Utumishi Blog

What do all these things have in common?

• The abortion of 189,100 babies in the UK in 2009, 1.1% for reasons of likely serious handicap.
• A Muslim debater challenges a Christian, “Can God also become a dog?”
• A terrible industrial accident brought about by a culture of recklessness on the part of authorities and residents.
• Extreme environmentalism that sees humanity as a cancer on the planet.

Underlying each of these is the suppression of a very important truth – that men and women are immensely privileged to be made in the image of God.  We are not God (as some sects would have us believe and as our sin pretends) but we are in the image of God.  As Francis Schaeffer says:

I am as separated from God in the area of His being the Creator and infinite and I being the creature and finite, as is the atom or the energy particle [or the dog]…  However, on the side of God’s personality, the break comes between man and the rest of creation… man’s relationship is upward      (The God Who is There, pp. 94-95)

What is the image of God then?  What is it that we have trampled and deformed?  What is this personality that we are supposed to share (amazingly) with the Creator?  I’ve always been a bit stuck on this one.  From Genesis 1:27-28 we can infer that we are like God in exercising dominion, in being moral beings and in being plural, social beings.  Is that all?  I was greatly helped by a David Jackman article recently which prompted me to turn to Colossians 3:

⁹ Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices ¹⁰ and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator… ¹² Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. ¹³ Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ¹⁴ And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

So what is the image?  Truthfulness, compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love.  From the parallel passage in Ephesians we might add ‘working with your hands so that you have something to share with those in need’ (Eph. 4:28).  Now try meditating through the Old Testament and consider how God is all those things – truthful, compassionate, gentle, incredibly patient, even working with his mighty hands for the benefit of others – what a God we have!  Even his dominion is a gentle, humble, loving, for-the-benefit-of-others dominion – servant leadership.

Which all makes us think of Jesus doesn’t it?  The ‘Creator’ in Colossians is Christ (Col. 1:16).  It is the image of the Lord Jesus into which we are being changed (2 Cor. 3:18).  Before the world began it was God’s plan to conform us to the image of the Son (Rom. 8:29) and one day we will be fully like him (1 John 3:2).  And how are we conformed to his image?  (1) By all things that we experience (Rom. 8:28), especially suffering; (2) by seeing Him (2 Cor. 3:18; John 3:2) – that is knowing him, his truth, compassion, kindness, humility in his Word, and fixing our hearts and minds on him (2 Cor. 3:12-16; Col. 3:2,10).   

Sometimes these truths are better sung than read – listen to this great song by Emu Music – In His Image.