Humanity: Created in God's Image | Genesis 1:26-31
Brian G. Hedges | May 8, 2016
Thank you, worship team. Good morning. How would you define human nature? What is a human being? What is the basic, irreducible nature of man? There have been lots of answers to that question across the centuries. There was Shakespeare who said,
"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2)
Eric Fromm said, “The only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve is man.”
Mark Twain called man, “The Animal that Blushes and the only one that does it or has occasion to.”
Carl Sagan, a patron saint of philosophical naturalism said, “Man is a transitional animal.” [Transitional in the chain of evolution.] “He is not the climax of creation.” (Sagan, Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective)
Maybe you noticed the key word that ties all of those quotations together, and it’s the word animal. And that is, for many people in the world, what man is. He is the highest of the animals. In contrast to those definitions, consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s wonderful essay entitled, “What is man?” King used explicit biblical language and Christian categories to get at the essential nature of man. And he argued that man is something between an animal and God. More than an animal, but less than God. He uses especially Psalm 8, “What is man that you are mindful of him? and the Son of Man that you consider him? You’ve made him a little lower than the angels, but you’ve crowned him with glory and honor.”
Here’s a quotation from King’s wonderful essay, “My friends,” he said, “there is something in man that cannot be calculated in materialistic terms. Man is a being of spirit. This is ultimately that which distinguishes man from his animal ancestors. He is in time, yet above time. He is in nature, yet above nature. He is made to have communion with that which is eternal and everlasting, We cannot imagine an animal writing a Shakespearean play. We have never seen a group of animals sitting down discussing intricate problems concerning the political and economic structure of a society. We have never come across a group of animals speculating on the nature and destiny of the universe. But man, that being that God created just a little lower than the angels, is able to think a poem and write it, he’s able to think a symphony and compose it. He’s able to imagine a great civilization and create it. Through his amazing capacity for memory and thought and imagination, man is able to leap oceans, break through walls, and rise above the limitations of time and space. Through his powers of memory man can have communion with the past, through his powers of imagination man can embrace the uncertainties of the future…”
That’s a very eloquent testimony to a Christian view of man.
What is man? What is a human being? How we answer that question is vitally important, because it will shape how we think about human nature, about human dignity, about human rights. It will shape how we think about ethics, how we treat one another in family, and in society, and in the world, and much more.
And so this morning we are going to think about the Biblical answer to this question as we look at Genesis 1:26-31.
This is the third message in our series on these initial chapters of Genesis. And today we’re looking very specifically at the climax of God’s creation—the sixth day of creation, as God creates humanity. Let’s read the passage together, Genesis Chapter 1, verse 26.
“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.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 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.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
This is God’s word.
So as we look at this passage I want us to think about three things.
I. God’s creation of humanity
II. God’s provision for humanity
III. God’s purpose for humanity
First of all:
I. God’s creation of humanity
We see this in verses 26 and 27. Let me just read the beginning of verse 26: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
There are a couple questions we have to ask about this verse. What does it mean, first of all, when the text says—where God says, “Let us make man in our image”? Why is the plural form used here? Why not, “Let me make man in my image.” And really the question here is whether this is a reference to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity or to something else. Is it a plural of majesty? Is it God speaking to the heavenly hosts, the heavenly court? You remember how Job talks about how the morning of creation all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:7). Is it something more akin to an editorial “we”? What is the exact reference here? Why does it say, “Let us make man in our own image”?
Victor Hamilton, in his fine commentary, surveys six possible interpretations. I’m not going to go through them all, but he says that “the best suggestion approaches the Trinitarian understanding but employs less direct terminology…” he refers back to God’s Spirit as the agent of creation in Genesis 1:2. And so he thinks the author is giving us a hint of plurality in the divine being, while coming short of a full a Trinitarian view of God.
