The image of God is the foundational doctrine of biblical anthropology. Genesis 1:26-27 announces it at the crown of creation: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion'... So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Three times in two verses the text hammers home the point. Man alone is the imago Dei. The doctrine matters for everything. It establishes the infinite worth of every human being, regardless of race, age, ability, achievement, social status, or usefulness. The unborn child is an image-bearer. The elderly grandmother with dementia is an image-bearer. The prisoner, the homeless man, the intellectually disabled person, the political opponent — all image-bearers. "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man His blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man" (Genesis 9:6) — the basis of capital justice is that the victim bore God's image. "Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing... with it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God" (James 3:9-10). The doctrine also establishes human dignity: we are not animals, not machines, not accidents, not mere biological processes. We are icons of the living God. The Fall damaged the image but did not erase it (Genesis 9:6 is post-Fall). Redemption restores it: "We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18). Christ Himself is called "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15). The final goal of salvation is to be conformed to the image of the Son (Romans 8:29). Every political, ethical, and pastoral question the Christian faces must be answered under the banner of the image of God.