Created in His Image

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‌Vision - One of the visions of this church is for it to be a house of healing not a haven of hurting. In other words, we take seriously the prophecy in Isaiah 61 that Jesus came to bind up the broken-hearted. So we pray and we desire for God to bring his broken-hearted here and that this place would be a place of healing. What that means is we have to first acknowledge our own brokenness and be willing to allow the great physician to heal or bind up our broken hearts. And then, be willing to be allow the Lord to work through us to reach those who are broken around us.

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Introduction:

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Today we are starting a new series called “Identity.” We are in the midst of an identity crisis in our country. Not only has our country forgotten where it came from and the values that it once stood for, but the people within the country cannot even tell the difference between a man and a woman anymore. The rise of identity politics has also given way for even more division in our country and now we stand at the brink of another war and I’m not 100% certain that the president even knows who he is anymore.

Now, here’s what we know as christians, the world is going to do what the world is going to do. It should be of no surprise to us that the world is having issues in terms of identity. They have forgotten who their father is and therefore forgotten who they are.

The Lion King - Remember who you are.

So here’s what I think. I think not only has the world forgotten who they are and where they come from, I believe the church is also in the midst of an identity crisis, which means you and I are in the midst of an identity crisis. Decades of popular American Christianity has ruined us in many ways.

We think the church is healthy if we fill a stadium or have thousands of people. In other words we think the more popular we are, healthier we are.

We think the church is healthy if we have large donors or bring in millions of dollars. In other words, we think the richer we are the healthier we are.

We think the church is healthy if have rousing bible studies or home groups. In other words, we believe the more educated we are, the healthier we are.

We think the church is healthy because have lots of programs. In other words, we believe the more you do, the healthier you are.

While all of these things are fairly innocent and good, they are not indicators of health. To say it another way, yes, the church needs people, money, bible studies and programs, but that does not make us healthy if we have those things. Our spiritual and emotional health doesn’t depend on those things. That would be like a person thinking because they are rich, that means they aren’t having a heart attack. It’s like thinking just because you are highly educated, that means you can’t have high blood pressure.

Our spiritual health is deeper than that. This won’t be a superficial sermon series and I’m going to ask you to take a deep look into your own heart and how you perceive the Lord and who you are in Him. I want you to really dive deep into this with your family because how we see the Lord and ourselves is what we pass on to our kids.

So we are starting this new sermon series called Identity and today I want to kick this off by starting to laying the foundation of this idea. And this is my main point today. We are CREATED in His Image.

Genesis 1:26–28 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

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The Trinity

Relationship is the foundation for everything.

This passage, found in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, the book of origins reveals to us that there is more to God than just what meets the eye. From the beginning, we get glimpses of what we would call the doctrine of the Trinity - which is God in Three Persons. Or in other words, one God who is expressed in three distinct persons in the Scriptures. Part of understanding identity is understanding God.

The Bible teaches us that God is triune. He is not multiple Gods, but one God. We are not poly-theistic, but mono-theistic. We believe in one God.

We also believe that he exists in three persons simultaneously. Three in one. We do not believe that God expresses himself in three persons sequentially but simultaneously. That means that he wasn’t father, then became son, then became Holy Ghost. That would be a wrong view of God. We believe that he has eternally existed as these three persons.

So essentially, God is one in essence, three in persons. So built into this idea of three persons in one God is the idea of relationship. God is in constant relationship with himself. And relationship is the foundation of everything.

In the Bible we see God first has relationship with himself, the three members of the trinity in constant relationship, but we also see that God has relationship with mankind. And not just a shallow relationship, but an intimate one. God literally breathes into us his spirit. Adam received God’s spirit as the breath of life.

And throughout the Bible you see God desiring and interacting with mankind in deep and profound ways, not just surface level, but deep heart issues. So God cares about our heart. He’s deeply concerned about what is going on within our inner man.

So this is who we are made after and what we are made for in the broadest of senses. We are made after a God who is in constant relationship and we are created for relationship with Him and with others. This is why we see God say in Genesis 2 in reference to the creation of Adam that it is not good for man to be alone and then he creates Eve. God realizes our psychological need for relationship because of who we are created after.

Regardless of whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, you need other people. We were not designed to be hermits in caves alone, despite the fact that many of us on a bad day say that’s what we want the most. We are designed to be in relationship. Now for the introverts, I’m not sayin you need to be in a ton of relationships, and for the extroverts, I’m not saying you need to be in every relationship. There should be boundaries and limits, but we are foremost created for relationship and anything less than that is unbiblical and ungodly.

In other words, we need to fight the notion that we can do this on our own and we don’t need anyone else. The American ideal of rugged individualism isn’t biblical in its extreme. We were made to help and to serve and to love one another. Period.

