Created in the Image of Theologians

Humans really like conformity, uniformity, and similarity. When everything is the same, the world seems a friendlier place, a comforting place, where nothing surprises or threatens.  Anything strange or different is deemed a threat to that peace, wherefore humans have always tried to destroy everything that breaks the artificial harmony through laws, customs, segregation or annihilation.

This tendency to create uniformity spills over to the realm of theology as well. God is so vastly different from us that we humans have a hard time understanding who God is. For examples, God is a spirit, not a corporeal creature - how can we relate to such a being? One answer has been to re-create God in our own image. Theologians, exasperated with the challenge to explain God, have made God sound and look awfully like themselves: white males whose job is the rule everyone else; thus the heavy emphasis on authority and subjection, the supposed “maleness” of God (although God does not have reproductive organs) and the imperial elevation of the white skin over the darker shades. But this is not who God is.

God is not like humans; humans were created in the likeness of God. Sin has corrupted that image wherefore we no longer see God when we see a human. In the new creation, which we become when the corrupted nature is put off and the new nature is put on, our inner person is transformed until it once more resembles who God is. This transformation is through the Spirit and knowledge: the Spirit teaches us to know Christ until we have become just like him. But this transformation does not take place without our co-operation. We must put off the corrupted nature and be willing to learn. For this reason God gave us teachers so we would no longer be like small children, always wavering from one belief to another, but that speaking truth to each other we would grow in all things into Christ, the head (Eph 4.11-16). When we have grasped the love of Christ, and we are rooted and established in it, we will be filled with fullness of God – we will be like God and do the things God does (Eph 3.14-19). As a contrast, those who do not think it worthwhile to know God are filled with envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice (Rom 1.28-29, NIV).

If we must be like God and do the things God does, what is God like?

God is incorruptible (aphthartos, lit. undecaying, Rom 1:18-25)
God is light (phos, lit. to shine or make manifest, 1 John 1:5-7)
God is righteous/just (dikaios, i.e. that which is fair to all, just, 1 John 2:25-29)

God is pure (1 John 3:1-10)
God is love (1 John 4.7-18)
God is true (alethes, lit. not concealed, John 3:31-36)
God is spirit (pneuma, John 4:21-24)

Allowing God’s Spirit to re-create these traits in us is what the new creation is all about, for what matters is that our trust in God is manifested through love – love for God and love for our neighbors (Gal 5.6). When we love, we are like God, who is love.