…since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator (Colossians 3:9,10).
It is imperative that thinking Christ-followers understand the Bible’s answer to the question, What does it mean to be human?
Why?
More than ever, our culture is wrestling with a package of front-burner social issues – abortion on demand, medical assistance in dying (MAiD), sexuality and gender, marriage and family – to which the Bible provides navigational principles.
And that begins with an
understanding of imago dei; of all created beings, mankind alone bears the
image and likeness of God.
But another indispensable component exists. And therefore, the Bible’s answer to the question of human ontology and identity supplies a binary, paradoxical and asymmetrical conclusion.
Firstly as stated, every person – regardless of whether they possess beauty or talent or intelligence, and without regard to the colour of their skin or racial derivation – possesses unparalleled dignity because each is created in the image of God.
And yet – although appearing contradictory on first glance – every human person is infected by the moral disease of what is theologically referred to as original sin. This does not mean merely the disobedience of our first parents in the Garden of Eden.
Rather, original sin explains that that representative evil on the part of Adam and Eve changed the constituent moral nature of their progeny – the entire human race. From that historic point, every person is born with a natural inclination away from God. Like a defiant toddler, we are consequently hard-wired to disobey our loving Creator.
Each of us mirrors – although opaquely – something of God’s goodness, while simultaneously reflecting a dimension of the hideous ethical deformity resulting from our rebelling against Him and His law.
The Bible asserts that this has not simply caused a
slight moral stain on the heart, but that the core of our beings are contaminated
by malignant evil. Each of us is
capable of incredible, unspeakable selfishness.
We are depraved, degenerate, debauched.
In a word, mankind as a whole is therefore characterized
as being ungodly.
The Apostle Paul’s classic text quotes heavily from the Jewish Old Testament (various Psalms and Isaiah): As it is written: "There is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands, no-one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no-one who does good, not even one." "Their throats are open graves; their tongues practise deceit." "The poison of vipers is on their lips." "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." (Romans 3:10-18).
That is of
course disputed by contemporary pundits. We are told that the shackles of the
repressive Christian God must be thrown off so that mankind can know true
liberty and enlightenment.
One wonders if what is at play is this simple intellectual exercise attributed to Russian revolutionary anarchist Michael Bakunin: “If God is, man is a slave; now man can and must be free; then God does not exist.”
In the 21st
century interpretation of the age-old nature versus nurture
controversy, we are told that every person is born morally neutral, that it is
our living milieu – particularly that which oppresses and victimizes – that compels us to deviate from what is right and good.
But every parent
knows different.
Malcolm Muggeridge, the British soldier, spy, journalist, and satirist (died 1990) was a keen social spectator. He observed, “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted.”
The prominent Russian writer and dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.”
But the glory of the Gospel of Christ offers mankind’s only hope – a future return to what God intended before He laid the foundations of the globe.
The Creator chose to step into His creation by becoming a
1st century, Palestinian Jewish male stone-mason/carpenter. Cornelius van Til noted that God became “fearlessly anthropomorphic”.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: God “did not become an idea, a principle, a program, a universally valid belief or a law”.
But the God-Man came to die. The Lamb of God came to atone
for my sin and its eternal effect. 10
and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the
image of its Creator.
Takeaway: To come to the Saviour in repentant
faith triggers the life-long process of being remade into the image of Christ.
One of the great biblical caveats is the U-turn that follows Paul’s bleak text on the depravity of all men quoted above: But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known…This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe (Romans 3:21,22).
And the continuing promise of the inexpressible brilliance of the Gospel of Christ promises to revolutionize any life, bringing spiritual rebirth – infusing with new life – and transitioning into His likeness: [you] have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image
of its Creator (Colossians 3:10).
The Spirit of God works
continuously, relentlessly, and ultimately in the life of every Christ-follower
to mould each into the image of the Saviour: being transformed into his
image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the
Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).
