Monday
"And God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness."
-Genesis 1:26
This is one of the most significant verses in the Bible. Our sense of our own self-worth, our treatment of other people, our understanding of human rights and dignity, - all of it stems from one indisputable fact of our existence: we are made in the image of God!
Think of it this way: every outward manifestation of our practice of religion changes throughout our lives: what we sing, how we sing, what we wear to church, how we pray, even the breadth and width of our smiles. What doesn't change is what goes on inside us the moment we rise in the morning to a consciousness of God's reality. What doesn't alter is our fellowship with him. And that fellowship occurs in a relationship even more intimate than that which we have with any human being.
Even our sin does not alter the fact that we bear the image of God. There's no question that sin has defaced something of what he gave us when he imparted part of himself into us. But our regeneration in Christ, something essential to belief, restores that image, an imprint only humans share with the Creator.
When God said, "Let us make man in our image," what he did was to fashion beings fully capable of close fellowship with him. If true religion is defined most precisely by an intimate fellowship with God, then when God created us in his image, he was creating religion.
Birds are wonderfully blessed with beaks, elephants with trunks, trees with bark, and cats with nocturnal vision - in all these ways God filled nature with glory; but on nothing else in his world did he invest his image. Only human beings can fully know his love by intimate fellowship with him.
-Genesis 1:26
This is one of the most significant verses in the Bible. Our sense of our own self-worth, our treatment of other people, our understanding of human rights and dignity, - all of it stems from one indisputable fact of our existence: we are made in the image of God!
Think of it this way: every outward manifestation of our practice of religion changes throughout our lives: what we sing, how we sing, what we wear to church, how we pray, even the breadth and width of our smiles. What doesn't change is what goes on inside us the moment we rise in the morning to a consciousness of God's reality. What doesn't alter is our fellowship with him. And that fellowship occurs in a relationship even more intimate than that which we have with any human being.
Even our sin does not alter the fact that we bear the image of God. There's no question that sin has defaced something of what he gave us when he imparted part of himself into us. But our regeneration in Christ, something essential to belief, restores that image, an imprint only humans share with the Creator.
When God said, "Let us make man in our image," what he did was to fashion beings fully capable of close fellowship with him. If true religion is defined most precisely by an intimate fellowship with God, then when God created us in his image, he was creating religion.
Birds are wonderfully blessed with beaks, elephants with trunks, trees with bark, and cats with nocturnal vision - in all these ways God filled nature with glory; but on nothing else in his world did he invest his image. Only human beings can fully know his love by intimate fellowship with him.
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. - C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
So what does that mean, really? That we have opportunity to know God like no other member of his created world means at least this: that our warmest and most intimate moments with him are not accomplished solely for our benefit, but for His. We don't practice religion - don't pray and sing and study Scripture - simply for our benefit. Our righteousness is not our own. He made us in his image, not only so that we could enjoy him - although of course we can; we carry his likeness so he can enjoy us. God gives us his love because we are his, not because of what we are on our own. He wills our lives of praise. He wants to know us, in the deepest and richest sense of that word, because we are like him.
Everything we do out of faith, everything we know of God, begins in the fact that we are His! God’s ultimate plan for us is that we would find our joy in Him, the one in whose image we are made!
So what does that mean, really? That we have opportunity to know God like no other member of his created world means at least this: that our warmest and most intimate moments with him are not accomplished solely for our benefit, but for His. We don't practice religion - don't pray and sing and study Scripture - simply for our benefit. Our righteousness is not our own. He made us in his image, not only so that we could enjoy him - although of course we can; we carry his likeness so he can enjoy us. God gives us his love because we are his, not because of what we are on our own. He wills our lives of praise. He wants to know us, in the deepest and richest sense of that word, because we are like him.
Everything we do out of faith, everything we know of God, begins in the fact that we are His! God’s ultimate plan for us is that we would find our joy in Him, the one in whose image we are made!
Jeff Frazier
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1 comment:
On this US Inauguration Day, on this day we honor Martin Luther King, a man who helped shape a new normal in America, may we do everything out of faith in full knowledge that we are all His that we would find our joy in Him, the one in whose image we are all made!
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