LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
The Image of God (2)
Amongst the different characteristics of the image of God are love, the cross and the grace to give.
Roberto Sáez
In the last message I mentioned four different characteristics of the image of God. This morning I want to emphasise another that shows three bound within itself: love, the cross and the grace to give.
Love
Love is the most distinctive characteristic of the image of God. John says to us "God is love". In these last few days, He has been teaching us how the Lord Jesus Christ came to shape the image of God in the twelve when there had not even been a ministry or such a thing as apostleship. There had only been a relationship between Christ and His disciples. And it was a relationship of love. They began to feel and to see in an objective, practical and what's more, a very dedicated way, how the Lord Jesus Christ revealed the image of God with tenderness, with love and with meekness.
They saw in Christ an intense love for His Father. And they heard, in one of His last teachings in John chapter 15, when Jesus was departing from them: "Remain in my love just as I ... remain in His love"(1). And if there was anything that had supported Jesus in his humanity during His time on earth, it was to remember the eternal love with which the Father had loved Him. How could He forget that love, how could He betray that love, how could He be unfaithful to that eternal love?
Christ lived in a mutual relationship with His Father, and had eternally enjoyed the delights of the Love of the Father. With His Father, they had planned and made all things. Even His death had been planned with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. Christ died, not by chance, not because they obligated Him to die: His death was an act of obedience to an anticipated and determined decision of God. He said, "no-one takes it (His life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again" (John 10:18). The Lord Himself did not act in the resurrection (having had the power to do so) but rather He waited for the time appointed by the Father: on the third day He was resurrected. The Son of God did not raise up by Himself, rather by the Father through the eternal spirit He was raised up among the dead. Hallelujah!
Jesus was supported by the love of the Father. How could He not live in that love, how could He not remember it in the midst of temptations that he endured and during the crises of His soul (because He experienced human life just like us... the only difference between Him and us is that in Him there was no sin, but He still felt our humanity with all its contingencies; with hunger, weariness, solitude and with the pain of suffering betrayal.) The disciples saw Jesus' relationship with His Father; depending on His Father, praying to His Father, listening to His Father, being alone with His Father and delighting in having contact with heaven.
One day, Jesus took three of them to a mountain. And as if a window or door between heaven and earth had opened, Christ was transformed in full sight of the disciples. They saw the glory of God. John gave testimony that what he contemplated with his eyes and what he felt touching the word of life with his hands was what they had all seen. They received a great revelation of Jesus Christ and of the communion that the Lord Jesus shared with His Father. In that instant a voice from heaven was heard for a second time, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!" (Matt 17:5) What a profound revelation of the image of God! A complete revelation, full of the glory of God.
The image of God, following what we have discussed in these last days, is not a silhouette, but rather a form of life. It is an image that is characterised by interdependence, by reciprocity, by conformity to one and other. However, all of these multiple relations are bound by love. And it is this that the Lord Jesus Christ came to show. He summarised all of His teaching, his instructions and all the commands of Moses in two commands: Love of God and love of one's neighbour. Because in these, all the laws and the prophets are summed up.
The Cross
Love is related to the cross. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life". (John 3:16) It is love that brought Christ down from heaven. It is in love that God gave His Son. It is love that moved Him to endure the cross at Golgotha. Love moved the Father to give up His Son for us. That love for us moved the Son to give His life to save sinners. Love carries the implications of the cross and of sacrifice.
God is love, and His love enabled Him to pay this costly price to save our lives. Therefore this additional and distinctive characteristic of the image of God comes as a consequence of giving. For love He suffers the cross, for love He denies Himself, for love He gives everything; this is the fruit of love: to give. The cross is behind every act of giving, and love is behind the cross.
Love implies the cross, and the cross implies giving. It is all inter-related. It is the distinctive characteristic of God. It is His form of life, and from this we learn that the cross is something that has eternally been in God's heart; that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have eternally lived in this form.
First, the Father shared with the Son, as all things were from the Father. When the Father's authority and glory was challenged by the principal angel, who rebelled against God and caused chaos in the heavens, the Father, in an exemplary attitude did not vindicate Himself, despite having the authority to do so, but entrusted the work of judging the devil and the sin of humanity to the Son. Equally on the cross the Lord Jesus Christ casts judgement representing the will of the Father, offended in His authority and holiness. The Son vindicates the authority of the Father.