Now, you might ask at this point now, now why this is really important? Why is this germane to this message? And the reason is, because the meaning of the text matters. The meaning of the text matters. This is the Word of God, given to us by divine inspiration through a human author. And when we are studying a text we always have to look at two things. We have to look at the original authorial intent. What did the original author mean? What did the original audience understand? We have to ask that question. And we have to look at the text in the light of all of God’s revelation in the canon of scripture—its canonical context. So part of our task in interpreting scripture is to ask these questions. And so I think the answer here must be that the original Hebrew author certainly wouldn’t have intended a reference to the Trinity - something that God had not yet revealed. Nevertheless, we have a hint of plurality within the divine being. We have a small clue that was enshrouded in mystery until the fullness of time when God sent his Son, and God sent his Spirit, into the world, for us and for our salvation.
And then we come to this statement about the creation itself, or the creation of man itself, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . .” And then in verse 27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
So the second question to ask here is, what is the image of God? What does it mean that God created man in his image?
James Montgomery Boice, that great Presbyterian pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, left us a wonderful three-volume exposition of Genesis. And he saw the image of God as consisting in three specific attributes. He said that the image of God had to do with personality, morality, and spirituality. (1) Personality, by which he means rational personhood, the capacities for creativity, and love, and worship; (2) Morality, involving both freedom and responsibility; and then (3) Spirituality, meaning that man was created for communion with God.
That’s a helpful definition. I want to give you another approach to it. We might call these the three R’s. You know the three R’s of education: reading, writing and arithmetic. Well, here are the three R’s that relate to our central nature as human beings.
We were created in the image of God, and that means:
• we were created to reflect,
• we were created to relate,
• we were created to reign.
(1) We were created to reflect. To reflect the image of God, just as a mirror reflects back an image to the person who looks in the mirror. Or as a mirror reflects light, so we were created to reflect the image that is the character of God. It is true we were created with rational capacity, we were created with conscience, we were created with an innate sense of right and wrong, we were created as spiritual and moral beings, and we were created specifically to display the character of God in the created world.
(2) We were also created to relate. It is interesting that the passage speaks of man in the very moment of creation in relational kinds of terms. We see this in a couple of ways. We see this, first of all, in the fact that God not only creates man, but he speaks to man. Speaking is a relational act. Man is created to be a hearer, a receiver of divine revelation. God not only creates man, he speaks to man. So we are created for relationship with God. We were created for a vertical relationship with God himself.
But notice also—the passage says that God created human beings as male and female. Now, we’ll talk more about this when we get to the end of Genesis 2. But here, at least, we can see that God created human beings as sexual beings, as beings with gender, and then he gives them the mandate “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.” That shows that one of God’s intentions for human beings is that they should form families, that they should reproduce, that they should build a society. All of this, of course, involves relationships. As we will see in Genesis chapter 2, when God created Adam, he said, “It is not good that man should be alone,” and so he created a helper, a companion for him, in creating the first woman. This tells us that God has created us, not only with this vertical capacity for relationship with God, but with a horizontal need for relationships with one another. We are created to relate. And in some ways we image God, we mirror God, we reflect God in our relational capacity, because God is not a solitary being. God is a being with plurality of personality. He is the triune God. And so at the heart of the universe is a society, a communion of three. And God created us to image his relational capacity.
(3) And then thirdly, another aspect of being created in the image of God is that we are created to reign. We see this in God’s command to “exercise dominion.” So, one of God’s intentions for humanity is that human beings rule as his representatives over the created world. So we’re created in the image of God with these various attributes and capacities.
Now, what’s the application of this? How does this shape our understanding of human nature and the essential nature of human personhood and human dignity and so on? I want to give you a couple of answers.
First of all, we have here the biblical basis for human rights and dignity and for moral responsibility. This is the biblical basis for human rights and dignity and for moral responsibility.
John Stott, in his great book Issues Facing Christians Today, grounds his whole discussion of human rights in Genesis 1. And he says that, because human beings are created in the image of God, therefore, they have certain inalienable rights. They have certain freedoms. They should therefore, have rights and freedoms of worship and of conscience and of speech. The right to the basic necessities of life; the right to life itself.
And notice here that all human beings are created in the image of God. Male and female he created them. So it’s not just men that are created in the image of God, it’s also women.
