OUR LORD FASHIONS US INTO HIS IMAGE
In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth and filled them with good things and the final task He completed was to make human beings in His own likeness and image. Genesis 1 verse 27 records it this way;
So God created mankind in his own image in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
This astonishing passage reveals that we humans were designed to look like God and to operate like God. We were imbued with the characteristics that make God who He is.
As the story of the human race progressed, we discover that human beings chose a path of independence from God and as a result, our species suffered a catastrophic falling away that caused our race and indeed the whole earth to suffer a trainwreck of eternal proportions.
We humans, having been designed to be like God and able to function as His representives, rebelled against God and chose instead to represent ourselves and our own interests. All our pathways, as a race, through the fallen creation, show marked evidence of our own fallen nature.
All manner of mayhem, brutality, cruelty, carelessness, war, confusion, purposelessness, corruption, hatred, predation and murder are the fruit of our fallen nature as the laws of sin and death played out in our existence. The human race, refusing to fulfil the function we were made for, ran headlong into severe limitations of survival when trying to fulfill purposes other than those that we were designed for.
This was our eternal lot and we were all bound to it until the appearing of our Lord Jesus who paid the ransom to re-acquire us from the kingdom of darkness.
Jesus paid by His blood for us and when each of us believed in Him, we became children of God. We all remain in our bodies that are tainted by the corruption of the fall but the Lord, in His wisdom, made provision for us to begin to ascend out of the mire sin and to regain the image of God in ourselves which our frames were originally designed to carry.
The apostle Paul, in Romans 8 verse 29, writes of the regaining of the image of God this way;
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
The passage says that we are being conformed to the image of the Jesus, the Son of God and because Jesus is the exact representation of God, being made into the image of Jesus is synonymous with being restored to the image of God.
Another passage in Colossians 3 verse 9 - 10, says it more directly;
You have put off the old self [literally “man”] with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
The great gift of Jesus is salvation and from that, even though we are fallen, the Lord our God undertakes to reshape us into the image and likeness of God as we were meant to be from the time we were on the drawingboards of creation.
It is no wonder that the Lord Jesus said in Mathew 11 verse 28 - 30;
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
If we were to function according to design, our burdens would be light.
A Lamborghini Aventador would probably creak and groan if it were used to haul loads of bricks to construction sites through muddy roads but when set on a racing circuit, its yoke is easy and its burden is light.
Bless the Lord our God.
Amen.
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