Wednesday, August 06, 2008
 | John Calvin talked about the "Imago Dei" which means in Latin "the image of God" The bible says we are made in the image of God. Genesis 1:26,27 says "Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth. So God created man in His own image; In the image of God He created them, make and female He created them." Now many have twisted this scripture to mean a bunch of horrible, blasphemous, and down-right comical mistranslations. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Hebrew writing styles tell us something important here. In English, if we want to emphasize something, we would yell it, or we would, if writing, would capitalize it, in Hebrew, they repeat it, and here we see that God says he created us in his image 5 times. So this is defiantly something that he wants us to know. This is a fact God wants to hammer home in us. So what is it to be made in the image of God? We see that it isn't looking like God in physical appearance. God is a Spirit. God doesn't have a physical substance that we can say, oh, we look just like him, also it says he created male and female, so God doesn't look like a male, a female, or a cross-dresser, it means something deeper than looks. What it means is that we are like God in the fact that he gave us certain attributes that distinguish us from animals and plants. We are creative, we dream, we plan, we do may things that animals and plants do not. House cats have not created a union within an old ladies house to strike because their milk ration is not large enough, beavers don't pull a mortgage from the bank of the bear to pay for the building supplies to build that lovely "add on" to the dam. monkeys don't make a wonderful bio degradable paint and paint their trees purely for aesthetic purposes. A dog doesn't sit around and dream of the time he blew it and could have gone off to college and studied how to be an Arctic survival dog. They function on pure instinct and survival....now many people who i know will read this will say we are nothing more than just animals, i assure you we are not, to claim that degrades your very purpose and existence to nothing...not to mention spits in the Face of God. In this passage we see other things about God that he created us with in his likeness. God is a trinitarian God, The very Hebrew name of God Elohim if you break it down "El"=God "Oh"=Strength "Im"=makes it plural...so the translation of the very name of God means "the Strength of many witnesses" God is One Deuteronomy says "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, The Lord is One." But God has three distinct persons in the trinity..one God three persons. the Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. Equal in substance, but different in function. God is in perpetual relationship with himself. Content and happy in that union Now God is a relational God, he gave us the desire and ability for us in our nature to be relational. To long relationship. When the first man and woman were made, they walked in perfect union with God, but then sin entered, and that union was lost. Now there is a skism, a break, a chasm, an inability for us to be back in that relationship with God. This Sin spread through our blood stream, all of us, through our beings, contaminating everything about us, just like sugar in a gas tank, we are all born in this sin, we are caked in it, every thought we have, every action we have taken, everything in our life is sin, and caked in it. But this sin, also damaged the perfect plan in relationship we have on earth with each other. The family was designed to be an example of God in heaven on Earth. but now sin destroyed that dynamic. Which gives us, a man who had a cruel and evil heart, and acted in abuse towards a little child, and that child grew up, and because of that experience, decided he would abandon his Child. that child was me. Sin destroyed the ability for me to have a relationship with my father and sin now destroys our ability to have a relationship with our heavenly father. Although we are made in the image of God, it has now been bent and twisted by Sin. In our fallen state, a man can abuse and turn his back on his Child, God cannot turn his back on his children. The problem is that God is holy and cannot look upon Sin, which makes us not the children of God, but as Jesus said, "You are of your father the devil." King David in Psalm 51 says "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me." Paul says in Romans 3 "There is no one who does Good, no not one." Genesis says every though of our hearts is only evil all the time. We are lost in Sin. As my father was dying, he made no effort to ever see me, to ever talk to me, to ever try to reach me, and no effort to repair that breech between us....God isn't like that, he came to earth, in the being of Jesus Christ, and being perfect, lived a perfect sinless life, and died on the cross for us to repair that breach and to pay for the sin that so covers us. so we can again stand before God. My dad died and i never saw him, was not allowed, will have no funeral, no memorial service, and i do not know if i will ever see him again...Jesus died, and I know i will see him again sitting at the right hand of the father, my father, my true father fully restored and glorified. The way for that breach to be repaired in you is to repent of our sins, means to confess them, feel true heartfelt sorrow and brokenness over our sins, which are spitting in the face of Jesus who died for us. Then turning from them and in the power of the holy spirit to have our sinful nature transformed into the likeness of Christ, this will not happen overnight, but slowly we will be sanctified and changed into the likeness of his son, and second, is faith in Christ, faith as you would to a parachute, to trust it as you would as your life your immortal life depends on it, because it does when we do that we are born again, we are sons of God, and will be glorified with Christ and will be forever in relationship with him as we were designed to be where he will wipe away every tear from our eyes...If not, we go to our earthly fathers home...which is Hell..and he is Satan..where the worm never dies, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. I Love all of you who read this...I love my father...and i Love my God who loves me so much that he died for me. |
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