But it’s all human beings; it’s not just some men and women. Victor Hamilton in his commentary points out how in both Egyptian and in Ancient Near Eastern societies, kings were often called “images of God.” The kings were viewed essentially as divine or as the divine representatives on earth. But Genesis, in some ways, is a very polemical document: it’s written to correct and to contrast the theologies of the Ancient Near East. So Hamilton says, that this phrase, “image of God”—this designation—was not applied in the Ancient Near East to the canal digger or to the mason who worked on a ziggurat. But Genesis 1 uses this royal language to designate all human beings. All of humanity is related to God, not just the king. (Hamilton, 135)
So, right here you have a basis for human dignity for all human beings—human rights for all human beings—and then also therefore, a moral responsibility. Our responsibility to one another.
Now a couple of ways that you see this in Scripture is in Genesis 9:6. This is after the flood, and you have this mandate given by God to Noah, who is now the father of a new humanity. Here’s the mandate: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” In other words, one of the reasons why life is so precious, and why murder is so heinous a crime, is because every human being is created in the image of God. No life is dispensable, no life is cheap, no life should be wasted. So, murder is reprehensible because it’s an assault on God’s image in man.
Then in the New Testament in the letter of James—James 3:9-10—James is talking about the tongue, this little member that causes so much trouble, and he says, “With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers,” he says, “these things ought not to be so.”
So right there he’s grounding a morality of the tongue, a right use of words, he’s grounding it in the image of God. He says the reason you shouldn’t insult another human being, the reason you shouldn’t curse another human being, is because they are made in the image of God, they’re made in the likeness of God.
Now, you put all of this together, and what we have here is the biblical basis for opposing all injustice and laboring for all the human rights and freedoms of all people in the world. This is why we oppose racism as Christians. Because there are no inferior or superior races. All races are equally created in the image of God. This is why we oppose both patriarchy and chauvinism on one hand and radical feminism on the other hand. Because both men and women are made in the image of God. Distinct, yes, but equal in dignity and in personhood and in relation to God. This is why we also must oppose abortion, and euthanasia, and genocide, and ethnic cleansing, and human trafficking, and all other forms of evil that demean human dignity. Because human beings are made in the image of the Creator.
Now, my guess is that, at this point, I’m preaching to the choir. So let’s push this a little further. Here is why also, brothers and sisters, we should never be cruel or hateful in our speech, even towards those with whom we disagree. We should always be respectful, even when we’re talking about people of other political perspectives or people of other religions. We should always bless, not curse, our enemies. Here is one reason for avoiding all mockery in speech. Christians should not use racial slurs, or tell ethnic jokes, or make fun of people because of their economic status, or their physical features, or their intellectual capacities—because they’re made in the image of God. They’re image bearers, they’re God’s icons on earth. They’re made in his image and in his likeness; and therefore, we respect human life, we respect human dignity, we respect human personhood.
And then, another application of the image of God to us is seeing that here we have the pattern of moral and spiritual transformation. As we’ll see in a few moments, human beings have fallen terribly from the glory of God. And, in some ways, the image of God is terribly marred. It’s terribly scarred, the image of God. We don’t reflect the image of God as we once did as human beings. The vestiges of that image still remain as the passages in Genesis 9 and James 3 indicate. But yet, in a moral sense, we don’t bear the image of God as we once did. And so as we’re transformed, as we’re redeemed, one of the things that God is doing in redemption is renewing the image of God in us. And, in fact, that is what sanctification is. It’s the renewal of the divine image.
That’s why the Apostle Paul will so often describe our sanctification in terms of the renewal of the image. So, for example, in Ephesians Chapter 4, Paul described how we have been taught to “put off the old man, which belongs to our former manner of life and is corrupted through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:22-24) What is that? It’s the renewal of human nature. It’s the renewal of the moral image of God in us.
This is what it means to be conformed to the image of Christ, who is the image of God par excellence. Christ is the perfect human representative, the perfect man, and as we’re conformed into the image of Christ in redemption and sanctification, we are being renewed in our humanity. So we see here God’s creation of humanity in the image of God and its application to us.
