Declaration of Dependence
The Prospect of Being Less Than
Consider This: You can measure the substance of something by the kind of void it leaves behind when it’s taken away.
Have you ever wondered what it means—really means—to be made in the image of God?
In the first pages of the Bible, we see arguably the most important event in world history: God creating his image bearers. It’s phenomenal in its scope and purpose.
At one point nothing existed. In the next moment, everything we now see, feel and touch came to be—out of nothing. Like vapor from our mouths on a cold winter’s day, it all appeared at God’s call.
Yet while everything in creation was good and reflected his glory, no part of it reflected his nature. So God created Adam and Eve as one, in his own “image” and “likeness.” Together they represented him, “ruling” over creation, exercising dominion and stewardship as an extension of God himself. And God called them “mankind” (NIV) or “man” (ESV); or in Hebrew: āḏām (Gen. 1.26).
Humanity has been referred to as the imago Dei (Latin for the “image of God”). They were the only part of God’s physical creation that represented his invisible, spiritual reality. Said plainly: If you wanted to know what God was like, all you had to do was look at humanity in its original form.
It shouldn’t escape our attention that God never explicitly told us how humanity bears his image—that is, until Jesus appeared in human form (Heb. 1.3). Given that God’s intention for his followers is to become image bearers of Christ (Rom. 8.29), Jesus’ identity now gives us a tangible connection to our own identity.
Jesus is a yardstick, if you will, that we can use to measure …
Who we were,
Who we are now, and
Who we will be.
Because our identity is not self-generated; it is received and reflected.
Being Imagers
In the same way that Jesus is the exact representation of God’s nature in a fallen world, humans were the exact representation of God (without the divine qualities) in the pre-fallen world. Prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve knew God completely and trusted in him alone. There was no distraction, no competition for allegiance or trust—a scenario that’s about as far from our current experience as we could imagine.
Humankind as the imago Dei was perfect. However, in this perfection there’s a corresponding vulnerability: Their connection with God worked perfectly, so long as their trust and desires remained directed toward God.
It’s not a flaw, it’s by design. Humans couldn’t be like their Creator without the will to choose the object of their devotion and relational trust. Otherwise, we’d be robots who neither bear his image nor function as his representatives. Richard Lints captures this point well:
“It is appropriate to say that human identity is constituted in relationship to God. It is also true to say, asymmetrically, that God’s identity is not rooted in his relation to humanity … as an image is dependent upon the object for its identity, so the imago Dei is dependent upon God for its identity.”1
Lints’ point is that our “imaging” of God is one-way. Our identity is dependent upon God’s identity, but God’s identity is not dependent upon ours. We are “imagers” of him, not the other way around.2
This puts us in the position of absolute dependence upon God. And the moment we stop being dependent upon God, we lose our created ability to reflect him adequately.
Remaining in this posture of faith, trust and obedience to God is an existential necessity. It is our normal life and reality as the imago Dei. Again, Lints hits home with this thought:
“People, who are created as divine image bearers, are also capable of reflecting the created order. Thus humans may be said to have a reflective identity. In some sense they find meaning outside themselves by virtue of what they reflect.”3
We are made to find the whole of our created identity, meaning, purpose and passion outside of ourselves—completely and solely in our creator.
And therein lies the key: We don’t automatically default to God as the source of our identity, meaning, purpose and passion. God leaves it to us to choose; the focus of our desire. Which points us back to Jesus as our yardstick for who we are now (and who we will be).
Declaration of Dependence
Jesus was unwaveringly clear when it came to the source of his identity, meaning, purpose and passion. He consistently deferred his desires, putting them in submission to the Father’s will. This identity defined reality for himself and everyone he came into contact with. It was his organizing principle for life: Everything he did orbited around it.
Using this as a contrast with our current experience exposes the tendencies we exhibit in our lives. Jesus embraced dependence, but we’re afraid of it. Jesus found security in dependence, but we resent it. Jesus saw dependence as strength, but we see it as weakness. Jesus came to be less than, but we pursue greatness. Jesus looked to the Father for guidance, but we’re masters of our fate and captains of our souls.
