The Image of God (3) New Humanity In Christ

“We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people - the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world - just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.” (Col 1:3-6)

​Review
Thank you all for coming to our young adult worship service. We’ve been talking about the image of God and today is the last sermon on this subject.
 
Regarding the image of God, the Bible speaks about three things. First of all, human beings were created in the image of God. Second, human beings have lost the image of God because of sin. Third, God recovers His image through Jesus Christ, and He wants all His people to be conformed to the image of His Son.
 
So, we find three different types of humanity in the Bible—created humanity, fallen humanity, and new humanity in Christ. In the first sermon, we focused on the meaning of being created in the image of God.
 
To be created in the image of God means that we are essentially made to have relationships with God, with others, and with other creatures the way the triune God—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—have an intimate relationship with each other with mutual respect and love.
 
God created human beings to share His love with them and to have them take good care of each other and everything He made. That’s what the image of created humanity should look like. And we can find the perfect example of this image in Jesus’ life.
 
Last Sunday, we focused on fallen humanity. The Bible doesn’t only talk about the fact that human beings were created in the image of God—it also reveals that they lost that image because of their sin.
 
How the great fall came to all human beings is described in Genesis chapter 3, where Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil. They did so with the desire to make themselves “be like God,” and as a result of this one disobedience, all the relationships they had were broken.
 
The relationship with God was severed, which resulted in the brokenness of human relationships. The image of God became obscured and distorted by sin.
 
Sin doesn’t have just one face. Even though the essence of every kind of sin is the same, it has been revealed in many aspects of our lives. First of all, in our relationship with God, human beings start to resist their need for God and His grace.
 
This active resistance caused us to lose the kind of image we were created in. We’ve lost how worthily God created us and have started to despise ourselves according to worldly standards of being worthy. Because we’ve lost the identity of being children of God, we don’t know how to truly love ourselves.
 
This also affected our relationships with others. Because we’ve lost the ability to see others as God’s masterpieces, created in His image, we don’t love them but often harm, ignore, and become indifferent to them.
 
Out of the many faces of sin, I think the passive form of being indifferent to others is the most widely pervasive in Christian life nowadays. Sadly, it seems that many Christians aren’t interested in what God’s really interested in.
 
Rather than seeking God’s will, they only seek their own pleasure. We’ve lost the ability to see others in need the way God sees them and to reach out to them just as Jesus came to the world to save us.
 
Rather than trying to know where God’s eyes are, we only see what we want to see, following our own desires. This sin of indifference is the most powerful aspect of sin that severs our relationships with others. That’s what fallen humanly looks like.
 
New Humanity in Christ
Even though we can’t find any hope within ourselves, we can still find hope in Christ Jesus. He wasn’t indifferent to us, but actively came down to save us from our sins and renew us.
 
Paul said, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2Co 5:17)
 
Here, the new creation refers to the new self we come to have in Jesus. Jesus perfectly solved the problem of sin with His sacrifice on the cross and, by doing so, restored the image of God in us. We have been freed from the bondage of sin, and all our relationships with God and others that have been severed because of sin were recovered.
 
Now, in Jesus, we see the perfect example of how we should live as new creations. As I said before, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, in whose image we were created. So, the way Jesus had relationships with God and others shows us the kind of life we should also live with our new identity in Him.
 
In His total trust in God, Jesus always relied on God by praying in all circumstances. And in His life with all people, especially with the poor and the outcast, Jesus showed His unconditional love and compassion, which were revealed in His specific actions. And Jesus laid down His life even to the point of death to save us.
 
The Image of God: Faith and Love
So the life of Jesus, or the image of the Son, brings us into the new realm of faith and love we should have in our relationships with God and others.
 
1) Faith
Being created in the image of God means total dependence on God and living by His grace. Such a relationship was broken by sin. So, to recover the relationship with God as new creations in Jesus is to regain true faith in Him, because faith means simple trust and total confidence in God’s grace revealed to us by Jesus Christ.
 
Faith is not just agreeing with something with our minds. It is to completely accept what Jesus achieved on the cross as truth and to shift the lordship of our lives from ourselves to God.
 
Faith is a free and total act of entrusting ourselves to God, so faith is the end of all kinds of idolatry, whether the idolatry of self or the idolatry of others. In faith, we put God first and set His word as the absolute authority of our lives.
 
With faith, we gladly respond to the first and greatest commandment to love God with all our hearts, minds, and souls. With faith, we humbly accept the truth of who we are in Christ so that we’re no longer influenced by false ideas of worthiness in the world. We don’t despise or overlook ourselves but start to love ourselves just the way we are, proclaiming that we’re God’s beloved children bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
 
Therefore, genuine faith in God must change our relationship with Him. If sin comes from the desire to be like God in terms of the lordship of our lives, true faith produces a pure, glad, willing desire to be conformed to the image of God. Through faith, and only through faith, can we know who God is and who we are in Him. That’s the first thing that’s recovered when we believe in Jesus.
 
2) Love
Second, our lives as new creations being conformed to the image of the Son must also be shown in our loving relationships with others.
 
