Physical no. God is spirit.
This is one take:
“The origin of human beings is not simply from the waters on the earth like the plants, fishes/birds, and animals; it is “in our image, according to our likeness.” The human is a statue of the deity, not by static being but by action, who will rule over all things previously created (v 26). In the ancient Near East, the king was often called the image of the deity and was vested with God’s authority; royal language is here used for the human. Mesopotamian cosmogonies ordinarily portrayed humans as slaves.” NJBC – Genesis
I don’t disagree but that is not the totality of it for me as I think the objection Bill Arnold raises below in his Baker commentary is more significant and it also limits interpretation to historical-critical at the expense of canonical which gives a full doctrine of man:
On the basis of numerous parallels from both Egypt and Mesopotamia, it has become clear that the phrase is related to royal language, in which a king or pharaoh is the “image of (a) god.”66 Thus humans are created to function as the divine image through the exercise of “dominion” and “rule,” which of course is reinforced by the statement “and let them have dominion over . . . ” (v. 26). This statement in v. 26 should be interpreted as a purpose clause, expressing the motivation behind God’s creation of humans in his image: “in order that they may have dominion over . . . ”67 The image of God is about the exercise of rulership in the world. While it may be objected that an entire species of humans cannot stand in God’s place as an individual king, it seems likely that the office of God’s representative has been “democratized” in 1:26–27.68
I like Derek Kinder’s take in his Genesis Commentary:
- Let us make man. In both the opening chapters of Genesis man is portrayed as in nature and over it, continuous with it and discontinuous. He shares the sixth day with other creatures, is made of dust as they are (2:7, 19), feeds as they feed (1:29, 30) and reproduces with a blessing similar to theirs (1:22, 28a); so he can well be studied partly through the study of them: they are half his context. But the stress falls on his distinctness. Let us make stands in tacit contrast with ‘Let the earth bring forth’ (24); the note of self-communing and the impressive plural proclaim it a momentous step; and this done, the whole creation is complete. Vis-à-vis the animals man is set apart by his office (1:26b, 28b; 2:19; cf. Ps. 8:4–8; Jas 3:7) and still more by his nature (2:20); but his crowning glory is his relation to God.
The terms, in our image, after our likeness, are characteristically bold. If image seems too pictorial a word, there is the rest of Scripture to control it; but at a single stroke it imprints on the mind the central truth about us. The words image and likeness reinforce one another: there is no ‘and’ between the phrases, and Scripture does not use them as technically distinct expressions, as some theologians have done, whereby the ‘image’ is man’s indelible constitution as a rational and morally responsible being, and the ‘likeness’ is that spiritual accord with the will of God which was lost at the fall. The distinction exists, but it does not coincide with these terms. After the fall, man is still said to be in God’s image (Gen. 9:6) and likeness (Jas 3:9); nonetheless he requires to be ‘renewed … after the image of him that created him’ (Col. 3:10; cf. Eph. 4:24). See also 5:1, 3.
When we try to define the image of God, it is not enough to react against a crude literalism by isolating man’s mind and spirit from his body. The Bible makes man a unity: acting, thinking and feeling with his whole being. This living creature, then, and not some distillation from him, is an expression or transcription of the eternal, incorporeal creator in terms of temporal, bodily, creaturely existence – as one might attempt a transcription of, say, an epic into a sculpture, or a symphony into a sonnet. Likeness in this sense survived the fall, since it is structural. As long as we are human we are, by definition, in the image of God. But spiritual likeness – in a single word, love – can be present only where God and man are in fellowship; hence the fall destroyed it, and our redemption recreates and perfects it. ‘We are God’s children now … when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2, RSV; cf. 4:12).
Another take that is certainly true as well:
David Wenham: rethinking Genesis
Man is created in the divine image, which means he is supposed to imitate God’s activity in certain respects, in this context most obviously by working for
six days and resting on the seventh. This is implicit in Genesis and explicit
in Exodus 20.
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor
and do al your work. For in six days the LORD made heaven
and earth, the sea, and al that is in them, and rested the seventh
day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it
holy. (Exod 20:8, 9, 11)
The length of the Sabbath commandment, the longest of the Ten,
witnesses to the importance of the Sabbath in biblical thinking. Genesis
1underlines the significance of the Sabbath by showing how God created
the universe in six days and then rested. Indeed, one might describe Gen-
esis 1as an etiology of the Sabbath, i.e., an explanation of its origin and
significance.
But I think our capacity to love and reason is also part of the image of God. We are special in that regard. Why would we be appointed stewards otherwise?