Whose Image Do We Bear?

A small item in today's paper describes some guy in Ottawa, Ontario, who was beaten up by thugs.  The victim complained that he was the victim of a "hate crime" because of the way he looks:  intensely tattooed and pierced, with black-inked eyes, a split tongue, and implanted silicone horns on his forehead.  He claims that "...making me look like the person I want to look like is almost a religious experience for me."

No doubt.

Out of every people and nation, God calls people for one purpose:  He wants "images" of Himself in a darkened world.  He wants His marvelous light to shine out of darkness so that all men might come to a saving knowledge of Who He Is.  He wants men and women whose character says, "This is what God is like."  But those who do not know God cannot know what He is like, nor can our 'natural goodness' or righteousness even begin to approach the goodness and righteousness of God:  "We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

In fact, science is now discovering that we all bear the "image" of our ancestors, not only in appearance, but also in experience.  A posting on FB yesterday described in detail how our experiences change our DNA by adding or depleting chemicals in the brain, so that it is entirely possible to pass on fears, anxieties, even irrational behaviors, to our descendants.  From the beginning, this has been the teaching termed "original sin"  -- we inherit the weaknesses as well as the strengths of our ancestors.

In fact, even before science, we have the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden "eating" of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  It is so interesting that sin has been portrayed not so much as what we "do" as what we consume, as something that enters into us and changes us at the cellular level.  What is minor in Adam and Eve becomes major in the next generation:  they produce both good (Abel) and evil (Cain).  And so the story goes, on and on, until the evil of mankind is so great that the entire earth is corrupted (Gen. 6), man's evil reaching even into the spiritual world.  It is clear that an untended garden will soon be overrun with weeds, and the same is true in the spiritual world.

We are told that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven," presumably because of its inherent corruption.  So what is needed is not "patching up of old wineskins," which are unable to contain the "new wine" of the kingdom of God, but rather new wineskins, and new cloth. It is clear that the corrupted 'natural man' must die in order that a "new man," a man who bears the image and likeness of God, can be "born again."

Adam was birthed from the dust of the earth, and the whole universe is of one substance with Adam.  It is clear from the story of Genesis that what happens to man spiritually happens also to the earth -- the ground is now cursed because of Adam, producing thorns and thistles as well as produce.  By the time of Cain, the earth refuses to yield any produce at all; he is forced to 'wander' over the earth.  The story of the flood is actually an 'uncreation' story -- the earth returns to the watery chaos out of which it was originally formed.

When Jesus came, He took on our human flesh, though incorrupt, through the sinless virgin. But He also spiritually, on the cross, took on the sin of mankind -- He became sin, for our sake, that destroying it once for all in His body, He could give us a "new creation:"

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.  The first man became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving Spirit....the first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man, from heaven.  As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.  And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so let us bear the likeness of the man from heaven (I Cor. 15: 45-49).

 

Jesus did not come on earth in order to found another religion but to bring us new life, the life of God Himself, the life lived by the Holy Trinity: the communion between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit...Msgr. Aldo Giordano, Special Envoy of the Pope to the Council of Europe, 2009).

 

The only possibility for living the Christian life is to have Christ dwelling in us, living His life in our life.  Paul said, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ who dwells in me to the glory of God the Father."  Thanks be to God, we are no longer controlled by the sinful flesh if Christ lives in us, for when He died, we died.  When He rose, we also rose with Him to a new life -- that is why He is called 'the new Adam," the "second Man." 

 

There is a new kind of life on earth, but we have to make room for it in ourselves -- the room Christ asks for in us.  Just as the guy in the article today is making room in his life for the presence of Satan and "looking like the one I want to look like," so Christians are to make room for and "look like" Jesus, who is the 'exact Image of the invisible God."

 

The "room" inside of us is not empty space; it is fully occupied.  I, the sinner, occupy this space.  And that there may be room for Him, in His resurrected energy,  I (the natural man) must decrease so as to almost disappear, .... that the space in me may be filled with the Lord....This increase of the Lord in me is the light dispelling the darkness (in me and in the world around me).  The darkness does not escape; it is consumed by the light  (Adrienne von Speyr, The Word Becomes Flesh).

 

Allowing Christ to occupy more and more of us is the Christian Life; He will do in me all that pleases the Father, as long as I do not inhibit the action of the Holy Spirit in me.  He will cleanse me from all unrighteousness as long as I continue to walk with Him.  Even were there no promise of heaven after this life, it would still profit me to allow Jesus to live His life in me --- but His promise is that the "spring of living water" that He gives to us is "eternal" life, and that those who believe in Him will never hunger or thirst. 

 

It is clear from the Gospels that we do not have to be "good" to inherit eternal life; we just have to be "willing" or "thirsty."  He will do all the rest.