Friday | 20 December 2024
Our ‘image’ is how we know ourselves and are known by others. It is the essence of the name through which our identity has its expression. In this regard, an image is not inherently wicked. Rather, the eternal implications of one’s image – whether eternal life or eternal death – depends upon the source of that image.
We all were predestined to be made into the image and likeness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Gen 1:26. According to God’s immutable plan, this is to happen as we are born to see the kingdom of God and are then born of water and of the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God. Joh 3:3,5. The kingdom of God is the fellowship of Yahweh. Their fellowship is to become both the source and context of our life and expression, forever.
However, this predestination was forsaken through the fall of mankind. Satan deceived Eve with a lie, saying that if she ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil her eyes would be opened, and she would become like God. Gen 3:4‑5. Adam then disobeyed God, and dishonoured Christ as the Head of his house, when he listened to his wife and ate of this fruit. Gen 3:17. Through their disobedience, Adam and Eve strayed from God’s predestination for them as they sought to become the source of their own image and expression. The drive to craft their own image was established as another law in their hearts and, by implication, in the heart of every son and daughter who would be born after them. Rom 7:23.
Straying from our predestination to be made in the image and likeness of God to, instead, walk in our own way, is iniquity. Highlighting this point, the prophet Isaiah declared, ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’ Isa 53:6. Evidently, our iniquity is manifest by living according to a self‑sourced image.
Further Study:
GENESIS 3
References:
Gen 1:26
Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’
Joh 3:3
Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’
Joh 3:5
Jesus answered, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’
Gen 3:4-5
Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’
Gen 3:17
Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it”: cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.’
Rom 7:23
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
Isa 53:6
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.