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Genesis 1:26-31
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Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (ESV)
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The Image of God
Thursday of Advent 4
23 December 2010
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Our heavenly Father was not about to leave his creation in ruins because of sin. He was not going to leave humans under the hegemony of nothingness perpetrated by Satan through the fall of Adam. We humans were incapable of overthrowing the power of sin and corruption because we ourselves had fallen into that corruption in the garden. We proved our inability to overthrow the thralldom of the devil because we did not avoid being overthrown by the serpent's blandishments in the first instance.
In that fall we became rebels without a cause. What reason could there be for a rebellion against God's gracious gifts? There is no good reason to be a slave. God, compelled by his love, sent His true Image, to re-create man after that image and rescue man from the thralldom of nothingness in the kingdom of Satan. The true King has come.
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Athanasius of Alexandria
"Even a human king does not let the lands he has colonized pass to others to serve them, nor go over to other men; but he warns them by letters, and often sends them friends, or, if need be, he comes in person, to rebuke them in the last resort by his presence, that they may not serve others and his own work be for nothing. Shall not God much more spare His own creatures, that they not be led astray from Him and serve things that are not? Especially since such going astray proves the cause of their ruin and undoing, and since it was unfitting that those should perish who had once been partakers of God's image.
"What then was God to do? Or what was to be done except the renewing of that which was in God's image, so that by it men might once more be able to know Him? But how could this happen except by the presence of the true Image of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? For by men's means it was impossible, since they are but made after an image; nor by angels either, for not even angels are (God's) images. For this reason the Word of God came in His own person, that, as He was the Image of the Father, He might be able to re-create man after the image.
"But, again, it could not have taken place unless death and corruption had been done away with. Therefore He assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once for all be destroyed, and that man might be renewed according to the Image. The Image of the Father only was sufficient for this need."
Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God, 13
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Prayer
O Jesus Christ, You are the true image of the Father having come into the world. Grant that being renewed in knowledge in the image of my Creator, I might find true freedom in Your kingdom. Amen.
For Barbara Darling, who is struggling with cancer, that the Lord would grant strength of body and spirit, and healing of both
For all those who heard the Christmas gospel in word and song in Advent services, that they might be rescued from the kingdom of nothingness through the Word of God
For the missionary endeavors of all Christians that they might invite others to come and see what the Lord has told them
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Art: LEONARDO da Vinci Annunciation 1472-75
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 © Scott R. Murray, 2010
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