Subject: CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
Scripture: Genesis 1:26-27; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21.
Text: Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in His Own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them."
A nursery rhyme that used to bother me when I first heard it as a very small boy was the one about Humpty Dumpty. You may remember how it goes:
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Can't put Humpty Dumpty together again."
How one little fall off a wall could do such great damage that no one could ever repair it was hard for me to understand - until I finally came to realize that Humpty Dumpty was an egg! He may have little spindley arms and legs and a sort of a face in the nursery rhyme picture that went along with the poem, but if you looked carefully at him, you could see that he was basically just another egg! Then, it was easy to see that if he did indeed fall off a wall and break, there was no one who could ever put him back together again and make him just as once he was. I had dropped enough of the eggs while gathering them from the hen nests for my mother to know that you can't put a broken egg back together again.
In our study this morning we are thinking about another great fall that did so much damage that to repair it seems beyond the power and ability of mankind.
In the first chapter of the book of GENESIS we read that God created man in His Own image. The word "man" as used in this chapter is of course generic and refers to mankind, including both men and women.
Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, were created in the very image, the very likeness of God. They were not given a nature like unto the lower animals. God imparted to them a nature like unto His Own. They could think. They could reason. They could make choices. They had personalities. They were righteous and pure and free from all taint of sin and evil. Their natures were like unto the very nature of God so that they could have fellowship with God and God with them.
This does not mean, of course, that the bodies which God gave Adam and Eve were like God and that God, in His outward appearance, looks like a man. When people refer to God as the "Man upstairs" and think of Him as having a physical form like us, they aren't being Scriptural.
God is a Spirit, and He created man as an immortal spirit. The physical body is the dwelling place of the spirit here on earth; but someday we will drop these physical bodies and leave them behind to go and dwell in an incorruptible body suited to the realm of eternity.
When we say that a person is a godly person, we are not talking about his or her physical body. We are talking about his or her nature or personality.
Likewise, when the Scripture talks about mankind as being made in the image of God, it is not talking about the physical form. It is talking about the nature, the personality, the immortal being that lives within the physical body here on earth and that will someday live in a different kind of body suited to a different realm in the world to come.
Well, mankind was created in the image, in the likeness, of God. Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, as they came from the creative hand of God, mirrored the very nature of God in their own lives and could walk and talk and have fellowship with God.
But Adam and Eve, like Humpty Dumpty, had a great fall!
They were not sitting on a wall.
Their physical bodies were not broken when they fell. There were no broken bones, no open cuts requiring stitches and bandages, no brain concussions nor teeth knocked loose.
But the image of God in which they were created was marred. Their likeness to God was blemished. Their ability to communicate with God and have fellowship with Him was damaged. No longer could it be said of them that to look at them was to see a measure of the reflection of the very nature of God Himself.
God continued to be righteous; they were now unrighteous.
God continued to be holy; they were now unholy.
God continued to be an eternal Spirit, the same yesterday, today and forever; they were now subject to the law of sin and death.
And the great question with which the human race has grappled ever since the fall of Adam and Eve has been that of how the image of God can be restored in the soul of man.
We may sometimes have the idea that the great question facing the human race is the question of how to get to Heaven when our earthly lives are over. Important though it is to know the pathway that leads to Heaven, of what value would it be to know and to travel that pathway if, when we arrived at the gates of Heaven, we were not fit to enter therein?
I am reminded of a little story that Pierce Harris used to tell when he was pastor of First United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Where he got the story and how much of it was just symbolic he didn't say, but anyway it was about a man who lived rather high and mighty down here on earth, and who, when he died, barged up to the gate of Heaven expecting just to walk right in. According to the story, Saint Peter told him he would have to wait until he checked the roll to see if he was one of those who were to be admitted. After a lengthy wait, Saint Peter returned to tell him that his name was not on the list.
"Oh, but there must be some mistake!" exclaimed the man. "I was a member of such-and-such a church down on earth."
Again Saint Peter looked over the roll. Still his name was not found.
"Tell me," said Saint Peter, "just what you did down on earth to advance the kingdom of God."
The man thought for a few moments. "Well," he finally said, "I did give $10.00 once to the church."
Saint Peter went inside for a consultation with Those in authority, and returned with something in his hand.
"What's the verdict?" inquired the man who was now becoming quite anxious.
"It was decided," came the reply, "just to refund your money," and returning the man his $10.00, the gate was closed before him.
If we think Pierce Harris' little illustration is both absurd and unscriptural, we need to remember that Jesus, Himself, in one of His parables in which He tried to show us something of what the kingdom of Heaven is like, told of people coming up to a closed door and trying to get in but being unable to do so.
It was sin, disobedience to the known will of God, that marred the image of God in the souls of Adam and Eve and resulted in their being put out of the Garden of Eden; and even if they had known the way back to the Garden, they would not have been fit to enter and live there as once they did so long as their lives remained out of harmony with the nature and character of God.
Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. The important thing is to be prepared! The important thing is the restoral of the likeness of God in the human soul. The important thing is to have a nature that is at home in a heavenly atmosphere, to have the love of God so shed abroad in our hearts that we love the things that God loves and do the things that God would have us do and live the kind of lives that God would have us to live so that once again we can enjoy true fellowship with a holy and righteous God and be at home in a realm of peace and love.
Adam and Eve had a great fall. Their fall marred the image of God in their souls and broke their fellowship with God. And "in Adam's fall, we sinned all" as I believe one of the old McGuffey Readers put it. Or, as it is put in the seventh Article of Religion of The United Methodist Church, "(mankind) is very far gone from original righteousness, and of (their) own nature inclined to evil, and that continually."
