As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
Read Part 1.
The mirror shattered. When first made, the mirror perfectly reflected its Maker. A clean, clear picture revealed Him. But when the pit of that fruit struck the glass, snaking cracks distorted His image. Blurring obscured what He intended His creation to see. God’s image remained but not as He designed it to be.
No, you are not omnipotent, and you never will be. You are not a god, and you cannot ascend to that level. That’s been tried, and the devil and his angels got condemned forever for it. Yet, God made you like Him. You bear the image of God.
Genesis 1:26 records how God created human beings: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.’” By design, God purposely made us like Him. But how? What does it mean to bear the image of God?
“Desecration can take many forms, but it is always characterized by certain things: a delight in dehumanizing those made in God’s image; and an absence of gratitude to God” - Carl Trueman
“At the height of World War 2, British novelist Dorothy Sayers wrote an influential essay… [on] the value and importance of the biblical doctrine of work….Her essay was a pivotal watershed for her nation in her day, and her insights are still important for the Church today.” - Baptist Press
“A doctor in Quebec “treated” a BIID [Body Identity Integrity Disorder] patient by amputating two of his healthy fingers. Otherwise, the patient was threatening to mutilate himself” - Humanize
“Because we’re finite and unique and because we’ll never know everything….we’ll still likely have different tastes in food and clothes and music and thousands of other things.” - Randy Alcorn
“Christians can be guilty of making pithy statements of a theological nature that require a lot of explanation for the phrase to be accurate. If an explanation is not offered, we are sometimes demanding a lot of the reader to put all the pieces together.” - Ref21
Read Part 1.
Not only did God’s curse upon humanity entail a spiritual death; it also resulted in physical death or the dissolution of the body. You may recall God’s judicial pronouncement on Adam:
The Bible portrays death as the consequence of human sin. Death was the sanction that God tied to the Garden of Eden stipulation: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17). And God’s expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden on account of their covenant breach and treason demonstrated that His threats were not empty. Death became the lot of Adam and his posterity.
Discussion