Made in the Image of God
As we start this new year, let us remember who’s image we reflect. Genesis 1:26 reads, “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image.”
Unlike the animals, birds, and trees, mankind was made in God’s likeness. His image is stamped on our hearts. We carry His attributes. God values us because we look like Him.
The Psalmist in Psalm 8:4 writes that the Lord has “…crowned them with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:4)
We are valued by God more than anything. Jesus explained to his disciples how much God loves them in his sermon on the mount: “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26)
As we spend time with God this new year, as we read His Word daily, and as we obey his commandments, his likeness grows in us.
“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)
We begin to appear more and more like God. His image is seen by others in us. We point others to Him, instead of taking credit for our successes. We acknowledge Him as the the true source of our successes.
We are all made in God’s image, however, this image has been distorted by sin. When we accept Jesus’s death on the cross for forgiveness of our sins, those past sins are wiped away and forgiven. We are given a new life, a clean slate, and God’s image is able to be seen clearly in us.
As God’s children, we feel satisfied when we know that we carry His image out into the world for them to see Him in us. This is our purpose. And we are fulfilled knowing that God is using us to redeem the world.
Reflect His image in 2021.
Rev. Susan McKeithen, ideas gleamed from Max Lucado’s book Unshakeable Hope, chapter 2.
Published: 01/04/2021
Archived News