Put it how we will, we have but to examine the life of Christ and then look at human nature to realize that the likeness of God in the soul of mankind has been marred.
The Old Testament bears witness across the history of thousands of years that the vast majority of the human race was not made up of Godly people. Even the people of Israel who were God's chosen people were described as a stiff-necked and rebellious people.
The Apostle Paul tells us that the carnal nature of man or the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
The poet recognizes that we are not all that we ought to be when she writes,
"I wish that there were some wonderful place
In the Land of Beginning Again:
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all of our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
And never put on again..." (Louise Fletcher Tarkington)
Or, as Alfred Tennyson put it,
"0 for a man to rise in me,
That the man that I am
May cease to be."
Many of our most familiar hymns deal with the fact that the image of God in the soul of man has been marred - hymns such as we are using this morning such as "I Would Be Like Jesus" and "More Like The Master I Would Ever Be."
The hymn, "Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing" that goes on to say, "tune my heart to sing Thy praise" recognizes that the worldly human heart is not by nature tuned to sing the praises of God.
The hymn, "Whiter Than Snow," is a cry for the restoral of the likeness to Christ to the human soul.
When I think of the great need of the human soul, I think sometimes of the old story found in one of the children's books of years ago about the handsome young prince who was turned into an ugly old frog, I suppose by a wicked old witch. Anyway, he was doomed to remain an ugly old frog until a certain lovely young lady came along and cared enough for him to kiss him. And come, she finally did, and kissed him, and he turned back into a handsome young prince and they were married and lived happily ever after.
The great spiritual question of course is how can a selfish, self-centered, self-willed person be transformed into a saintly, Christlike person who reflects the very character of God in his or her life?
The Scriptures hold this before us as our great goal in life.
In Romans 8:29 we read, "For whom He did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son..."
In 1 Corinthians 15:49 we read that as we have borne the image of the earthly we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
In 2 Corinthians 3:18 we read that "we all, with unveiled face (or open face), beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
Peter tells us in his 2nd epistle that there "are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these we might be partakers of the Divine nature..."
And John tells us in his 1st epistle that when Christ shall appear, those who are Christians shall be like Him.
How is this great transformation to be wrought?
Down across the pages and centuries of Old Testament history, we find that the people of Israel tried to be in fellowship with God through the keeping of the laws of God. Yet, they failed tragically. Obedience to the Old Testament laws and the offering of sacrifices upon the temple altars and the observance of special religious days did not restore the image of God in their souls.
The problem was that these things did not change their hearts, and in the heart, in the soul, is where the trouble lies.
Finally, the Old Testament prophets realized that the problem was not one of outward observances but one of inward purity. Thus we find Ezekiel setting forth God's promise to take away the stony heart and to replace it with a heart of flesh so that His people may walk in His statutes and keep His ordinances.
In the New Testament we find Jesus talking about the need for a person to be born of the Spirit. Sin mars the image of God in the human soul. Through the new birth, the likeness to God's nature is restored; and then it is to be kept restored through the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ.
The other day I was driving behind a school bus. The bus stopped and a teenaged boy got off. I did not know the boy's name, nor do I remember having seen him before. But I knew who he was. He looked so much like a man I know that I don't think there could be any doubt in anyone's mind as to whose son he was.
Every now and then I am called back to a former church to help in a funeral service, preach at a homecoming service, or help in a series of revival services. I often see young people on those occasions who were not even born when I was pastor of their particular church. But it is a rather common thing to be able to tell who their parents are for they are so often what we refer to as the very spittin' image of their parents.
Brother F. R. Davis was for many years one of my closest friends in the ministry. We worked together in more revival services and were in each other's homes on those occasions perhaps more than I ever was with another preacher.
He had a son named Lonnie who is also in the ministry. When Lonnie was serving the Coleridge charge, he asked me to help him in a couple of series of revival services. One night as Lonnie was conducting the opening part of the service, I got to noticing him very closely. I noticed that he stood behind the pulpit almost the same way his father did. He bent his shoulders almost the same way his father did. His voice sounded almost like his father's voice, and he used many of the same expressions that his father did.
Lonnie was redheaded and his father was baldheaded. Lonnie was young and his father was getting up in years. In physical stature Lonnie reminded me perhaps more of his mother than of his father, but in almost everything that he said and did I could see something of the reflection of his father.
That's sort of the way it is supposed to be with us if God is truly our Father, if we have been born of His Spirit. Others ought to be able to see in us something of the very reflection of His nature. In the way we talk, in the way we walk, in the way that we live, we ought to show forth so much of the nature of our heavenly Father that it can be truly said of us that we are Godly people and that we are living Christlike lives.
In the new birth the likeness of Christ is restored to the human soul.
In walking with the Lord in the light of His Word, He and the Father make their abode with us and indwell us.
As we day by day behold the glory of the Lord and fellowship with Him, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
As we are obedient unto His will, we are baptized with His Spirit.
At this present time in our spiritual journey, His image may not yet be fully formed within us but we ought to be able to say truthfully, "I am not yet all that I ought to be, and I am not yet all that I want to be, and I am not yet all that I am going to be, but, thank God, I am not what I used to be!"
And the prayer of our hearts ought to be Charles Wesley's familiar prayer: "Finish, then, Thy new creation; pure and spotless let us be; let us see Thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee: changed from glory into glory, till in Heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before Thee, lost in wonder, love and praise. Amen."