IMAGE

 

Genesis 1:26,27; 5:1-3 to “after his image”; Romans 1:19-23; 2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:3-6

If we think for a moment about the wonderful, majestic things that are described in chapter 1 of Genesis, dear friends, they start with, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (v.1). That is something which, to the natural mind, is really incomprehensible. It is beyond what we as humans are able to consider, the greatness of creation; but God in His grace has given us this very simple account of the origin and order of creation, and given us some insight as to who He is through the way in which He created the heavens and the earth and ordered them, and created man.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image”. The scriptures that I read all contain that word ‘image’. I feel it laid upon me in this gospel preaching to speak about the thought of image. God created many things. He created the heavens and the earth, a vast sphere beyond man’s capability to measure. He filled the earth and the sea with so many creatures that man, even in this day and age with all the scientific advances he has made, has not been able to enumerate them all. There are species completely unknown to man. No doubt that will continue to be the case until the earth is brought to its final conclusion. Then after making all of these things, all these incredibly intricate and wonderful creatures, God made man in His image. God said, “in our image, after our likeness”, and He set him in dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the heavens, the cattle, the creeping things – over the whole earth. “God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him”. That word “image” is repeated three times in this short passage; God would create man “in his image”. God created man to be His ‘image-bearer’ on earth so that He could have a relationship with him. How wonderful it is that God created a creature with the capabilities, with the intelligence, to be in relation to Himself, for there to be mutual enjoyment between God and man. That is a wonderful thing. It is beautiful to consider the purpose of God and the counsels of God before time began and which were then brought to pass in time – that He should create His creature man.

I read the parallel account in chapter 5 of God creating man: “in the likeness of God made he him. Male and female created he them”. Everything was in order there in the fulness of what God had intended to do. He called their name Adam in the day when they were created. There was an orderliness in what God made but very soon it was intruded upon. God had taken man and put him in the garden of Eden, but Satan came in and spoiled it; he attacked this arrangement that God had made, a wonderful arrangement. Adam and Eve sinned through disobedience, and because of that, sin and its sorrowful consequences entered into the human race. Not that God was unprepared for this happening, but the fact is that it happened. Adam, of course, begot a son in his likeness and after his image. Adam’s fall, Adam’s brokenness, meant that sin was conveyed to his son Cain, and to every generation after that right up to the present generation.

No one is free of the taint of sin, dear friends; not you and not me. There is practical evidence of that in my own life. I do not have to look very far to discover sin – the practical matter of sin manifesting itself in my own life, in my heart and in my thoughts. I do not need to look outside to the man in the street, as we say, or to great atrocities which have been carried out by men in their wickedness. I only need to look within my own heart, and with the aid of the Holy Spirit to look at it soberly and honestly, and see that there is a brokenness there, there is a defect which has come down right from Adam, although I must bear my personal responsibility for my own sins. That is sobering, that I must bear responsibility for my own sins; I must have to do with God about them. That is a very sober matter to consider. It is not something we can treat lightly. There may be people who would acknowledge that they have done things which are wrong, but they say, ‘Well, who is going to hold me to account for that?’. God, dear friend, is going to hold them to account for that.

God formed man for a certain purpose; He has formed you for a certain purpose. At the end, He will hold every person responsible for what they have done; God will have to do with man in judgment. But the wonderful matter that I want to speak about in the gospel is that although these are sober matters about which I am speaking – sin, the need for conviction of sin, the realised need for repentance – I can tell you that God has dealt with the matter of sin from His own side. We were powerless to deal with it. There was nothing we could do; we were weak. Our flesh is weak; we might desire very much not to sin and to get free from the matter of sin altogether but this is not something we can achieve by our own efforts. Well-meaning people have tried to do it. There have been and are all kinds of ascetic practices and monastic ideas, some of them even prevalent amongst believers in the history of the testimony. These things provide no power in themselves. You cannot mortify the natural mind of man by these practices, which are really of the same nature themselves.

I read this scripture in Romans to bring out the depth of the matter of sin, the deep-dyed nature of it. Men fell into folly in their thoughts and turned away from God and idolatry came in. It speaks here about the glory of the incorruptible God. What a glory that is! From the very act of creation through to all that has been revealed of God in the person of His Son, what glory is involved, but mankind generally has turned away from Him. People turned the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man; man putting himself in the place of God. What a terrible thing that is. And even lower than that, even more abominable, is that birds and quadrupeds and reptiles have been put in the place of God as an object of worship! What a terrible rejection of how God has made Himself known.

