A
series of blogs on the Names of Jesus
THE EXACT
IMAGE OF GOD
Hebrews
1:3 He is
the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made
purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
John 14:9
Jesus said
to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know
me? Whoever has seen me has seen the
Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
2 Corinthians 4:4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the
unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Colossians
1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;
When a child is born, one of the
first things that family and friends do is look for hints of the parents, and
even the grandparents, in the facial features of the newly born babe. And as
the child grows up, other family traits become more obvious; we see
similarities in voice, character, behaviour, interests, likes or dislikes. And
so begins and never ends the creative tension of nurture versus nature. As we
grow older, we might catch sight of ourselves in a mirror and see our parents
or grandparents in us. As we watch our children or grandchildren grow we see
things in them that might hearten us or dishearten us, because they are doing
or saying or behaving how we did/do. We learn to love the ridiculous, the
innate ‘ness’ of the person.
The New Testament’s witness about Jesus is that he is the EXACT reflection or imprint of God, in human form. If we want to see God, we have been given Jesus to reflect upon. In the last blog we spent time with Matthew’s account of the Good News of Jesus, the Emmanuel, the God with us even to the end of time. Today, I am beginning a new 28-day blog on the Names of Jesus. Please join in with your thoughts and reflections. I think we all grow by seeing things together. The whole enterprise of following Jesus is not a solitary pursuit.
What I believe is that Jesus
lived among humanity to show that God is active and alive in communion with
creation, and, in particular, with humanity. We are called to imitate Jesus not
as solitary disciples but as people of sorrow and joy who enter into God’s
dance of life. And yet, there is inevitably also a sense in which each of us must
enter into the solitariness of Jesus death and resurrection alone.
Jesus was both human and divine,
we are taught by our creeds. We are also taught through the Hebrew bible that
from the beginning humans were all made in God’s image (Genesis 1.26). We all
bear God’s likeness, but not God’s ‘exact likeness’.
What is the Jesus-ness of Jesus
which reflects for you the exact imprint of God?
IMPRINT
Unique swirl
this fingerprint
contouring beautifully
curling tightly
holding lightly
the unfurling brightness of
the incredible likeness
of God in human form.
But at such cost.
These hands that flung stars into
space
were to cruel nails surrendered.
The exact image of God
imprinted on wood
and minds
and hearts
and made good
in the incredible likeness
of God again in human form.
In his sermon yesterday Paul started by referring to a walk on the Clent Hills the previous day. It was foggy, and he could not see the Worcestershire countryside stretching away from him; although he knew the fields and woods, the farmland and the villages were there, they were obscured. I thought he would go on to develop the idea that we know God is there, and we know something of his ‘landscape’, his nature, from experience and the Bible, yet he is obscured from our view by our lifestyle, our choices and the many distractions from seeing him. By that was not his theme, and the sermon went elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good picture, however, for today’s blog, ‘the exact image of God’. We cannot know the exact image of God because God is beyond time and space. How can we, limited as we are by the aging process and our physical senses, know about God who is always everywhere (eternal, omniscient, and omnipresent in those old terms)? Our minds are too small to picture such a God. We are forever trying to see through the mist covering the landscape, the mist of our human limitations.
So perhaps we need something closer to home to explore the nature of God at a level we can understand, a peak rising above the foggy landscape, a point we can recognise and aim for. What we need is an image on our terms, set in time and space which will lead us through the mist. An exact image projected on to the human sphere. Something or someone to show us the essential nature of God in the midst (and mist) of the world we live in. It’s as if we needed God to take a ‘selfie’ and pass it round. Fortunately, being out of time and space, he had an excellent camera long before we invented cameras, not a Nikon or a Canon, but a Jesus.
Jesus tells us the selfie is a good likeness, ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14,9). Isn’t that a bit of a game changer? We may still get caught in the mist, literally and morally, as we travel through life. But we can no longer say that we cannot see what God is like because our vision is obscured, the excuse has gone, alas! The route is set out in the gospels. All we need is a strong pair of walking shoes and a determination to see the way ahead in Jesus, the compass (or GPS) to follow; the exact image of God that we can relate to; human like us, or like what we could be.
The exact image of God:
ReplyDeleteWhen I read that, it occurred it me that it was not just Jesus who was made in the image of God, but we too. Genesis 1:26, 27 says,
"Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
However, Jesus, did not see his power and his oneness with God as an opportunity to lord it over us. Jesus kept his power under check. The Bible points out a pattern where when all is going well for humans, they fall from a great height. Examples include David, Solomon and King Amaziah among others.
Philippians chapter 2 exhorts us to be like Christ:
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
2 Cor 4: 6 reminds us that we carry "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." Verse 7 points out,
".. we who have this spiritual treasure are like common clay pots, in order to show that the supreme power belongs to God, not to us."