The Father does not do this by Himself. The Father sent the Son. The Son obeyed the Father. The Son submitted to the Father and the greatest demonstration of this is that in the crucial moment, in which He had to determine giving up His life on the cross in the most terrifying, painful, shameful and vile way, the Lord Jesus Christ says, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done". (Luke 22:42) And the Father confirmed it in the Son's heart. Perhaps the Son remembered some moment from eternity, before all things were created, when in that eternal council of Godhood, whom were all in agreement, one asked, who will go for us? And the Son said, "Here I am, send me".
Obedience Was Tested
However, that obedience, that "here I am" was tested. The Son had never been part of humanity and in His human nature His obedience amidst suffering was being tested. This culminated in the arrival of the moment to demonstrate His capacity to be obedient... as a man! Hallelujah! Because Jesus was obedient even up to His death, death on a cross. The Son submitted to the cross. The Son knew of the horrors and the terrors; the prophecies spoke of pain, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, (Isaiah 53:3) from the moment when they would tear out the hairs of his beard.
When the Son confronted the cross, He suffered pain as any human would. By the sensitivity of the blessed Son of God, it seems that He died prematurely. He was crucified at midday, and hours later He breathed His last. He could not sustain the pain. He could not sustain the abuse any longer. If we express this in scientific and medical terms, Jesus' human heart exploded from the emotional impact. His blood was poured out. His side, injured by the spear, poured out that blood. The cross was horrendous. It was for you and for me. How blessed that cross! Blessed obedience! What a blessed act of love, exalted love! There is no greater love than He who came down from heaven, leaving His throne of glory and paid this costly price! Oh, what a price! He poured out His life for you and me. In the cross every problem was solved. All the rebellion, all the disobedience, all the consequences of the fall, all disgrace, all death was conquered by the cross. Christ won the victory! Hallelujah!
But the cross of Golgotha, the historical, real, tangible cross that thousands of eyes saw, is only an expression of the image of God, of the character and form of the Godhood. They eternally existed on the cross. What would have happened had Jesus not been obedient to the Father? What would have happened if the Lord Jesus, in some moment of eternity had decided to act for himself? ... God would no longer be one. God would be divided. Yet what has allowed God to remain as one is the cross. They have had the capacity to deny themselves, and the Father has shown it in the most tremendous, graphic and tangible form. The cross of Golgotha is the historical act in which God showed His love to us. Through the historical and visible cross, He shows us the spiritual cross, the cross of His character, of His life, of His image. The cross has eternally been upon Him, and will eternally be so. It is for this reason that the cross has to be applied in our lives.
Our Experience
In the past, we gave many messages about the cross, however, despite knowing the doctrine of the cross, we had not, until the last few years, experienced it. How many of us, faced with the cross wanted to avoid it? For this reason we were not worthy. How many, facing the cross had an alternative, a jar of wine vinegar mixed with gall to sooth the pain? How many of us, faced with the cross have "drugged" ourselves with an alternative that gave us some relief so that the cross would not be so painful?
I don't know how conscious you are of how necessary the cross is in our natural daily life, for our old self, for the inheritance of our sinful flesh, for our vain ways of living received from our ancestors. I don't know how conscious we are of how bad we are inside, how perverse we are, of the natural inclinations we have for doing wrong. I don't know how many of us have arrived at a point of saying, "How miserable am I!" I don't know how many of us still have a better opinion of ourselves than we ought, "I'm not so bad. I was born in a Christian home." How wonderful for those born in Christian homes and have never sinned with these vulgar sins. Yet there are still too many, having this formal life in a Christian home, who do not know the cross; they are full of their own self righteousness. They think that because they have not tasted of the world, that they are better than others. How many will have a righteousness of their own! Oh free us Lord! We know that from head to toe everything that is in us is arrogant and could wound us. Our righteousness, the best of our actions are like filthy rags in the presence of God. We are not justified by ourselves, there is nothing good within us. Sin and darkness are in us. Over and above all things we are sinners.