II. God’s provision for humanity
The second point is God’s provision for humanity. God’s provision for humanity. We see this in several ways in the passage: in verse 28, the first sentence, “God blessed them.” God blessed them. God not only created human beings, he blessed them. Now, what does it mean that he blessed them? Well, at least part of what it means, is that human beings as they were originally created were given everything they needed by God. They were given everything that they needed for life to fulfill their vocation. They were given that by God. He provided for them abundantly.
As I mentioned last week John Sailhamer shows how the word “earth” here in the Hebrew is actually the word for land, and the focus of this chapter is very much on God’s preparation of the earth, his preparation of the land as a fit habitation for human beings. Almost casually, almost in a nonchalant way, the author says, God created the stars. “He made the stars also.” I mean, these are millions upon millions upon millions of other solar systems and galaxies and stars! He created the stars. But the focus is on this planet and on the human beings who live on this planet. Why? Because God created the world as a fit habitation for human beings, it’s part of his provision.
And then you see it in verse 29: God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.” Two times the passage says, “I have given…I have given.” God’s gift to man is the created world. And then we also see God’s provision in the pronouncement that God makes on creation. Where God, after he creates something throughout Genesis 1, says, “It was good.” All right? He sees what he has made, and he says that it is good. But then in verse 31, at the end of this creation week, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” It was very good.
That word “good” is an important word. That word has two connotations: it means first of all that which is useful, that which is beneficial, that which is good for us. God created the world, and he made it useful. He made it beneficial for human beings. But it also means that which is beautiful. That which is pleasant, that which is attractive. In fact, it’s the word that is used in Genesis 24:16 to describe Isaac’s future bride, Rebecca, where it says, “The young woman was very attractive in appearance.” It’s the same word, the same Hebrew word. So, God created the world useful and beneficial for us; it’s good in that sense. He created it beautiful. “All things bright and beautiful,” all right? He created them, and he created them for us. This is God’s provision for us.
Now, again, this has tremendous implications for us as we think about a biblical perspective on the created world—on created things—and how we’re to relate to the created world and to created things. It shows us, first of all, that we should not fear to enjoy created goods. Christianity stands in contrast to many religions that teach some kind of dualism, in which good and evil eternally coexist—so often that which is good being the realm of the spirit and that which is evil being the material world—so that created things are viewed as essentially evil. In contrast to that, Christianity tells us that God created a good world and that material things are good. Nature is good. The environment is good. Bodies are good. Food is good. Relationships are good. Sex is good. Work is good. Recreation and rest are good.
Now, none of things, none of these things are ultimate. All of these things have a very specific context in which their goodness can be kept intact. And, taken out of that context, used in ways that God did not design, they become destructive. But the things themselves are good, and we should not fear to enjoy these goods. God has created food and he’s given us all things richly to enjoy. When we receive these gifts of God with thankful hearts, they are good gifts.
On the other hand, we should not worship or exploit the world. A biblical view of creation shows us that creation is God’s gift. Creation is not God; therefore, we do not worship creation. Creation is God’s gift over which we are stewards. So we use it without abusing it, we don’t exploit creation. Some of you might remember this big blockbuster film a few years ago called Avatar. When I first saw Avatar, I was actually studying Genesis at the time, and I was struck by the contrast in how the film Avatar presented nature and creation in contrast to the Christian worldview. So, in this film there are all these human beings and they’ve gone to another planet called Pandora and the human beings are trying to exploit the planet; they want to strip it of its natural resources. But there are the native aliens on the planet, the Na’vi and they essentially worship the planet. In fact, they call this planet their “mother.” They have such a reverence, such a connection to the planet that they worship the planet.
There you’ve got the two extremes right there. You’ve got exploitation on one hand, you’ve got worship of creation, panentheism or pantheism where everything is God or God is in everything—a confusion of the created world with God himself.
The Christian vision is different from either one of those things. We don’t worship the natural world, but we don’t exploit it either. You see, God made the world, and it is good. And we are its stewards. But he is above the world as its Lord and its Creator; therefore, we worship him and not nature.
And I think all of this means that Christians of all people should be the most responsible stewards of creation. We should be the most responsible stewards of the environment. We should care about our environment, we should take care of it. We should have the greatest joy in its place in created things. We should enjoy a feast. We should enjoy relationships. We should enjoy the good gifts that God has given us to have.
