We Are Him — (Part 2)
In the next few posts I’m going to try to tie the last three chapters together. These are the “so what?” posts. So what if I accept that sin is not petty and arbitrary but dehumanizing and deadly? So what if God wasn’t punishing Jesus, but instead changing a covenant? So what if Jesus had to die to show us that death was nothing to fear? What difference is any of that supposed to make? I began with a description of restorative justice and now we move on to a closer look at the image of God. Here we go!
“Justice involves claiming a shared, mutual humanity. It is about interrelationships.”
“We must provide space — institutional space, political space, social space and conceptual space — for the emergence of new relationships and a new way of being that exists beyond isolation and separation.”
– john powell, Racing to Justice
In the Image
One of the things the Bible teaches about human beings is that they are made “in the image of God.” In the very first chapter of the Bible as God’s work of creation unfolds God says, “Let us make humankind in our image” (Genesis 1:26). Genesis introduces the Bible’s first family tree in chapter five by writing, “When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God.” (Genesis 5:1). And, following the tragedy of violence and the flood in Genesis 9, God tries to put a check on human cruelty by saying, “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind.” (Genesis 9:6). So, from the beginning, human beings receive a special recognition in the Bible.
What exactly it means to be made in God’s image has been up for debate for centuries. In Genesis 1, God says, “let them have dominion” (v. 26). Perhaps the image has something to do with power, ownership, and ruling over other creatures. In Genesis 9, God repeats the command to “be fruitful and multiply.” (v. 7). So, perhaps the image has something to do with being creative, producing and reproducing on the earth. Whatever the case, everyone can agree that this image signifies a particular dignity among all of God’s creation. Everyone can agree on this much: to be human is to be set apart and unique with an inherent worth not known by any other creature.
In addition, everyone can agree that sin has something to do with the loss of or damage to this image. In chapter 4 of this book the examples of the Rwandan genocide and Abu Ghraib prison showed us two gruesome examples of dehumanization. Violence, torture, and death ruled over life as one human being came to view another as a cockroach or a dog. The victims were treated as less than human, but the offenders also became inhuman in their actions. They became inhumane. All of this makes God terribly angry, but rather than punish or simply give, God sent Jesus to restore.
The words of “image” and “likeness” are applied to Jesus as well. “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” (Heb. 1:3). The “god of this world” is trying to blind people to the “glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Cor. 4:4). For in Jesus “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19) and “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9). Simply stated, Jesus is “the image of the invisible God.” (Col. 1:15).
If being human means to be made in God’s image and the fullness of God dwelt in Jesus’ body, then we understand that Jesus is fully human. If Jesus is like us in every way except that he was without sin, then we can understand that Jesus harbored no dehumanizing thought about someone else, nor carried out any inhumane actions. If there has been some question about what it means to be made in God’s image, then we find the answer when we see what kind of human was Jesus. Everything that God intended for human beings and asks for from human beings is captured in the person of Jesus.
This should sound similar to the way we discussed eternal life in chapter 6. Just as there are many versions of life that we can live, so there are many different ways to be human. Jesus showed us that there is a certain kind of life that is an eternal life. In the same way, we grow up with heroes and idols and fashion ourselves in their image. Many of those images compete for attention and glory and honor. Some idols lead us toward life and some lead us toward death. Into this world, God sent Jesus inviting us to be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29) who guides us to eternal life and the fullness of God.
Here is another key point that I hope you can remember:
The work that God is doing through Jesus is not to get us into heaven, but to make us human.
In other words, God is working to restore us to the full image in which we were created. God is working to make things right by restoring us to our full humanity. God’s glory, God’s goodness, God’s power, and God’s promises are all meant to serve the same purpose, that we may “become participants in the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:4). That divine nature is not some supernatural, secret power. It is flesh and blood, skin and bone humanity that fully reflects the image of God just like Jesus did.
This restoration project involves two parts: there is a letting go of the old and the taking hold of the new. “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self…” (Eph. 4:22. The Bible is referring to the dehumanizing and inhumane way of life that we have reviewed multiple times so far. The call is to strip off that old way of life like you would an outfit that no longer fits or represents how you want to be seen. In stripping off the old, you are then able to clothe yourself with something new.
However, what is new is not actually new. In reality, it’s very old. The shape of that new self turns out to be the same image and likeness of God in which humanity was originally created. “Clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph. 4:24; see also Col 3:11 for “image”). Righteousness and holiness are big, churchy words that invite a lot of debate, but they simply refer to being set apart (holy) to do what is right (righteous). At the end of the day, we are talking about being fully human and Jesus gives us the complete image.
Throughout history, the church has tried to preserve two truths about Jesus. The first one is that Jesus is both fully God and fully human. He is not someone who was divine and only appeared to be human. And, he was not someone who was human and then became divine after he lived and died and God raised him from the dead. From the moment that Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb, Jesus was human in every way that we are human. However, at no moment during his human life was Jesus not also divine.
The second truth that the church has tried to preserve about Jesus was that he was a unique individual. It is Jesus, and Jesus alone, who is God with us. While you and I might also be called God’s children, Jesus is God’s Son in some way that we are not. While we might share flesh and blood with him, there is something in him that we do not possess. No other man or woman is able to duplicate what he did. I like to say that, in Jesus, we learn how God would be human and no other individual can show us that.
While these two truths might seem exclusive to you, I want to point out why I think that they are important. On the one hand, I see how people don’t even make an attempt to imitate Jesus because they feel that they could never match up. Since, they can’t complete the painting, they don’t even make a stroke. These people think too little of themselves. On the other hand, there are some individuals who feel like they can represent God in the same way that Jesus did. In reality, they end up painting a picture that suits their own desires and preferences. These people think too much of themselves. Each of these faults tend to result in isolation and separation. That’s the opposite of what God wants for and from human beings. The right way forward, the path of justice, is found in the title of this chapter: we are him.
As you read above, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” in Jesus. The Bible says that the way for other individuals to experience this same fullness of God is to be “in him.” This is an odd thing to say and most Christians take it to mean “have faith in him” or “believe in him.” Being “in him” becomes about what I think. This is only one small part of the picture. Thankfully, the Bible provides a very clear image to help us develop a fuller understanding of what being “in him” means. It is the image of a body.
Again the Bible says that, in Jesus, “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” The Bible follows that up with a call to us as individuals to become members of his body. It is the call to join together as one and for everyone to play a part. It is the call to relationship. No individual can play the whole part, but every individual can play some part. It is the Bible’s way of calling us into interrelationships because I need other people to play the parts that I cannot play. I may not be able to do what Jesus did, but we can. We are him.
The next post will take a more detailed look at how the Bible uses the image of the body to help us understand what the church is supposed to look like.
