Bonhoeffer.... creation and fall....the image of God on earth

“In man God creates his image on earth. This means that man is like the creator in that he is free. Actually he is free only by God’s creation, by means of the word of God; he is free for the worship of the creator. In the language of the Bible, freedom is not something man has for himself but something he has for others. No man is free “as such” that is, in a vacuum, in the way that he may be musical, intelligent or blind as such. Freedom is not a quality of man, nor is it an ability, a capacity, a kind of being that somehow flares up in him. Any one investigation of man to discover freedom finds nothing of it. Why? Because freedom is not a quality which can be revealed- it is not a possession, a presence, an object, nor is it a form for existence- but a relationship and nothing else. In truth, freedom is a relationship between two persons. Being free means ‘being free for the other’, because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.
No substantial or individualistic concept of freedom can conceive of freedom. I have no control over freedom as over a property. It is simply the event that happens to me through the other. We can ask how we know this, or whether this is not just again speculation about the beginning resulting from being in the middle. The answer is that it is the message of the gospel that God’s freedom has bound us to itself, that his free grace only becomes real in this relation to us, and that God does not will to be free for himself but for man. God in Christ is free for man. Because he does not retain his freedom for himself the concept of freedom only exists for us as “being free for.” For to us who live in the middle through Christ and know our humanity in his resurrection, that God is free has no meaning except that we are free for God. The freedom of the creator is proved by the fact that he allows us to be free for him, and that means nothing except that he creates his image on earth. The paradox of created freedom cannot be eliminated. Indeed it must be made as obvious as possible. Here created freedom means- and it is this that goes beyond all previous deeds of God, the unique par excellence- that God himself enters into creation.”