In Corinthians, we see that the glory of God has been made known in the Lord Jesus. The Lord came into this scene to do that. Further on it refers to the glory of Christ “who is the image of God”. Think of that One who came into this world from glory’s heights. Jesus came in as a Babe in Bethlehem’s manger, not in the way that the world was expecting Him – those who were looking out for Him in a certain way. The Jews were looking for a Messiah who would come in great glory and throw off the shackles of Roman rule and reinstate Israel as His people. They were looking for such a One, but here was One who is the image of God, come in as a Babe in Bethlehem’s manger in all humility. What a beautiful thing that is. It is wonderful, beautiful, to think about the way that the Lord Jesus came into this scene. He advanced in favour with God and men (Luke 2:52). Think of the preciousness of that Man whose life here yielded fragrance to God. The Lord Jesus showed who God is, displayed the heart of God and did things by the hand of God. You think of Jesus going out in His public ministry and healing and casting out demons by the finger of God, as He said at this point (Luke 11:20). What a wonderful thing that is. What great power was there, the power and the love and the grace of God bringing relief to man. And also – and we cannot forget this for a moment – Jesus was making known the holiness and righteousness of God. Everything that God was and is, was set out in that Man; everything that God desired to see in man was seen in Jesus, that perfect, spotless Man who, we might say in the language of the type, had no blemish and in whom there was no defect. That is perfection, dear friends; perfection in a Man.

John the baptist saw Jesus coming to him and could say, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”, John 1:29. We can look at the perfection of the life of Jesus; we can consider Him, and we should consider Him in His life here and be attracted to Him, dear believing friend. We would be attracted to the moral beauty which was and is seen in Him and the perfection of every step of that pathway. It is so attractive to the heart of the believer to consider Him. But for all the perfection of His manhood, it would not have availed us; if still in our sins, it would not have saved us. It would have simply shown our case to be darker than ever. How can we compare to the perfection of that One, for He was the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. A sacrificial Lamb, He went the way of the cross and the grave. He moved in a pathway of suffering and He never shielded Himself from any of the suffering which He experienced in His life, from the rejection by His people which grieved His heart. His heart was so great, we might say, that Jesus would have loved to be accepted by those who reviled Him and scorned Him and hated Him. How He sorrowed over Jerusalem. He would have embraced the Jewish people if they had simply received Him, but they rejected Him. He was thoroughly rejected and the Jews conspired with the Gentiles to have Him falsely tried and falsely accused and then put to death, and that the death of the cross. The death of the cross! What a terrible death that was, an ignominious death, the worst death that the Roman authorities could have possibly dealt out to the worst of criminals. In fact, one of the worst of criminals was set free in Jesus’ place. The crowd would rather have Barabbas than Christ.

What a matter this is, but although His opposers meant it for evil, God meant it for blessing. Although our Lord Jesus went to the cross, and His blood was shed in hatred by the thrust of a spear, we can sing:

‘Thy blood love’s answer gave’ (Hymn 230).

In His blood, there was a full answer to all the hatred, all the sin, all the depravity of man against Him. That answer was the Lord Jesus going to the cross and bearing the sins in His body on that cross of all who turn to Him in repentance. My sins – I can say that, dear friend. The great, vast catalogue of my sins – and I can only remember a few; if I were to try and write down all of my sins, I could not possibly remember them all – but as having my faith in Him, I know that Jesus has borne them all. He bore the wrath of God towards sin. The wrath of God! Now I say this guardedly and I hope my meaning will be clear, but what an important matter the wrath of God is. It comes because of His love. God's wrath against sin is because it challenges His rights as God, and it also separates persons from God, it corrupts them, it breaks them, it causes endless misery and torment, although God loves the sinner! But Jesus bore that wrath, taking that cup of God’s wrath against sin (Luke 22:42) and draining it to the very last drop – a cup of wrath that none of us could possibly have drained, wrath that none of us could have borne without being utterly destroyed. How wonderful it is that the Lord Jesus, in His love, His deep love for us, has gone that way and drained that cup, has borne that wrath for all those whose faith is in Him. He went into death and was placed in the grave. He went into the domain of death, but He was the One who was in Himself life and had the power of life. Death could not contain Him; death could not contain the only perfect, sinless Man. The sentence of death was passed when sin came into the world, and so in Adam’s genealogy, after every one of Adam’s descendants is mentioned, it says, “and he died” (Gen.5). That is a sober matter. Sin came into the world, and because of sin death, but the Lord Jesus has met its power. He went into its own domain and defeated it on its own ground, we might say, and then He rose from the grave and ascended.

This is the Saviour with whom we have to do. He is not a historical person who has passed away and only remains on the page of history; He is a living Man out of death, the Firstborn from among the dead. And you can, you must, have to do with Him now, dear friend. If you have not yet had to do with Him, if you have not yet come to terms with the fact that you are a sinner and you need a Saviour, that you need the One who has the power of life, then this is the time to turn to Jesus in faith and repentance. There is great danger in putting it off for a single moment longer. We are not promised the next moment. We are not promised that I will be allowed to finish this preaching before God wraps everything up in judgment. God is patient and long-suffering; His long-suffering is beautiful and wonderful. He has patiently borne with the sins of men and I would include myself in that – indeed He was very gracious and patient with me. Just think of how, during the whole period of the law when God was dealing with Israel, His people were unfaithful. I see a picture of myself in that, but we see how God is so patient, so gracious. When Christ came, God opened up the way of salvation to everyone, not on the grounds of being an Israelite, but simply on the grounds of being a needy sinner, as we all are, and then putting our faith in Him. So we can trust in Him.

