Imago Dei

Introduction

Did anyone else have a heavy week this week?

The biggest story this week was of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but we cannot forget the stabbing Iryna Zarutska and the school shooting that killed two students at Evergreen Highschool. All of this is heightened by the fact that the 24th anniversary of 9.11 was on Thursday.

What do we do with these tragedies? I know there are so many feelings right now.

Some of you are tired of talking about it. You have a fatigue to all of the violence that you see. And you think that’s wrong, but you really don’t know how to feel. You are weary.

Some of you are in shock at having seen graphic video content this week that looks like what soldiers see in war zones and probably carry some trauma from it. You don’t watch someone die and then go on about your day. That’s not normal.

Some of you are angry at the horrific injustice of what has happened this week. And you don’t really know where to put that. You have said some things you shouldn’t have said this week, or you haven’s said anything and you are about to burst.

Some of you are heartsick in a way that you cannot describe. And you don’t know why… because you have never met these people before, and you have gaslit yourself into believing that you shouldn’t be so sensitive.

Some of you are deeply grieved by what has happened to these individuals this week, but you know that for every story that is publicized there are dozens of stories of murder and horror and injustice against mankind that haven’t gotten airtime.

Some of you are scared. Charlie Kirk was a believer in Jesus. And you wonder what the USA will look like who proclaim Him as well.

Some of you are confused. Why do these school shootings keep happening? What is causing people to want to to this.

Most of us are a combination of those feelings. It’s normal to feel those things, because what happened this week was unnatural and incomprehensible. Yet, while it is incomprehensible and unnatural, it is not unexplainable.

What you have held in tension (wrestled with) this week is two competing truths - man is precious beyond comprehension, and man is also deeply flawed.

But what is more difficult is not what we FEEL, but what we THINK. How do we think clearly through the fog? How do we find clarity with so many voices? What, my friends, are we supposed to think?

As often as I ask a question like this, I know you know the answer. As Christ-followers, we can at least be predictable. Where do we go? We go to the Word of God. And isn’t it comforting that we don’t have to question where to go. We just know where we will find rest and truth and solace.

Read Genesis 1:26-31.

Explanation

Genesis 1:26–27 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.

What is the imago Dei?

In the Creation story, God makes all things, “according to their kinds,” but notice that when God starts to make man, he makes them, “in His image.” Something is distinct about mankind. Animals look like themselves, but humanity is something distinctly different.

Man was made to “mirror” or “represent” God.

Wayne Grudem // “Let us make man to be like us and represent us.”

Our reflection of God doesn’t come from our abilities to reason or know or walk or talk or throw a baseball.

In essence, we are representatives of God on the earth.

Owen Strachan // “Man is made by God to display God to the world God has formed.”

Wrong ideas of being “made in God’s image.”

Being made in God’s image means that God is like humans only much bigger.

Being made in God’s image means that humans are divine and can become “like God” one day.

We are like God in some ways and unlike Him in others. but we not God and will never be God. IMPORTANT. We are like God in some ways and unlike Him in others. but we not God and will never be God.

Human beings emulate or express some of the characteristics of God.

We have a spiritual life. Every human desires to worship something, because God created us to worship him.

We know right from wrong.

We desire and crave relationships with other people. (Man and Woman)

God made man and woman.

God made mankind for other relationships.

We can reason and think logically. We communicate with language. We are inventive and resourceful. We are creative. We have a sense of the future and not simply the moment in front of us.

Yet, we have sinned against God, and this image is tarnished, fractured, and broken. We are not all that God desired us to be.

How does God see humanity? What value does He place on us?

We are the high point and the climax of God’s creation.

Psalm 8:3–6 “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,”

John Piper said once, “if you took 7 Million statues of yourself and placed them all over the world, it would say something about you.” God desires to be known, and he is best displayed in US.

Because we are created in God’s image, we are inherently warranting of dignity and worth.

Having dignity means deserving of honor and respect. Having worth means having weight. Your life matters to God and, therefore, it should matter to others.

This stamp of the Imago Dei is inherent in us.