Being created in the image of God means living in mutual respect and love with others. This aspect of the image of God has been lost and distorted by despising others or being indifferent to them as a result of centering ourselves in our lives rather than God.
 
Then, to live with and love others is the new way of life that was clearly shown in Jesus Christ and that we’re to live out as new creations in Him.
 
Christian love is characterized by self-giving. The way we love is different from the way the world defines love because the love we’re called to live out is not our own definition of love, but the kind of love we find in Jesus’ life. We’re called to imitate Jesus’ love, which was shown in the most sacrificial way.
 
To seek us out, Jesus willingly laid down all His heavenly authority and chose to become like one of us. And He loved His people to the end, even to the point of sacrificing His own life to pay the ransom for our sin.
 
Jesus shows us what true love looks like. And now, it’s our turn to show how great and deep His love is for all people through our love for others.
 
Let’s read 1 John 3:16-19 together.
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters… Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence” (1Jn 3:16-19)
 
The way Jesus loved us shows us how we should treat others. To be conformed to the image of the Son is to reflect His love in our relationships with others. And, the ‘others’ must include not only those with whom we get along, but also those who seem to be against us. Namely, we’re called to love our enemies.
 
And as John said, love is much more than just encouraging someone with words, which is important, but not enough. Jesus didn’t only love us with His words, but He proved His love in the most sacrificial way so that no one can doubt His love. That’s the love we’re to seek as we grow in our faith.
 
Christian love must be an act of freedom. According to the Bible, love is not a duty, but rather a joyful practice of what we’ve seen in and received from Christ, which means that we can truly love only when we’re filled with Jesus’ love.
 
The love we’re to show to others is not our love. Our love is always preceded by God’s surprising love for us. As John said, “We love because he first loved us.” (1 Jn 4:19)
 
So, what’s more important than deciding to love others is just trying to remain in Jesus’ love at all times. Our love has a clear limit, but there’s no limit to Jesus’ love.
 
If we try to love with our love, we can only love as much as we can, and we ourselves will be praised; but if we love others through Jesus’ love, which is without any limit or end, we can love others much more than we’re able to on our own, and Jesus’ name will be shown, praised, and glorified.
 
So, to love others is not an obligation or burden, but actually a great privilege that lets us experience Jesus’ love more deeply. Then, what we should do is dive deeply into His love and remain in it so that it can naturally overflow from our lives to those around us.
 
So, we just talked about how to live as new creations in Christ, especially in our relationships with God and with others. I believe faith and love are ways of living in the image of God.
 
God’s will for us is to be conformed to the image of His Son. Christians are those who live not by their own strength or abilities, but through Christ in them. The faith Jesus had in God and the love Jesus showed toward people must become ours. Then we’ll be able to glorify God through our lives.
 
Today, we started the sermon by reading Colossians chapter 1. Paul said that he always thanked God because he had heard of the Colossians’ faith in Christ and of the love they had for all God’s people. And their faith and love sprang from their hope for the coming of the kingdom of God and joining in Jesus’ resurrection.
 
The Colossians weren’t the only ones who had faith in God and love for others that resulted from this eternal hope.
 
Paul wrote to the Thessalonians,
“We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you” (1Th 1:3-4)
 
Paul knew that they were chosen through their faith, love, and hope. Their faith was shown as a form of hard work, their love as ‘labor,’ and their hope as endurance, which shows that Christian faith, love, and hope are not abstract concepts, but very practical aspects of our lives that we should all seek.
 
All right. Before we wrap up, I want to introduce one of Paul’s great prayers for God’s people. Let’s read Ephesians 3:16-19 together.
 
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:16-19)
 
This is also my prayer for you as well. I pray that all of us can experience Jesus’ amazing work of renewal in our lives so that we can have new faith, new love, and new hope until we are fully transformed into the image of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
 
Let’s pray.
 
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank You for creating us in Your image and for sending Jesus Christ to restore the image of God that we’ve lost because of our sin.
 
Oh Lord, we want to be conformed to the image of Your Son, Jesus. Please have mercy on us and continue to work in us so that we can put on the new self, created to be like Jesus.
 
We want to reflect Jesus’ personality. Let us have complete trust in You just as Jesus fully surrendered to You on earth, and let us love others as Jesus loved us to the point of laying down His life.
 
Thank You for making us new creations through Jesus. Please continue to teach us how to live as Your people, being conformed to and reflecting Your image. We want to live a life that’s completely dependent on You.
 
Please let us learn what it means to live by faith in the Son of God so that our lives can be firmly established in Your love. Please continue to restore the image of Christ in us until our transformation is made complete on the last day.
 
We thank You Lord. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
 
Sharing Questions
Today we talked about what new humanity in Christ looks like. It is depicted as faith in God in our relationship with Him and as love in our relationships with others. Here are the questions I want us to think about today.
 
1) What do you think it means for you to have faith in God? What would true faith look like? What kind of faith do you want to have or recover in your relationship with God?
 
2) What are some big obstacles that keep you from loving others as new creations in Christ? How do you think you can truly love others, including those who are against you, and overcome the sin of indifference?