Good day dear souls. It is a joy to link with you and communicate both questions and understandings about this Human state in which we are, and frequently fail to be. May we have ears to hear and hearts to receive.
Made in God’s Image? Only in the last 30 years have I come to acknowledge that I am made in God’s image…’In His image He made them, man and woman he made them.’ So even in our broken humanity we carry at heart the image of God. According to the Genesis story He provided for Adam and Eve a Paradise of growing things and made them to be in communion with Him. This potential is still within us, and we’ve all had experiences of ‘knowing’ we must take a certain action…and if we are obedient find it provides either for some need we had, or for another person. God continues to care and to communicate with listening hearts.
What do we do with Free Will? But there was a thorn in this creating! He made us with free will in order that we have freedom to chose to love Him, ourselves and others. Adam and Eve were tempted to go against God’s instruction, and they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. This all gets a bit technical and theological, but at root it meant that humans opened themselves to judgement of good and evil, and lost their freedom to love in God. They were disobedient and that curse has lived with us in our fallen humanity. We are tempted to want our own way, and to judge, and thus cause separation from our true Heart, from others and from God. Being truly human, which requires dependence on God and thus freedom to ‘live and move and have our being in HIm’, has become for most people a dream rather than a reality.
God’s Provision: 1 But God in His mercy and love didn’t leave us to struggle alone. Even after giving the Ten Commandments via Moses so we knew how to live righteously , it became clear that our wilfulness meant that knowing the laws did not lead us to love God, ourselves or others and we fell with temptations. So here God’s master plan came into being.
2 Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born as a human, yet divine, child. He lived through difficulties as a baby, suffered persecution, and needed to go with his parents to a foreign country. On their return He became obedient to His parents, growing up and working for a living with His step-father while holding within Him His Divinity and growing wisdom. When the time was right, He was baptised by John the Baptist, receiving afresh the gift of the Holy Spirit. He then spent 40 days in the desert being prepared for His Divine life and resisting the temptations of the devil to worldly power and pleasure.
He called His disciples to follow Him, and worked for a number of years (scholars suggest it was more than three) teaching the disciples the Way of the Kingdom of God often through practical example. Those who sought His help received the teaching that would set them free. He healed the sick; gave sight to the blind, made the lame walk, cleansed the lepers, forgave the repentant and broken hearted, men and women, and healed souls and bodies like the woman with a 12 year flow of blood. She came to Him, believing He would help her, and all she did was touch His garment. But He knew ‘power had gone from HIm’, and when she revealed herself from the crowd, He told her ‘Your faith has made you well’.
Christ’s Image of the Father Christ was showing the love of God and God’s desire for people to be whole, and loving themselves, God and others trusting in Him. His teaching was often in parables so people’s minds were challenged by truth embedded in mystery. He encouraged His disciples to pray and fast for the healing of those who had lost all sense of their humanity through demonic activity. He told people not to judge others…to do as you would be done by…but He made it clear that without choosing God’s will mankind could not be fully human. No worldly goods or power would fulfil the longing heart or take them into Eternity.
He sent His disciples out on ‘mission’ in twos, including them in His purposes. He told His disciples to love their enemies, to pray for them and bless them. And He prayed that they would all be One as He and the Father were One. Without God’s Spirit mankind could not enter into this Divine purpose, to love and bless and to follow His way. So Baptism became the means of receiving the Holy Spirit of God after confessing we have strayed from our true humanity and failed to love God, ourselves and others.
Christ was obedient to the Father, even unto death. He had lived through the tribulations of being human, and served in love and total dependence on the Holy Spirit with Divine grace to heal, and even raise from the dead. In His Cross He suffered Spiritual and physical death in his human-ness, and on the third day rose again. Though it looked like failure, it was His greatest gift to us. There is little we have suffered that He has not already overcome. This is our hope when we go through trials and face fear. He suffered terrible despising when He was being crucified, but forgave. What a role model…but we cannot do it without His Spirit – without praying and calling on the Image we bear to become His Likeness through the Holy Spirit.
Christ Unites St Paul tells us clearly that ‘In Christ is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female.’ God is love, and is servant of all. He hates arrogance and pride, oppression and violence against others. St Paul calls those he writes to to ask for the gifts of the Spirit that they may serve, but adds they may choose the greater gift…’love’. And Love is what Christ showed us on the Cross.
‘Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, nor is prideful….’ St Paul says that unless we have love, then all the other gifts are worthless…even speaking for God without love, is ‘clanging gongs and sounding cymbals’. So may we all pray to grow in love and understanding of the ‘other’, and become the human being God intended, bearing His image into a broken world. May we pray that God will grant us His likeness too, that we may bear love that binds together, and bless our enemy in obedience to the Holy Spirit which He promised to pour out on all people in the last days. Come Holy Spirit enable our true Humanity.
In the mystery of love, I wonder if you could respond to what is written…to ask questions, or share your thoughts and understanding, so I can grow too. And if you would like Biblical references let me know. Many thanks,