Sonship and Kingship

One of the many interesting discussions in Kingdom Through Covenant deals with man being made in the image of God. This topic gets a lengthy discussion in the book. The authors, of course, interact with the Bible in this regard, but they also deal with the societal context of image during the biblical times. The authors eventually produce a succinct and two-fold concept for what the image of God means:

Genesis 1:26 defines a divine-human relationship with two dimensions, one vertical and one horizontal. First, it defines human ontology in terms of a covenant relationship between God and man, and second, it defines a covenant relationship between man and the earth. The relationship between humans and God is best captured by the term sonship. The relationship between humans and the creation may be expressed by the terms kingship and servanthood, or better, servant kingship.(200)

Thus, imaging God can be described as sonship and servant kingship. And this imaging results in two relationships of significance, our relationship to God and our relationship to creation.

Man is the divine image. As servant king and son of God mankind will mediate God’s rule to the creation in the context of a covenant relationship with God on the one hand and the earth on the other. (201)