In Corinthians, this matter of image comes in again. “But we all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit”. What wonderful thoughts God has for His people. Not simply to redeem us and to reconcile us to Himself, although these are beautiful and wonderful things – to be saved from your sins is a wonderful thing – but God’s desire is that each person who is saved from his or her sins should have a deep appreciation not only of that, but of all the wonderful things that God has in store for us in Christ, so that we might take account of the glory of the Lord and be transformed. I simply want to draw attention to the Lord Jesus, to Christ, to the Saviour who is the image of God. Paul speaks here very affectingly; he wants to make it very clear that he and his fellow preachers are not preaching themselves “but Christ Jesus Lord, and ourselves your bondmen for Jesus’ sake”. He says it is “Because it is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. God had shone in the heart of Paul and those who ministered with him, laboured with him, so that it should shine forth. But it should not be contained there, it should not just be kept within. That is why we preach the gospel, why we continue to have that exercise to preach the gospel, because its testimony should be maintained. As believers, as those who have trusted in the Lord Jesus, a testimony has come to us and we would desire to share that with others, to speak about “the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. What an attractive place for the knowledge of the glory of God to be found, you might say, in the beautiful face of Jesus Christ.

It brings home the fact that Jesus is not a historical person, someone who is unknown and distant and very far away from us. He is very near to us. He is very near to everyone who feels their need of Him and He would draw near to the needy sinner and knock on the door of their heart, and maybe even on the door of the heart of someone who has trusted in Him as Saviour but has become discouraged and has slipped back. Jesus would knock at the door of your heart so that He might enter in. How wonderful that is.

I want to speak about the Holy Spirit. This passage here speaks of “the Lord the Spirit”. The Spirit of God has been given to those who obey God. It is by the Spirit that we have the power to move forward, to continue in this scene, to go on in the face of adversity. There is a great deal of adversity now and it comes from the challenges that Satan would bring against us. Practical circumstances can be difficult and challenging and trying, and can discourage us. The Spirit would encourage us. The Spirit is spoken of as “another Comforter”, John 14:16. The Lord speaks of Him as the Paraclete; He spoke of begging the Father to send another Comforter to believers down here. Jesus is the Paraclete, our Comforter, and the Spirit is also a Paraclete – another Comforter. Jesus is with us every step of the way, and the Spirit is with us too. The Spirit is a great gift from God and the Lord Jesus is also with those who trust in Him. Jesus would never leave us nor abandon us nor turn aside from us for a moment. That is a great and comforting thought.

These two words interested me – “paraclete” which comes from Greek, and “comforter” which comes from Latin. The paraclete, “paracletus” in Greek, was a member of Greek society, a family lawyer who was kept on a retainer. If at any time of the day or night, someone brought a legal challenge against you and accused you of something, then you could call upon your paraclete and he would come and aid you. Paracletus means ‘called to stand with’. So there was one you could call to stand with you at any time. The Spirit would do that for us. If Satan attacks, and Satan is the accuser of the brethren, if he would come with accusations and temptations and doubts and fears, we can call on the Spirit to stand with us.

Then what the Spirit would do is brought out in the other word which is used – the ‘Comforter’. I think it means something slightly different in our day and age, but when Mr. Darby was translating the Scriptures and when those who translated the Authorised Version were translating it, the word ‘Comforter’ was more closely linked with its Latin origin, which is a conjunction of the two words ‘com’ and ‘forte’, which mean ‘with strength’. So the Spirit, when we speak of Him as a Comforter, is One who strengthens. He will come and stand beside us and He will strengthen us. Of course, these two words can certainly be used of the Lord Jesus as well. He would come and stand with us and strengthen us against whatever may come against us.

And the Lord Jesus, having been tempted while He was here, but being without sin, knows exactly whatever challenges might come against us. He is able to sympathise; we might say He stands with us to strengthen us for every step of the road, for every day that we are left here. The Lord would also strengthen us by giving us a view of His coming again. He is coming again very soon to take us to be with Himself. When all the trials and difficulties of this pathway, through which He is supporting and strengthening us, are over, we will be with Him for ever. That is the great hope, the great expectation which is in the hearts of all who believe in Him. Why would you turn away from that? This world is a scene full of barrenness and starvation, spiritual starvation. Men are hungry in their souls and the answer to that hunger and the thirst which they, and maybe you, are experiencing is Jesus; to have your sins washed away in His blood, to trust in Him, to lean on Him and to feed on Him and be near to Him. That is a great challenge to me but we can all feed on Christ and be sustained by Him for the rest of the pathway here.

And then to know what it is to be a son, to be one of the sons of God, to be brought into a blessed relationship with the Father. When Jesus ascended, He said He would ascend to “my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”, John 20:17. We are brought into a wonderful, blessed relationship with God as our Father. To be brethren of Christ and sons of God and indwelt by the Spirit – what wonderful riches these are. Mere words cannot express their value – so why, dear friend, would you turn away from any of that? The matter of having your sins forgiven is a wonderful blessing of God and a demonstration of His heart and His grace and His mercy. But there is so much more that God has in store for you, so why would you delay? Why would you wait? If you have not done so already, trust in the Saviour today. May the Lord bless the word.

 

Preaching of the gospel, Edinburgh

28 November 2021

 

 

Grant T Melville