Working on our image - Sept 8
“For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of God.” Rom 8:29
What does God look like? God doesn’t appear very often in the Bible. God’s voice is heard, a lot, and evidence of God’s presence is found in things like pillars of cloud and burning bushes, but God’s image is elusive. Except when talking about humans.
“God created humanity in God’s own image.” Gen 1:27
God’s image is reflected in humanity, or at least it was. For thousands and thousands of years we humans have been largely unrecognizable as an image of God. Despite a long history of messing things up, that divine image pops up here and there if you keep your eyes open for it.
The meaning of Paul’s writing can sometimes be unrecognizable to me. A whole bunch of head-scratching verses and then these beaming lights of divine wisdom shine through. I don’t get the surrounding verses’ fixation on foreknowledge and predestination and justification, but I do get that the goal of all this is to be conformed into the image of God, or as it is in this verse, in the image of God’s son.
This journey to being conformed into God’s image happens like many God-human interactions through action, consent, and reception. We must work to rid ourselves of those parts of us that don’t look like the image of God. Instead, as Paul says in Rom 13:14 we are to clothe ourselves with Christ. Even after doing this, we recognize that being conformed to God’s image is not something we can fully accomplish by ourselves. We must open and allow ourselves to be conformed into Christ’s image.
“Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming Christian is simple nothing else.” C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity.