“What are you like” Word on the Week 25th May 2019
The phrase can have either an exclamation or a question mark. An exclamation at something you have done or a question of where you come from. The Bible says: – Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens anover the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creep on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them (Genesis Chapter 1 verses 26/7).
It is plain that we come from God’s creation. We were made in his image to be creative beings living in a love relationship to each other modelling the Trinity.
Since the fall the image has been marred but in Jesus we see it as it should be. “He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians Chapter 1 verse 15a).
When on earth Jesus told a story concerning images. It arose out of a plan to trap him with a question. No one likes to pay taxes so the Pharisees seized an opportunity to gain popularity over Jesus by asking him whether or not it was right to pay taxes to the Roman occupying powers? If he answered in the affirmative, he was in trouble with his followers but if he answered negatively he was in trouble with the Roman authorities!
Jesus did neither but asked for the coin used in paying tax. He then asked them whose image was on the coin. It was Caesar’s. “Therefore give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” was Jesus reply (St Matthew Chapter 22 verses 15/22).
The answer confounded his enemies who gave up their questioning.
His followers may have thought more deeply into “give to God the things that are God’s”.
To be human is to bear the image of God. We are his by creation. We come from God. We bear the divine image. The secular view with its evolutionary overtones parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan
“Darwinian man, though well behaved,
At best is only a monkey shaved”, – sees us as animals.
We then begin to see the value system being skewed in favour of the fittest at the expense of the elderly, chronically sick or the baby in the womb.
It all depends on whether we are in God’s image and therefore of infinite value or go down the secular path with its diminished value system.
“What are you like!” The Bible says we are sinners. Not because we have sinned but that is our fallen nature (Romans chapter 5 verse 12). But by God’s grace and the work of Jesus as our sin-bearer on the cross everyone who turns to Jesus believing that “He died in my place” will be saved.
Putting your faith in the risen Jesus brings you into the family of God where you can become a living image-bearer of our risen Saviour.