The Image Of God

John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” It’s not that the way Jesus looked was how God looked; it’s not the physical features that caused Jesus to be the image of God it was the spiritual features. Jesus perfectly exemplified God’s love, mercy, grace, compassion, holiness; everything. He came to show us, in a living, tangible way who God was. Through Jesus’ behavior and character he made God known.

Heb. 1:3 says that Jesus is the “radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being”. Jesus is Emmanuel-God with us. When people saw Jesus and how he spoke, taught and acted they were seeing God. God had been silent for nearly 400 years and I’m sure people were wondering if God had forgotten them; if he loved them. Jesus came to show the people that God hadn’t forgotten them and that he indeed loved them.

Jesus wasn’t only here to make God’s character known to us but he was also here to make God’s will known to us. As John 3:16 illustrates that God so loved the world that he sent Jesus that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have eternal life.

4) Remade in God’s image.

Not only is God’s will that we be saved but it’s also his will that those who are saved would be transformed into his likeness. In Gal. 3:27 it says that when we were baptized we clothed ourselves with Christ; we put Christ on. We were made in the image of God, that image was warped through sin but now, through being reborn, we are going through the process of being transformed into the image (likeness) of Christ who is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15).

Rom. 8:28 says that God works for the good of those that love him and are called according to his purpose. What is his purpose? We see it in vs. 29, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son.” God’s purpose for his followers is that they would strive to be more like Jesus.

2nd Cor. 3:16-18, “But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

When the veil of blindness is taken away when we come to Christ, we are now able to see and contemplate the Lord’s glory. We are able to understand what that’s about and we are now able, because the spirit of the Lord is in us, to reflect his glory. First we reflect on and then we reflect out. And the more we do so the greater that glory increases because the closer we get to the image of God the brighter we become.

But transformation is a process. And sometimes it’s not a very easy one. We will have to go through times of trial and testing in order to get rid of the darkness inside of us. We need to go through a refining process.