What does it mean to be created in God's image?

How true! Relationship is the key!

 

I believe God the Father is a spiritual being, and therefore has no physical form, per se. But I agree with Rob in that the likeness we have to God is in the soul He gave each and every one of us.

 

Agreed.

 

probably the intent of the phrase is to say that god is "knowable" in the sense that humans and he share many traits.

it's sorta like the egyptian or greek or roman gods who were very anthropomorphic -- they got mad, or sad, or jealous, etc. their stories resonated because they were all based on some sort of human-accessible idea as opposed to something that only a god would understand.

to say we're created in god's image is to say that we are similar to him so we can understand how we affect him and how he sees us. with the caveat that he works in mysterious ways, of course.

 

I believe that we are triune beings like God as one similarity:

God = Father, Son, Spirit
Man = spirit, soul, body

having said that I'd disagree with Rob and HB that our similarity is in our souls but is infact in our spirits

 

How do you define "spirit" and "soul"?

 

I believe that the soul is comprised of our mind, will and emotions

I think the spirit is the real you or the inner man.

 

So what, by your definition, differentiates mind, will, and emotion from the inner man?

 

Out of all the creatures in the world, we are human.. God is like us, we look like Him. He could have made everything human and no other living creatures, but we are like Him.

 

Our mind is our thoughts which can be different from God's, our will is our decision making ability which is ours alone and seperate from God's, and our emotions are ours which can be all screwed up for a bunch of different reasons.
Our inner man(spirits) are what is recreated in the image of Christ when we are born again and I believe it is the part of us that is perfect and pure once saved.