Made in the image of God

Karl Barth has an interesting discussion of the meaning of Genesis 1:27 which emphasizes sexual distinction and unity as reflecting the imago Dei.

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

It cannot be contested that the wider literary context, of which the biblical creation history is the first part, is not interested in man in abstracto, in his soul or spirituality, in his body or even in the superiority which he certainly enjoys over all other creatures, but in the future partner of the covenant, the kingdom and the glory of God, in the true counterpart of God, in the earthly subject, addressed and treated by God as a "Thou," of a history which begins with the creation and continues right up to the present time.

Church Dogmatics 3.1, Doctrine of Creation, p. 194

Barth then goes on to applaud the views of Dietrich Bonhoeffer ["uncreated freedom is worshipped by created freedom"] and to state:

the image and likeness of the being created by God signifies existence in confrontation, i.e., in this confrontation, in the juxtaposition and conjunction of man and man which is that of male and female,