I planned on moving to questions related to the Advent season, but one question kept popping up as I re-read the creation story: What does it mean that we've been created in God’s image?
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. [Genesis 1:27]
There’s nothing in the Bible to suggest a flesh-and-blood image. God is a spiritual entity, despite the very human-looking images we see depicted by everyone from Michelangelo to Monty Python. Does it mean that we are spiritual beings as God is spiritual, or is there something else to it?
The comments to the post Do we have a purpose? sent me searching. In seeking, I found an interesting blog called Musings on Science and Theology and a post Love Is the Name of the Game, which included the video below from N.T. Wright. It’s over 11 minutes long, but well worth the listen (okay, at least it was for me… I’ll let you decide on your own).
In the first 3 minutes or so, Wright talks about Jesus invoking the “ancient human vocation” of being image bearers:
“God calls human beings to be his image bearers. … People sometimes think an image is like a mirror reflecting God back to God, but that’s not how it’s supposed to work. It’s supposed to be an angled mirror reflecting God out into the world and reflecting the praises of the world back to God. That’s what it means to be image bearers. That’s right there in Genesis 1 and 2…. The priesthood of believers is an Old Testament idea that all God’s people are supposed to be the ones who gather up the praises of the whole world and present them to God and who act as God’s stewards and agents to bring his love and his light into the world.”
God’s people struggled – and still struggle – with what it means to be a priesthood of believers and to be God’s image bearers [I realize “image bearers” may not mean the same thing as being created in the image of God, but Wright doesn’t exclude the possibility]. Wright says that Jesus brought this calling into focus. Maybe the question should be: How do I live my life as the image of God?
Here’s something NT Wright says later in the video (beginning around the 8:50 mark):
“Sometimes people are frightened of the things they enjoy because they think of it as self-indulgent…. Again and again, God gives you the gifts so that the stuff that you enjoy doing may well be the way in which he wants you glorify him in the world.”
This is something I keep telling my sons and I hope that one day some of it sinks in: Think of the things you love doing as a gift from God. Then think of ways to do the things you love that turn it into your gift from God to the world.
In Love Is the Name of the Game is this advice to the communities of believers:
“We will not make a difference by having a better Sunday morning service, by serving better coffee, by having a more extroverted and energetic staff, by avoiding the hard questions, by keeping things shallow and palatable. Nor will we make a difference by focusing on precision in theological expression or the glory and sovereignty of God. We will make a difference by being the people of God such that his love is evident in us and through us.”
Is being that people of God what it means to be created in God’s image? Do you see that as your vocation?
Do you agree with NT Wright’s concept of being an image bearer? What do you think it means to be created in God’s image?
This is how John Rybicki wrapped up his 4-week class on the incarnation:
ReplyDelete"Jesus is God's self-interpretation in history. If we accept the incarnation, then our understanding of God now includes all of the temporal experiences of Jesus....
"Jesus wanted to change the worldview of those who genuinely wanted to respond to God... resulting in an equitable, compassionate, and righteous 'kingdom of God' on earth....
"Jesus' followers could... did... and must continue his work."
If we want to know what being an image bearer means, follow Jesus.
Sometimes the Amplified Bible (A more literal translation from to the original Hebrew and Greek) has a bit different take, such as:
ReplyDeleteGen 1:26 says “God said, Let Us [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] make mankind in Our image, after Our likeness” (in the Amplified Bible, the brackets indicate clarifying words not actually expressed in the original text). How can the Father, Son and Holy Spirit look alike physically? Maybe I can see the Father and Son looking physically alike, but I thought that one of the main attributes of a spirit was that it didn’t have a physical manifestation.
Gen 1:27 says “So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
1 Cor 11:7 says “For a man ought not to wear anything on his head [in church], for he is the image and [reflected] glory of God [his function of government reflects the majesty of the divine Rule]”. It would seem that this promotes Wright’s interpretation of "image". Then again, this was the passage that conservatives in the 1960s used to put down those dirty long-haired commie pinko hippies and coerce them into cutting their hair. Seems like it didn’t work too well.
You have to seriously question just what God looks like when He appears several ways in the old testament or in the parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matt 25 when Jesus says “in so far as you did it for one of the least [in the estimation of men] of these My brethren, you did it for Me”. Also, interestingly, in verse 35 Jesus says “For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you brought Me together with yourselves and welcomed and entertained and lodged Me”. I read somewhere that the word “strangers” in biblical times meant the same thing as “immigrants” does today. Hmmm.