Word of Salvation – Vol.29 No.27 –July 1984

 

Man: The Image of God (Gen.1:26 & Col.3:9-10)

 

Sermon by Rev. S. Voorwinde, v.d.m. on Gen.1:26 & Col.3:9 & 10

Belgic Confession: Article 14a

Scriptures: Genesis 1:24-31; Colossians 3:1-11

Suggested hymns: BoW.2:1,4,6; Ps.H.289:1,2,3,5; 13; 376

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

There are many things that we search for in life; and even now there may be something that you are seeking for with all your heart.

No doubt there are some of you who are searching for a career, a meaningful vocation in life.  There may be others who are seeking a wife or a husband.  And then again there are many, probably even most of us, who are searching for happiness.  Still others may be looking for security in one form or another.  But whatever your search may be, for you it is something important, something vital.  It occupies your mind and it takes up your time.

Yet, there is a search that is more basic, more important than all of these, than your career, your marriage, your happiness and your security.  It’s a search, a quest, that sometimes is unconscious and for some people it may last a life-time.  It is the search for identity.  Who am I?  Where did I come from?  Where am I going?  What am I doing here?

These questions aren’t just asked by philosophers and intellectuals.  They are very human questions that in one way or another are asked by almost everybody.  For some people they can be burning questions that blaze painfully in the mind for a long, long time.  For others they seem less pressing.  Yet, we must all come up with answers.  Even though we may not be able to verbalize these answers, it is these answers that will shape our identity.  It’s what we think about ourselves that will determine who we are and how we will live.

So what does it mean to be human?  That is the question.  “What is man”?  The Psalmist asks, and the answers are many.  Some say we are highly developed animals.  Others say we are descendants of the gods.  Still others imagine that we are offshoots of some form of life from outer space.

Whose word are you going to believe?  God’s Word states clearly: we have been created by God in His own image and likeness.

So who am I?  What is my identity?
To those questions I can give a confident and a beautiful answer:
I am the image and likeness of God.
I don’t say that arrogantly, I say it humbly, because it is also true of every other human being in the world.

But what does that mean?  It sounds so noble; it sounds so lofty, but what does it mean that you and I are the image and likeness of God?  That question has exercised the best Christian minds for centuries.  It’s a difficult question but it has a very practical answer.  And I’d like to answer it in three parts:

(1)  The image in man before the Fall.

(2)  The image in man after the Fall.

(3)  The image of God in the Christian, (the man in Christ)

So let’s begin at the beginning with God’s image in man before the Fall:
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our own likeness…  Here God has come to the very crown and climax of His creation.  Before this God would simply command:
“Let there be light…….
“Let there be a firmament.
“Let the earth bring forth living creatures…..!”

But now God doesn’t command.  He enters into consultation.  He confers with Himself in the three persons of the Trinity.  He is about to do something very special and very wonderful: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”.  It’s a momentous step and when it has been done, creation is complete.  When God saw everything that He had made it was very good.  These few verses in Genesis 1 give us a lot of significant insight into the nature of man:

(1)  He shares the sixth day with other creatures.  He is made of dust as they are.  He feeds on some of the same food as they do.  He is told to be fruitful and multiply as they will be.

So man can be studied partly through the study of the animals.  They are half his context.  So, when scientists study rats and mice and monkeys some of the results will be relevant for humans as well.

(2)  But!  Man is not an animal.  He is distinct.  He is unique.  He is the image of God which the animals are not.  Man is not just another animal.  Man has “dignity” and that before God; let’s never forget it.

A few years ago I spoke to a Dutch lady in Sydney (she wasn’t a member of one of our churches) and she was telling me about a trip she had just made back to Holland.  There she had attended a packed, but very dismal church.  The minister had been preaching a very depressing sermon.  In that sermon he made this statement: “God is thoroughly disgusted with everything human.”  That lady went to that minister after the service and took him to task and rightly so.  Man has dignity because he is the image and likeness of God; and woman has equal dignity because she is every bit as much the image and likeness of God.

One of the ways, (although not the only way) this comes to expression is in man’s dominion over the earth.  He is God’s representative in this world.  He is God’s vice-regent.  Just as the Governor General represents the Queen in Australia, so man represents God in this world.  Man rules the world on God’s behalf.  As we sing in Hymn 13 vs.5 (Psalter Hymnal) the words of Psalm 8:

“With dominion crowned he stands
Over the creatures of Thy hands;
All to him subjection yield
In the sea and air and field.
How great Thy Name!”

Such were Adam and Eve before the Fall.  They were the perfect image of God.  They had dignity; they were God’s representatives; they ruled for Him.

But now what about after the Fall?  What happened to the image then?  Was there anything left of God’s likeness in man?  Some people would think not.  Obviously if God would be disgusted with everything human there can’t be much of the divine image left in man.

But is that true?  Is that what the Bible teaches?  That after the Fall there wasn’t a trace left of the image of God in man?  No, somehow that image survived the Fall.  It didn’t come off unscathed, but it did survive.

