“Let us make man in our own image and likeness” is a statement that is foundational to the Christian faith.
Genesis 1:26, God says “Let us make man in our own image and likeness”
Genesis 1:27, God made man; in the image of God made he him; male and female he made them.
Notice the slight difference here in the narration? - verse 27 does not have the word “likeness” and says…"made man in the image of God” and is silent about the likeness. Early church belief was that man received the honour of God’s image in his first creation, whereas the perfection of God’s likeness was reserved for man through acquiring it for himself by his own earnest efforts to imitate God. It is then our task as image bearers of God to choose to live well in accordance with the divine image so that we become the likeness of God.
St. Gregory of Nyssa (4th century) teaches us that we possess the image of God in creation but we acquire the likeness by our free will participation in the wisdom, good intentions and loving design of God. God has given us the power for this. It is proper that one part has been given to you while the other has been left so that man complete it for himself and might become worthy of the reward which comes from God. St Paul hints at this reward in his letter to the Corinthians in 1 Cor 9:25 - Everyone who competes practices self-discipline in everything. The runners do this to get a crown of leaves that wither and die, but we do it to receive a crown that is imperishable and everlasting.
Thus human nature created to rule the world because of his resemblance to the universal King, has been made like a living image that participates in the archetype (Jesus the original model) by dignity and by name. When man clothes himself in virtue and justice he manifests the royal dignity by his exact likeness to the beauty of the archetype. It is in beauty, dignity and goodness that we were created and we can (if early church fathers are right in their reading) return to that dignity by the exercise of our will in the imitation of Christ, who being in the form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, instead He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:5-7).
This is how the true King rules the world and this is the One we are to be united with so that we can truly become the image and likeness of God.