Image Restoration
Last night I had a dream that I was preaching. It was kind of strange, because my dreams usually are far different than that. Yet what I was preaching on (the details of most of it and to who are personal, but I can say this much) is of absolute value: In the beginning, God made humanity in His image. We are bearers of the image of Almighty God. And then, God breathed His breath into the Nostrils of Adam, and the man became a living being. We not only bear the image of God, but we contain His breath. We were given the Garden, and, indeed, the whole earth to rule, as God ruled in the Heavens. When we chose for ourselves what was right in the Garden instead of letting God define good and evil, we were removed from the Garden, our crowns were tarnished and ruined, and we've been parading around in them, choosing death over life ever since.
What's the point of all of this? We keep trying to gain and achieve Paradise on our terms. Our tarnished crowns are incomparable to the glory and Majesty of God, the image He is attempting to restore us to. How do I know this? Because He fulfilled each and every promise of reconciliation through the One Man in all of History who did not rebel against God, Jesus Christ. Jesus, God in human flesh, lived as one of us, restricting Himself to our laws and our space, that He might reconcile us to Himself and His Father, placing within us His Spirit, making us alive again in Him. Jesus Christ died, putting our rebellion in our flesh to death. Yet, He did not stay dead, instead, rising again, that we too may die to our rebellion, and live in the newness of Life in Him for all eternity. Our tarnished crowns cannot compare to the glory of Christ, for apart from Him, we're dead in our rebellion. So what are you fighting against? Why are you seeking your own way, when The Way seeks to restore you to what you were always meant to be? Let Christ restore you back to His Image. Let Him breathe His breath on you, that you may also contain the Spirit and become a living being once more. Only in Christ do the dead come alive again. Only in Christ is the Image of God restored in humanity.
Ephesians 2:1-10 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
