GLEANINGS — December 8, A.D. 2013                                                                                                               "Imago Dei, Part One"

Human nature is an appropriate topic for this season when the adoring focus of Christendom is upon the tender, amazing wonders of Jesus' miraculous conception and His virgin birth. We Bible believers rightly cherish the truth of the incarnation of the eternal Son, that singular historical event when God took on human nature. Well...what is human nature? What sort of being is mankind? How are we alike or different from other earthly life forms, or angels, or demons?

Imago Dei is Latin, and means image of God. The first chapter of the Bible presents this basic truth: "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." (Genesis 1:27)

Grasping this fundamental reality concerning what human beings are – created representations of the uncreated One – is essential to a sound understanding of God's word. If we miss or marginalize this fundamental reality, we are bound to go astray in many ways. 

Before God's masterpiece was made (as briefly summarized in the verse above), the creation was good in God's eyes but not yet VERY good. It was not until Adam was made of the dust of the ground, and Eve then formed of Adam's substance, that God would utter that final approbrium which appears a few verses later in Genesis chapter one:

"Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day." (verse 31, emphasis added)

We should be both thrilled and astonished in consideration of what we are. How precious is each person! We are set apart from all other creatures, each one of us a living example of what our great Creator is like! And yet, we wonder, how can this be? Does not Scripture in various ways and in diverse places tell us that God is pure spirit...that He is equally present in His fulness at every place and time, that He is possessed of faculties such as almighty power, infinite understanding, that He has no beginning nor end? How can it be said that a human being is remotely like that?

Let's introduce a couple of "million dollar" words: ANTHROPOMORPHIC and THEOMORPHIC. The suffix morphic we see in both words means "form of." Anthropo-morphic means having the form of man, and theo-morphic means having the form of God. 

Let's give God credit. He is not anthropomorphic, but we are theomorphic. In other words, this is like a one-way street. We are like him, but we run into trouble assuming that He is like us. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts," says the LORD (Isaiah 55:9). 

Jeremiah adds, "...there is none like You, O LORD! You are great, and Your name is great in might." (Cf. Jeremiah 10:6)

to be continued...