But, on the other hand, we should have the loosest grasp on earthly comforts. Because they are not our ultimate good. They are not our god. God is our God, and we don’t worship these things. We enjoy them as lavish gifts from the hand of our Creator. But when he withholds them from us, we shouldn’t be discontent. We shouldn’t lose our happiness. We shouldn’t lose our peace. We shouldn’t lose our sense of well-being, because God is our God.
So, when you think about all the created goods that God has given us, he’s given us these things so richly, given them to us for our enjoyment. How do you handle these things? You know, the real test is whether we can use something that God has given appropriately, without abusing it. So…
• Can we eat food without overeating?
• Can we take care of our bodies without pinning all of our significance and self worth on our appearance?
• Can we work without overworking to the point of neglecting our families or our health?
• Can we embrace family without idolizing our spouses and our children?
• Can we receive the gift of sexual pleasure, but in the context of a covenantal relationship of marriage, where our focus is not mainly how she will please me, but on how I will please her?
• Can we enjoy recreation without allowing it to displace productivity and work?
Can we keep these things in their place? And we can, if we keep these things under the Lordship of the Creator, and we recognize them as gifts given to us by him, his provision for us as human beings.
So, God’s creation of humanity in the image of God, we’ve seen that; and God’s provision for humanity in the created world that he’s given us; and now thirdly, God’s purpose for humanity.
III. God’s purpose for humanity
What is God’s purpose for human beings? What is the chief end of man? I love the Westminster Shorter Catechism. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Or John Piper’s spin on it, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.” And that’s wonderful. That’s good. But you know what? It is missing a piece. It is missing a piece, because there is nothing there about the basic vocation that God gave human beings in Genesis 1. It’s true that our chief end, our purpose, is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. But one of the ways that we glorify God is by reflecting him. It’s by imaging him, and it’s by representing him and his reign in the earth for the praise of his name.
I think the key word here is this word: “dominion.” We were given the vocation to exercise dominion on the earth. And like the word “image,” this is a royal kind of word. It’s a word that points to man’s kingly existence under the kingship of God and God’s purpose for man to glorify him by reflecting his glory and to extend his reign in the world. That’s God’s purpose. God’s purpose for human beings is that we would extend God’s kingly reign and reflect his majestic glory in the world.
But here’s the problem. The problem is that, as human beings, we have fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). We have marred the image of God, and we have failed to extend his reign and to build his kingdom, and instead we try to build little empires of our own. And this is really true on all of its levels. We set up large and small empires of our own. Whether it’s the empire building of a powerful individual like Donald Trump, or whether it’s the imperialistic policies of a nation that takes advantage of other nations, or whether it’s the little mini kingdom-building that we all try to do in our families and in our social circles, where basically we view people as a means to get what we want. When we do that in any of those ways, we are usurping the kingship of God, and instead of extending the kingdom of Christ, we’re trying to build a kingdom that is in competition. This is the condition of the Fall, right? This is where we are now. And this is why we need the gospel so desperately.
James Montgomery Boice gave a very helpful illustration from Donald Grey Barnhouse, who was his predecessor at Tenth Presbyterian. And Barnhouse compared man’s fallen condition to a three-story house that had been damaged in wartime. The third story, the top story, had completely collapsed. It was completely demolished. And it was collapsing in on the second story, so that the second story is in ruins, and the weight of all of this put pressure on all the walls on the first story, so that the walls are cracked and the foundation is in jeopardy and it’s all doomed to collapse entirely sooner or later. And Barnhouse basically said, this is what happened to Adam. His body was the dwelling of his soul, and his spirit, the way he related to God, was above that. And that third story, that third level, the relationship with God, was completely collapsed—demolished by sin.
