The Image of God

We talk about the image of God but we don’t believe it any more than Adam and Eve believed it. When the serpent said, “Has God said?” they doubted whether God had said, they gave credence to the serpent’s words and discredited God’s.

In Christ, God has restored us to His image, but we don’t believe it. We say we believe it. We say we believe in justification by and in Jesus Christ, but we don’t believe it. If we believed it we would call one another what God calls those restored to His image – we would call one another the term the Bible uses – we would call one another saints. But we allow our natural eyes to deceive us, just as Adam and Eve did, and just as Adam and Eve we think, “What we thought God said doesn’t make sense,” and we too eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil rather than from the Tree of Life, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yes, Pentecostals and charismatics may allow their “experience” to influence their interaction with the Biblical text (don’t’ we all?). But what about the rest of us who allow our experience of life to so influence our interaction with the Biblical text that we steadfastly refuse to call a saint a saint, who refuse to acknowledge the identity that we have in Christ, and who are aghast at those who dare to use the language of God as opposed to the language of common-sense man?

A people robbed of their identity is a people in slavery. As long as we think as slaves to sin we might as well remain in Egypt. Isn’t it time we took our eyes off ourselves and focused on Jesus Christ?