimpse of these faculties in Christ.

There is an illustration of what this might mean in an essay on the Gospel miracles. In an essay the author argues quite convincingly that it is a mistake to see the miracles as simply evidence of Christ’s divinity (though that is the way in which they are taken by the Fathers, as a rule. They are evidence of the potentialities of the human, cooperating with divine grace. If we want to know what it means to be human, we look at Christ.