THE BODY: THE IMAGE OF GOD

Paul Brand writing about what it means to be in the image of God in his book In His Image:

"We will not explore the psychological and mental attributes in each one of us that might reflect the image of God. Instead, we will center on a community, that group of God’s people who are called, more than two dozen times in the New Testament, Christ’s body.

"All of us joined to Him are an extension of the Incarnation. God reproduces and lives out His image in millions of ordinary people like us. It is a supreme mystery. We are called to bear that image as a Body because any one of us taken individually would present an incomplete image, one partly false and always distorted, like a single glass chip hacked from a mirror. But collectively, in all our diversity, we can come together as a community of believers to restore the image of God in the world."