It is not something that can be given to you. It is not something that can be taken away from you.

For many years, Imago Dei meant that man had god-like characteristics. He was rational, spiritual, etc. Because we had those traits, we were in God’s image. He had them, and because we have some of them, we are in his image.

And that reason alone was cited in the extermination not only of the Jews in Nazi Germany but of anyone who was considered a less-than-optimal person to the Third Reich.

If rational thought is necessary for one to be considered “in the image of God” then what about a dementia patient or an infant? Your worth is not in what you are capable of doing. It is intrinsic.

The world would say of us, “You do, therefore, you are.” God would say, “You are, therefore, you do.”

This is why we don’t treat people based upon their economical value.

It is not economical to have a child. That child contributes nothing to your economic status.

Yet, that child makes your life indescribably more valuable.

How do we see ourselves?

The image of God is defaced in us - to the point that we do not see it anymore. You may not have done any of these things listed today, but

Michelangelo’s Pieta is one of the most beautiful sculptures of all time, and it is representative of Christian work in that period. *here is an image

In 1972, a Hungarian man named Laszlo Toth attacked the sculpture with a hammer while shouting that he was Jesus Christ. He struck the Virgin Mary’s face and body multiple times, breaking off her nose, part of her eyelid, and chipping her arm. For months after, fragments of marble were found on the floor where pilgrims had scrambled to pocket them as souvenirs. Restoration was painstaking, requiring experts to reattach hundreds of tiny fragments and fill in missing pieces with marble powder. To this day, the Pietà is protected by bulletproof glass, so that visitors can admire it but never again get close enough to harm it.

This story is remarkably similar to our own brokenness.

One who claimed to be God or like God marred it. How ironic? “God does not want you to be like Him. Take and eat and be like Him.” Who marred it? Us at the assistance of the great tempter.

In the marring of this statue, it lost some of what it was supposed to be. Mary’s face and arm were damaged greatly.

We have been so damaged, haven’t we. Broken into pieces by ourselves and others.

We have defaced ourselves.

Others deface us. I think we are so often like the Pieta - broken with people taking pieces of the carnage with them. Seen as a commodity instead of a human.

What a violation of what Michelangelo intended.

However, the image of what was supposed to be remained. Something that is marred is not destroyed. It is not beyond redemption or reworking.

You are not hopeless. You are not beyond redemption.

We may not be all that we are supposed to be, but we are not beyond the hands of the master sculptor of our souls, King Jesus.

And eventually, sculptors began to put that sculpture back together. Bit by bit and piece by piece.

If you are in Jesus, the Lord is putting His image back into you.

It is sometimes painful. There is much measuring and chipping and molding. But the result is going to be beautiful.

Although the artwork was deformed and broken, it had not lost its value - because of who made it.

How many of you had heard of the Pieta before I mentioned it was Michelangelo’s?

Pieta? Is that a desert or a sports car?

But when I said, “Michelangelo scuplted it.” The value immediately went up.

You have been created by the God of the universe who loves you deeply and intimately.

The Pieta represents the best and worst of humanity.

What is more horrific than the brutal death of a man?

And what is more beautiful than the love of a mother.

Finally, the Pieta tells us what God is going to do about out brokenness. The Perfect one. The only man without spot of blemish gave Himself in our stead.

How does this change how we see and, therefore, treat others?

We treat ALL people with dignity and worth, because we see the stamp, the imprint of God, on them.

We treat people with honor and dignity that do not think like us.

We treat people with honor and dignity that do not act like us.

We treat people with honor and dignity that do not look like us.

We treat people with honor and dignity that have done horrific things.

We treat people with honor and dignity that we don’t like.

We get people to Jesus so that HE can clean them up.

Beloved, the world will act like the world unless we get them to Jesus.

“Consider how precious a soul must be, when both God and the devil are after it.” Charles Spurgeon

1 Timothy 1:12–17 ESV

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Invitation

You are marred, flawed, and broken. But you are precious beyond your wildest imagination to the God who created the heavens. Come to Him and find rest.