In His Image & Likeness

Now this phrase really piques my interest. The Bible tells here’s in verse 26 that God creates man in his image and after his likeness. Now these are two different words so I want to tackle them individually. Now, before I start, I do want to say a lot of this is debated interpretations, so there’s not a consensus here and I’m just giving you what I think after some study.

Let’s start with “in his likeness”.

Likeness is the Hebrew word demoot. Which is what we would think about as far as a resemblance or a mirror. We were created as God’s mirror. We reflect him.

Just like my son Elijah reflects me, he looks like me, in his case right now a smaller version of me, but he demoot’s me. He’s my mini-me, we might say in today’s lingo.

Likeness gives us a look at the outward appearance. We are modeled after God in how we look. It’s not an exact replica, but a reflection of Him.

The second word that I want to look at and spend time on is the Hebrew word for image, which is Selem.

Now, in studying the differences between these two words, what I came away with was this. Selem, compared to demoot, is more than just an outward expression of resemblance, but an internal/spiritual expression of that person. In other words, we were created to carry the essence of God in us. We were created to represent him.

This is found in the context as God gives man dominion over the earth in verse 28 (Gen 1:28)

Genesis 1:28 ESV

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

So God was to rule the heaven and we were to rule the earth. We were to represent or re-present him here on the earth. So now you can start to get a picture of these two ideas. God creates us to represent him here and in some fashion our nature and makeup is in his likeness.

Now it has to be mentioned here, I am not saying that we are God. We are made in his image, not to be his image. We are not made to be God, we are made to represent him. 2nd Cor 4:4 says the Christ is the Image of God.

2 Corinthians 4:4 ESV

In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Not made in his image, but He IS the Image of God. Or as the author of Hebrews puts it, Jesus “is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” (Heb 1:3) This leads us to the fall.

Hebrews 1:3 ESV

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

So we were originally created in God’s image, but then we fall into sin as Adam and Eve eat from the forbidden tree. So what happens?

“This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.” - Genesis 5:1-3

Notice this pattern. We were created in the likeness or resemblance of God, but when Adam, after he fell, has children, it doesn’t say they were in God’s image, it says the were fathered after his own image. In other words, everyone that came after Adam was fathered after his image and his image was a broken distorted image of God. In the fall, God’s image in Adam was marred, it was deformed. Now we have inherited that deformed image.

Man still stands in the image of God—twisted, broken, abnormal, but still the image-bearer of God.

Francis Schaeffer

Now this brings us to an argument we will hear from Paul in 1st Corinthians 15 and Romans 5. We are from one of these images. We either image Adam or image Christ. We either find our root, our heritage, our belonging in Adam or in Christ. This is why Jesus uses the born again language in John 3. When you were born of your parents, you were born according to the lineage of Adam. In order to break free from that line which leads only to death, you need to be reborn into a different family tree, you need to be reborn in Christ. You need to come from his lineage.

1 Corinthians 15:45–49 ESV

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

In other words, what Paul is saying is this. We are first born in the natural and then reborn in the spiritual. And just as we borne the image of Adam, we shall also now bear the image of Christ. And truly this is the meaning of the term Christian - Little Christ. We are to be his representation on the earth.

Takeaways

What does all of this mean for us today?

Our identity must be defined by God. He is the one who created us, we do not get to define ourselves. The potter is the one who molds the clay, the clay doesn’t get to determine what it’s made into. In other words, unlike the world, which says I can find my identity in my sex, my race, my ethnic group, my politics, my education, my career, my spouse, etc……we find find our identity in Him and Him alone.

Our identity is rooted in relationship. Who we are is foundational based on who created us. We are to be in relationship with Him. He created us and desires relationship with us. God creates Adam in the garden and walks with him in the cool of the day. There is intimacy there. When we run from intimacy with God or with others, we are not being true to our identity.

Our identity is found in the likeness of God, therefore we all have value. One of the reasons we are a pro-life church is because we believe that all of life is created in the image of God and all of life is therefore intrinsically valuable. We cannot separate those ideas.

Our identity is found in Christ. If you are a Christian today or if you want to be, your new identity is not found in who you were born as, your family tree, your past, but in Christ. And in Christ we are being renewed in the image of God. We are brought back to perfection in Him and that is based not on anything we do or have done but totally on him and his finished work on Calvary.

This great gift of God, the salvation of our souls, is no other than the image of God fresh stamped on our hearts. It is a “renewal of believers in the spirit of their minds, after the likeness of Him that created them.”

John Wesley

‌Prayer Point

In light of the knowledge of you recreating me in your image, what are you asking me to believe about myself today, Father?