Where Jesus declared an identity of dependence, we have declared independence. It is the identity we inherited from the Fall.
The reason the human existence is so fraught with confusion, fear, frustration and fragmentation is that we were never created to live independently. Adam and Eve chose to forego their responsibility to rule over creation, letting the serpent (as a part of creation) deceive them into embracing a false reality of prideful independence: “You can be your own god.”
The relevant point for us to comprehend is that being dependent on someone else to know and live out our identity, meaning, purpose and passion is our created nature. It’s human. It’s normal, and good. It’s part of what makes us children of God and followers of Jesus.
Jesus not only modeled it for us, he told us plainly: “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15.5). We don’t have the capacity to find our identity from within ourselves, any more than we have the capacity to fly or breathe under water. If we deny this, then we are choosing to live in a false reality.
So What?
The truth of our dependent identity has many significant implications that we’ll unpack in due time. But for now, we must understand how foundational the truth of our created identity of dependence is to our everyday life.
We must understand how deceptively, insidiously easy it is to adopt the posture of independence—outwardly following God but inwardly trusting in self. It’s possible to create whole religions around this perspective … which pretty much describes most of human history.
We must understand how deeply the world is committed to the concept of independence. Especially in our modern, Western culture, everything we encounter in life rewards and incentivizes it—everything! That’s why we cannot love the world or anything in it, because it will not support or assist us in living dependently.
Ultimately, independent behavior flows from an independent identity. Independence is not just a posture; it’s the soil in which idolatry is cultivated.
If we don’t understand what it means to be dependent, then we’re rejecting who God made us to be and his will for our lives. We don’t really believe that he knows what’s best for us. We don’t really trust him; indeed, we can’t trust him.
If we don’t understand what it means to be dependent, then we don’t understand what it means to be like Jesus. And if we don’t understand what it means to be like Jesus, then what in God’s name are we doing? Who do we think we’re worshiping? Why do we pray “in Jesus’ name”? Whose disciples are we making, his or our own?
If we don’t want to pursue dependence because it sounds weak, vulnerable and lame, then let’s stop spending so much time and money pretending to be what we’re not and go build a Tower of Babel instead.
But…
I have a better hope for Jesus’ church.
I believe we can embrace dependence, by faith. I believe we can experience the Overview Effect that comes when we see God and ourselves from a more accurate vantage point.
If we take time to reflect, we can see that our longing for intimacy with God is actually the void left behind when humanity lost its dependent identity. In declaring independence, our dependence died.
But in Christ, we get it back once again. Being dependent is our witness. It validates God and points to him. It is the only context for the gospel. Being dependent is faith.
At this stage, my encouragement for you is simple: Reflect and meditate on having an identity of dependence upon God. With child-like simplicity, revel in and celebrate that God made you fully and completely dependent upon him for all your sense of identity, meaning, purpose and passion. All of it … all the time, for all time.
And don’t let this be a one-time, passing, token acknowledgement. Let it be an organizing principle. The more we reflect on this truth, the more our goals and behaviors will align with it. The more we embrace this truth, the more of the false identity, pride and autonomy will be revealed and put off.
It takes time to renew our perception of our identities. The roots of the old, independent identity run deep and wide, and are feeding off streams of falsehood we don’t consciously know about. So don’t expect overnight results.
But the more dependent we see ourselves, the more we will realize what it means to be made in the image of God.
Richard Lints, Identity and Idolatry: The Image of God and Its Inversion (United States: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 28-29.
Michael Heiser was the first person I’ve heard use this term, and though it may sound odd it’s actually a good one. It helps us see the activity of bearing God’s identity as “imaging” him—which positions us as “imagers”. See Heiser, Michael S, The Unseen Realm (Expanded Edition): Discovering the Supernatural World of the Bible. United States: Baker Publishing Group, 2025.
Richard Lints, Identity and Idolatry, 29.
YES!
Good stuff Damian. Someone once used the imagery of a vine and a branch. Can't get more dependent than that.