Waist Deep 2018 - January 2

Genesis 1: 27 So God created man in his own image. (NIV) 

Creation of mankind is . . . the ultimate purpose of God’s creative week.*

What does it mean to be created in God’s image? An image is a likeness. Does that mean we look like God? Does it mean “God’s imagination”? Whatever the precise meaning of the phrase, there is no doubt that man was created according to the image in God’s mind. But because of sin, the image has become warped. The masterpiece that God was so proud of has deteriorated and has been abused, all through the fault of his final creation – the one that seemed to be his finest and favorite.

In the movie Multiplicity, a busy man decides to have himself cloned. The clone takes care of business while the man goes off and has fun. The clone, whose whole life is devoted to work, loses the sense of fun that the original man has. When the man’s wife starts to feel overwhelmed by her career and housework and the kids, the man has a second clone made to help around the house. The second clone then taps into the man’s “feminine side” and becomes – well, less manly than the other two. None of the three is a well-balanced personality because none of them works on developing the whole person.  The copies (clones) started out exactly like the original, but as they “fed” certain aspects of their character, those aspects began to grow. As God’s copy (image), we start out like the original but as we feed our sinful desires we grow into someone far removed from the original version of ourselves.

Christ only is the express image of God’s person.*