“Then God said, “Let Us (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”
Genesis 1:26
In the very beginning of the Bible, (literally, "in the beginning") one of the first details we are given is that God made man in His image. Imago Dei, in the image of God, is sort of a foundational doctrine in the church that we all hear, but maybe we don’t often enough really put thought into what it means. We know that it means in some way we were made in a way that some part of us looks like God looks, and we think that’s great of course, and an honor, but it is almost too vast of a concept to fully grasp. So on a smaller level, have you ever really thought about what that means for your day-to-day life?
What I find interesting about the concept of being made in God's image, is that it SEEMS to be, that being made in the image of God is not exclusive to only those of us who are believers. It’s only through Jesus that we are adopted into God’s family and become children of God,(Ephesians 1:5) but even those who don’t believe are still, to some extent, image bearers. Even the people you struggle with most, the people who make you the angriest, the people who cut you off in traffic, the people who make the worst co-workers, the ones who always seem to drink a little too much at the family function, they’re all fundamentally made in the image of God. So, what if we actually kept that in mind when we’re AROUND those people, and with how we treat them?
Now obviously, being made in God’s image does NOT mean everything every person does is endorsed by God, don’t get me twisted. But what it does mean is that every single person you encounter, good or bad, has at least the tiniest spark of the Divine Creator inside of them, so what if you LOOKED for it? What if we made every effort to see the goodness in people, to see that spark, to find some quality in them that reflected God’s nature, and focused on THAT inside of them? And maybe even told them how much they reminded you of Jesus in that way? What would happen? How would it change how we see them, or even how they see themselves? We can look at God and know that He looks on us with eyes of love, so what if we looked on others with those same eyes? What if we lived as if every person we encountered had something in them that looked like the one who loves us? Because they do. I pray this week that you’ll try to find something of God’s image in every person you meet, and try to reflect His image in all you do.
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