The piece of red clay in Genesis 1:26 was a type of Christ, and Christ is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15).
The Word (God) became flesh (John 1:14), becoming the flesh of sin only in its likeness (Rom. 8:3). God as the Word who became flesh had only the outward appearance of the flesh of sin, not the sinful nature of the flesh of sin.
Christ, who exists in the form of God, took the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man, in His incarnation (Phil. 2:6-8).
Stephen saw the heavens opened up and the Son of Man—Christ—at the right hand of God (Acts 7:56). Stephen saw this after Christ’s ascension to the heavens. This indicates that Christ is in the heavens still as the Son of Man. Concerning this, Hymns, #132 says:
Lo! in heaven Jesus sitting,
Christ the Lord is there enthroned;
As the man by God exalted,
With God’s glory He is crowned.
In Matthew 26:64 the Lord Jesus said, “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power [God] and coming on the clouds of heaven.” This refers to Christ’s second coming. When the Lord Jesus comes back, He will still be the Son of Man.
In Romans 8:29 Paul tells us that those whom God foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers. This verse assures us that we, the believers in Christ, will all be conformed to the image of the Son of God.
Second Corinthians 3:18 says, “We all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.” Romans 12:2a speaks of our being transformed by the renewing of the mind. He as God has done a lot to make Himself in the form and likeness of man. Now He intends to transform us into the same image and conform us to the image of the Son of God.
Philippians 2:15 speaks of our being blameless and guileless, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation, among whom we shine as luminaries in the world.
The Lord Jesus Christ will transfigure the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of His glory, according to His operation by which He is able even to subject all things to Himself (Phil. 3:21). He has the power to transfigure our body in such a way that it will be conformed to the body of His glory.
We know that if Christ is manifested, we will be like Him wholly, perfectly, and absolutely because we will see Him even as He is (1 John 3:2b).
All this will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Revelation 4:3 says, “He [God] who was sitting was like a jasper stone.” This tells us that the appearance of God, the One sitting on the throne, is like jasper.
According to Revelation 21 the New Jerusalem’s light is like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone (v. 11b). The building work of its wall is jasper, and the first foundation of the wall is also jasper (vv. 18a, 19). The wall is jasper, the first foundation of the wall is jasper, the light of the city is jasper, and God on the throne is like jasper. Eventually God and man, man and God, all have the appearance of jasper. This is the conclusion of the Bible.
The consummation of the Bible is the New Jerusalem— divinity mingled with humanity. Divinity becomes the dwelling place of humanity, and humanity becomes the home of divinity. In this city the glory of God is manifested in man, brightly and splendidly. We will be there, and we are on the way. We are in the process of being made “a piece of God,” to look the same as God—jasper.