But thanks be to God that He has justified us of our sins and has put the holy life of His Son inside us, that dwells in us and now we have no glory of ourselves within. Now we know of the circumcision of our flesh. Not in our human flesh, but in the flesh of our humanity. We were circumcised, God removed our sinful flesh in the circumcision of Christ. We have been crucified with Christ. How many of you know that on the day that Christ died, we died too? We were with Christ in His death, we were buried with Him, baptised into His death. And now the life that we celebrate is the resurrected life, it is the new life of man, it is the life of Christ in us. This is not a life particular only to you and I, but is the life that is manifested in the body of Christ.
The Grace to Give
The love of God and the cross of Christ produces within us the grace to give. When we have known the love of God, and when we have known the cross, it is not difficult for us to give, because once you have experienced the cross, your life is already surrendered. Now you are of Christ. Now Christ is in you. Now you do not make your decisions alone. Now the kingdom of God is within us. Now the authority of God and of Christ has come to us. And the kingdom of God is regulating us.
Offerings appear in the New Testament, and are represented in the Old Testament with a system of sacrificing animals in Hebraic ceremonies. Giving an offering in the Old Testament was costly. They had to give up an animal, not just any animal, but the best one, and offer it to God. The cross was implicitly contained within the act of offering, because there had to be a sacrifice. At the same time as giving, one was also sacrificing.
I believe that we are living in days of renovation, days of purification, days of restoration. We are therefore seeing that it is easy to give, in these times, because we are surrendering ourselves, we are taking up the cross, we are accepting that in order to come to God and adore Him, we have to give over everything, we have to surrender everything. And in the time of offering, scripture teaches us to first offer ourselves to God.
Offering Yourself First
In Romans these well known verses appear, "Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, then you will be able to test and approve God's will - His good, pleasing and perfect will" (Romans 12:1-2).
In these verses he invites us to come to the altar of God, to come to the cross, he invites us to surrender everything at the altar, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices. If a believer who lives in sin offers sacrifices to God, it will count for nothing. A man cannot bring an offering to God if his life is not consecrated. This man may think that he is buying a blessing; that he is buying peace or forgiveness, that he is buying the goodness of God. If it worked in such a way as this, God would be indebted to this man, but God is not indebted to anyone.
The distinctive characteristic of God is love, and therefore every action that we take has to be done in love. Those who give to God give from the heart, because they understand that in this act of giving there is an act of adoration.
In order to offer something, we must first give of ourselves. We surrender our minds to the Lord. We surrender the heart, eyes, ears, feet, hands, we bring our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.
When you remain with your own eyes, and do not surrender them to God, you will fall into lust. When you remain with your own hands and do not surrender them to God, you will touch what belongs to another. When you do not give over your feet to God, you will walk in ways that are not the ways of God. However, if we bring all of our being before the altar of God, then there will be an experience, a renovation of our understanding, comprehending that what is pleasing and perfect according to God, not our own minds. Then we will no longer live according to the patterns of this world, but we will be adapting ourselves to the kingdom of God, to His principals, to His word and we will live by the will of God. Hallelujah! Glory to God!
Because God asked us to Give
Do we understand that love implies the cross, and that the cross implies giving? That one follows the other? That they are interrelated and that behind every act of giving is love and the cross, that that is the offering? That God would bless us brothers and sisters. That God would enlarge our understanding. That God would fill our hearts with goodness. That He would make us grow in the grace to give. That we would all increase our offerings for the work of God. God raised us up to be in communion and we are participants of His work. Perhaps that this is the biggest sense in which God asks of us to give of ourselves. He wants to teach us how He lives. He wants us to represent His image. He wants us to be like Him.
Do you want to be like God? Do you want to be similar to the Father? Do you want to be like the Son? Do you want to be like God? Well then, we have to walk this path. We have to walk in love. All of these multiple relations are impregnated with love. It is said that love is the perfect bond. What is a bond? A bond is a tie that holds together, that fastens and that supports. The perfect bond is a multiple relation of giving, receiving, supporting and enduring. The perfect bond is love. Hallelujah!
(1) All references taken from the NIV version, unless otherwise stated.