Whose image are you in?

Father began to highlight an area that I had only previously thought about in passing but His Spirit was breathing fresh perspective.  This area is in who's likeness we see ourselves, we maybe created in God's likeness and image but who are we looking to.  In Genesis 1:28 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit creates us in His image and likeness.  No other creature can speak intelligible words, has personality, morality, and spiritually.  We are unique and according to Psalm 8 the crowning work of all creation and born to rule and reign.  This is not some lofty theoretical idea, this is the design of the Creator.

Yet we are only 4 chapters from Genesis 1:28, in Genesis 5:3 and see, "When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth."  This is a huge transition after the Fall from children who would have looked at their parents and would be able to clearly see the image of God in them, then they would become like that image.  Now Adam, the first man God created, has a son who is in his own likeness not the image of God.  The image of God in Adam at this point in the story is hideously stained with sin, the Fall, and orphan thinking.  So Seth would look to his earthly father Adam to show him what God was like but instead of seeing the untainted image of God he would see this distorted image only to become like Adam.

I see this in everyday life as I counsel and minister to people, the judge their father as being distant and emotionally unavailable only to have a hard time connecting with their own kids and looking like the very image (dad) that they judged.  Romans 2:1-3 says in essence, we become what (the image) we judge in others.  A now mother herself judged her mother as not being the tender and nurturing mother her heart desired, only to later tell her kids it was time to make herself happy becoming unavailable to them when they needed her.  It goes on, children looking to their parents to see what God is like seeing this distorted image and then it being replicated in them.

It is only when we look to the fullness of who the Father is in the Son Jesus Christ that Scripture promises us we will be changed into the same image.  2 Corinthians 3:17-18 says, "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is,there is liberty.  But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit."  You were destined to look into the face of the One who made you, then you will look like the Son and know the Father's love.

In His Image,

Bret