And then the wreckage of our failed relationship with God affects all of our other relationships. It affects us psychologically, and it affects us socially, so that the whole social dimension of our existence is affected by our broken relationship with the Creator. And all of that places tremendous weight on us, even in our physical frame—our physical body—so that the whole creation itself and our created bodies are subject to death and decay. (Boice, p. 92)
But the good news of the gospel, as Boice points out, is that God’s salvation involves the redemption of the whole creation project. So that God regenerates our spirit and restores our relationship with God, and he sanctifies us in our souls and bodies, so that our relationships begin to be worked out as we are renewed in the image of God. And eventually we wait for future salvation—resurrection—as we are raised from death and made like Jesus Christ in all of his glory. (Boice, p. 92)
So the good news is that God’s purpose for humanity is realized in Christ.
Now let me close in this way. Wes began our service this morning by calling attention to Ascension Sunday. Today is Ascension Sunday. Ascension is the fortieth day after Easter, and ascension, I think, is one of those essential elements of the history of salvation that is not duly celebrated by Christians. We make a big deal out of Easter, but we don’t make a big deal out of his ascension. But the ascension is just as crucial, it’s just as crucial for our salvation as Easter. Because in the ascension of Christ, what we see is the glorification and the exaltation of human nature itself. In the ascension of Christ, God exalted human nature to his throne so that, as John Duncan, that great Scottish theologian put it, “The dust of man is seated on the throne of Heaven.”
And one of the ways we see this in Scripture is how the New Testament writers use creation language and connect it to the story of Christ. So, I mentioned at the beginning how Martin Luther King, Jr. used Psalm 8 to describe the essential nature of man. It’s a wonderful Psalm. But the writer to the Hebrews also used Psalm 8. And he used Psalm 8 specifically in relationship to Christ, showing how Jesus is the one who has fulfilled human destiny in his own person through his death and through his resurrection. And so I want to end by giving you this quotation from Hebrews 2, which quotes from Psalm 8.
Hebrews 2 beginning in verse 6, “It has been testified somewhere, ‘What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.” Now you can see the creation language right there. Everything under the subjection, under the dominion of man. But notice what the author says. He says, “Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.”
We don’t see the created world in subjection to man. I mean, we have earthquakes and floods and fires. We have all the devastation of war. We have all the breakdown in society. All of these things show us that man is not exercising dominion as he should. That’s why the author here says, “at present we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But,” he says, “we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” You know what he’s telling us? He’s telling us that Christ has defeated our greatest enemy, death itself, the result of the curse on the fall of human beings; and that Christ has now been exalted, he’s been crowned with glory and honor, he’s been exalted as the true man—the man who has defeated death in his death and who has been raised in newness of life and who has ascended to the glory of the Father.
A great hymn writer put it this way. I’ll close with these words,
He has raised our human nature
On the clouds to God’s right hand.
There we sit in Heavenly places,
There with him in glory stand.
Jesus reigns adored by angels,
Man with God is on the throne.
By our mighty Lord’s ascension,
We by faith behold our own.
When we look at Christ, we see the mirror of what we someday will be. We see in Christ the image of God fully restored and exalted to the right hand of God as he’s ascended to God’s throne. And we see our destiny realized. We see our purpose realized; we see what someday we will be.
Let’s pray.
Father, how we thank you for the glorious work of creation, and especially the glorious work of new creation, that in Christ all that we have lost through sin and through the fall is being restored to us. In Christ we see what a human being should really be. And by your grace and through the power of your Spirit, as we behold Christ, we now are being transformed into his image from one degree of glory to the next, so that we are being made like him. And we thank you for this, we thank you for the hope that this gives us, and we thank you for the perspective that your word gives us on how we are to live as human beings in this world. Would you use your word this morning to create within our hearts profound respect for human beings as made in your image? Would you use your word to set in order our loves and our desires, so that we will use and enjoy created things without letting them become gods, idols in our hearts? And most of all, would you lift our minds and our hearts to our future, to our destiny as it’s realized in Christ? As we come to the table this morning, we come to eat the elements of creation, bread and juice. But we also come by faith to feed on the crucified, risen, and ascended Christ, and to draw strength and grace from his glorified humanity. So as we come to the table, would you give us faith to receive Christ himself, to feed on Christ, to draw strength from him? Would you let us commune with him, partake of him? As Wes mentioned earlier in the service, may we take of Christ, even as we take of Christ through the hearing of the gospel, may we now take of Christ through coming to the Table. Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