In Genesis 9 God is speaking to Noah and his family after the flood.  There He introduces capital punishment for the crime of murder, in these words: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.  The thought is surely this, that murder is such a terrible sin because it is an assault against the image of God, whoever the murder victim might be.  So, man is still the image of God.

In the New Testament the same truth is taught in Chap.3 of James, that famous chapter about the tongue.  There James says in verse 9: “With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the likeness of God.”

So in spite of the Fall, man is still the image and likeness of God.  Surely, that was why He was so furious with the Israelites and their golden calf.  It’s not a statue or an idol that’s the image of God; it’s people like you and me who are God’s living images.  And that’s a fact that God still takes very seriously.

But then of course, the image is not what it used to be.  The image may have survived the Fall; it has been seriously injured.  But how?  What’s the difference?  How was Adam different from us as God’s image?  To answer this question we have to jump ahead a little to the restoration of the image.  Here 2 verses speak very clearly:
Eph.4:24: “And put on the new nature,” says Paul, “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

And then there are the rather similar words in our text in Col.  3:
“Put on the new nature which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

Now, if you put these two together then the image consists of righteousness, holiness and knowledge.  Of course, there’s more, but this gives us a good start.  Adam and Eve were the image of God because of their righteousness, holiness and knowledge.  In other words they were moral and rational creatures which the animals were not.

But then, when they fell into sin what happened?  They didn’t become animals, but the moral became immoral and the rational became irrational.  They and their descendants became unrighteous and unholy, and their knowledge was darkened.

So what became of the image?  It wasn’t lost.  It didn’t disappear, but it became distorted.  Now, say a professional photographer took several pictures of you.  Let’s say one of them was this beautiful, clear colour photograph.  That photo would be the perfect image of you.  But that’s not the only image.  The negative is also an image, but it’s quite distorted and you can hardly be recognized.  Adam and Eve were that beautiful colour photograph and fallen mankind is the negative.  Both are the image of God, but what a difference!

Or think of it this way.  Some of you are fortunate enough to have a colour T.V.  And on your set there’s a knob that helps you adjust the colour.  If that knob is set right you can get a perfect image of say your newscaster.  But if you fiddle with that knob you can do all sorts of hideous things.  Depending on the way you turn it you can probably give the man green teeth, purple eyes, pink hair.  The image is still there (you haven’t switched the T.V. off), you can still see who it is, but the whole thing is quite distorted.

That is the picture of mankind today: still the image of God, but very seriously distorted.  That’s what we all are: distorted images of God.  From Adam and Eve on it’s been the same sad story.

But wait a minute!  There has been an exception.  There was that one Person in whom there was no distortion.  He was the perfect image.  And that person was our Lord Jesus Christ.  He was so perfect and so flawless that He could safely say: “He who has seen me has seen the Father.’  He was such a beautiful person that when people saw Him they could have known immediately what God was like and at the same time they were reminded of what they were meant to be.

So Jesus Christ is central to a true understanding of ourselves.  When we find Him we find ourselves; we discover our true identity.  He is the key that unlocks the meaning of our lives.  We learn to know ourselves by looking to Him.

One of our catechism class books, “Never On Your Own”, puts it like this: “Christ is the key Person in understanding our position in the world.  For in His life we witness the perfect model of what our lives are meant to demonstrate: true knowledge of God, righteousness, holiness, perfect obedience to God’s will, genuine love of fellow men, and wise dominion over the powers of nature.  That was our calling in Adam.  That is now our calling in Christ.” (p.29).

So Christ was and is the perfect image of God.  In Him there was nothing distorted or twisted or warped; as a man He perfectly reflected God.

So that spells out exactly what we are meant to be.  As Paul tells the Romans: “For whom God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…!” That’s what God planned from all eternity: that we might be like Christ; so  that we might be like God.  It’s in Christ that man is restored to the image of God.  Every Christian is being adjusted so that he conforms to that perfect image.

Every distortion is going to be corrected; every flaw is going to be straightened out.

And God’s already working on that right now.  It’s a process that’s already under way.  It’s a mighty thing that God’s doing in every Christian.  We catch a glimpse of what’s happening, again in the words of the apostle Paul: “We all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2Cor.3:18).

Do you get the picture?  That negative image is being changed and transformed into a big and glorious positive.  That colour T.V. set that was playing havoc with its colour scheme and spoiling everything, is being repaired and soon it will be giving the clearest, most beautiful image you can imagine.  It’s the Holy Spirit who’s the repair man.  It’s the Holy Spirit who is developing these negatives into beautiful positives.  It’s the Holy Spirit who is working on every Christian and transforming him more and more into the glorious image of Christ.  He’s working on the flaws; He’s working on the distortions.

And so we must expect to see changes in our own lives.  We must expect to see changes in the lives of believers around us.  We must each be more like Christ now than we were say five or ten years ago.  Is that true of you?  Are you being transformed into that image from glory to glory?  As a Christian you are being restored into the image of God.  Do you submit readily to the Holy Spirit restoring and transforming you?  Can people see Christ in you?  Or perhaps I can put it even more strongly: Through you can people see God and Christ?  What kind of an image are you?

How do you rate?  See Col.3:12-17.

Amen.