The “spitting image” of God
- Introduction
- The Messiah-Christ is God
- The Word (Logos) is God
- The Only Begotten Jn 1:14, 18
- The “spitting image” of God
- The First Begotten or Firstborn of God (prototokos)
- The Primary Designation, “God”
- Emmanuel, “God with us”
- The Good Shepherd
- Jesus is the LORD (Jehovah), the eternal “I AM”
- The Lord of Lords
- The Holy One
- The Husband
- The Rock
- The True God
- Jesus God is Lord of All
Image is not just a likeness, but refers to a prototype, and the image is revealed reality of that prototype.
Dean Alford says
… the image of the invisible God (the adjunct invisible is of the utmost weight to the understanding of the expression. The same fact being the foundation of the whole as in Phil 2:6ff, that the Son subsisted in the form of God, that side of the fact is brought out here, which points to His being the visible manifestation of that in God which is invisible: the word of the eternal silence, the shining forth of the glory which no creature can bear, the expressed mark of that Person which is incommunicably God’s; in one word, the declarer of the Father, whom none hath seen. So that while the epithet invisible includes in it not only the invisibility, but the incommunicability of God, the term image also must not be restricted to Christ corporeally visible in the Incarnation, but understood of Him as the manifestation of God in His whole Person and work– pre-existent and incarnate. It is obvious, that in this expression, the Apostle approaches very near to the Alexandrian doctrine of the Logos or Word: how near, may be seen by an extract from Philo: “As they who cannot look upon the sun, behold the sunshine opposite to him as himself, and the changing phases of the moon as being Himself.” St Paul is, in fact, as St. John afterwards did, adopting the language of that lore as far as it represented divine truth, and rescuing it from being used in the service of error.– New Testament for English Readers, New Ed. II, 446.
The Exact Image (Heb 1:3) (xarakthr) Greek
The Greek word for “Exact Image” in Hebrews 1:3 is xarakthr, or in English letter substitution, “charakter”.
M.R. Vincent states
“Here the essential being of God is conceived as setting its distinctive stamp upon Christ, coming into definite and characteristic expression in his person, so that the Son bears the exact impress of the divine nature and character” (Word Studies in the New Testament IV, 383).
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