Let’s have a look at this subject. Now, I’m going to do it in three parts; basically, based on three readings from the Bible.
The first one is that We are created in the image of God – Humans as God made us
Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 says,
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1.1
Then, in verse 26 we read,
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1.26-28
We are created in the image of God.
The second is the question of Humans lost – humans as spoiled
This is after Genesis 3, but the reading is actually from Ephesians chapter 2
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2.1-3
We become lost and spoiled through sin.
The third reading is on Humans as Christ who restored us
From 2 Corinthians chapter 5,
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5.17-21
We are reconciled to God in Christ.
So, we have three readings speaking of our identity as God sees us. Our identity in Creation in the image of God – humans as God made us; in the fall – lost humans as Sin spoiled us; and in redemption humans – as Christ restored us.
Let us look at those three subjects briefly.
Our God in creation
Genesis chapters 1 and 2 speaks about how God created the world and how He created everything good before the Fall in Genesis chapter 3.
Now, I have to say that, throughout the Bible, it is assumed that this is fact, not fiction, reality not myth: God as Creator.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and you find that all cultures have some idea of God as Creator. They may be wrong but, in our culture, we’ve introduced a new idea called evolution.
You need Faith to believe both Creation and evolution. I think you have to have more faith to believe in evolution. I don’t find I find it does require faith to believe that, in the beginning, God created everything, that the incredible complexity and miracle of life could only come from a higher power who has life in Himself, who is God seems. To me, that’s a reasonable assumption.
If you believe evolution, you have to believe that life came about through billions of years of chance, after nothing exploded and that, out of that explosion of ‘nothing’ which existed before the Big Bang, an infinite ordered universe came into existence. You have to believe that life in its incredible complexity came out of non-life and that it evolved from simple organisms to creatures like us.
If you can believe that, well, good luck to you. I can’t. I accept there were difficulties in believing the Genesis account of Creation but there are answers as organizations like Answers in Genesis have shown us.
I have never found answers to the big questions about evolution. Now, evolution itself shapes a view of ‘who I am’. If you do take on board evolution, you have to believe that we’re here as a result of millions of years of blind chance. There was no God directing it all, it just happened by chance. So you’re part of an atom which came out of the atoms which were there at the Big Bang 4.5 billion (or was it more than that?) years ago. Whatever it is, it’s a long time ago.
It also means there’s no God who loves me and is ordering my life, and is ordering the world in which I live.
And, ultimately, there’s no meaning in my existence. I’m just here by blind chance and, when I’m gone, I’m gone, and that’s the end of it.
Genesis 1 tells us something different. It tells us that God created us. It tells that there’s something special about us. It tells us that we’re made in the image of God.
In fact it says,
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; Genesis 1.26
In our image. The Bible even uses the plural pronoun there which is interesting ‘our image‘ not ‘my image’, suggesting that God is Himself a Triune person of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not spelled out right there, but it is there implicitly, even in the first chapter of Genesis.
So we’re made in the image of God. Does that mean we look like God, or does it mean that we have some spiritual connection to God which is programmed into us and not into the animals?
Humans are created to have a relationship with God to reflect in some way the glory of God in our lives. In other words, there’s a God-shaped space within us.
in Genesis 2.7 it says,
7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
As God breathed into him, God breathed into us something of Himself. So, we have both a physical part of us and a spiritual part of us, and the spiritual part of us is made to relate to God. We have that God-shaped space within us, in humanity which is made to relate to God our Creator.
At this stage, in Genesis 1 and 2, humans only know good. Everything which God has made is good, and evil is going to come in in chapter 3. But even after having lost this special relationship with God through sin, there is still that God-shaped space within us. There is still that desire for God.
The Book of Ecclesiastes writes,
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3.11
God has put eternity into our hearts. There’s something which God has put into human beings which makes us desire to find God. You don’t see animals trying to find God, do you? But humans have this instinct that there is a God. We need to relate to Him.
Ecclesiastes also says in chapter 3 verse 21
21 Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth? Ecclesiastes 3.21
In other words, there’s something spiritual about human beings which is not there, in the animal kingdom. And in chapter 12 verse 7 it says,
7 Then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
And the spirit will return to God who gave it. Ecclesiastes 12.7
In other words, we have that Spirit part of us which is given into us by God, which is part of our identity as human beings and, when when we die, it says here that the spirit part of us is going to return to God either prepared to meet God or unprepared to meet God.
That’s the big question. But the point is that we’re different from the animal kingdom which is another reason why evolution cannot be true. We didn’t come here as evolved apes, we came here as created by God in His image.
We also see that in the reading from Genesis 1,
in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1.27-28
Part of God’s created order is that He has created us male and female. The same species, the same human species, but different in our bodies and also in more than our bodies, in our whole makeup. Men and women are different.
If you notice that not just whether you have a penis or a vagina, there’s much more to it than that. In fact, according to science, they’ve discovered that men have XY chromosomes and women have XX chromosomes which are programmed into your body as your whole makeup. Which means that, if you try and mess around with your sex organs as the trans transgender people do, it doesn’t make you one gender or the other, you’re still whatever gender, whatever you were born into. That’s how God made you.
He made us with a purpose, He made male and female with a purpose in order to procreate to have children. It doesn’t mean you have to have children; some people do, some people don’t. But if you have children, you’re you’re doing something which is programmed into you from creation and it’s another vital part of God’s created order.
If you think about the whole process of sexual reproduction, it is hugely complex. The idea that that it could have evolved by chance is, to my mind, impossible. Not just improbable, it’s impossible. If at one point it didn’t work first, in the first generation, there’d be no more humans and therefore no human race. So, it’s part of God’s created order and God created us male and female.
If you go against that, you’re going against God’s created order. God also created male and female to come together in one flesh. You read in Genesis 2.4
4 This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; 6 but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.
7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2.4-7
It’s part of God’s order for the procreation of the human race. We also read that God created humans, good humans, to relate to God and, in a sense, to act as a stewards under God, looking after the world which he had made. In Genesis chapter 2, we read
8 The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2.8-9
15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 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.” Genesis 2.15-17
Lost in sin, separated from God
The first point here is that everything that God made was good, very good and, at this point, there was no knowledge of evil in the human race. They knew God but they didn’t know evil. Now, we have to assume from this that evil already existed, that the fall of Satan had already happened.
According to Isaiah 14 Lucifer wanted to be like God and was thrown out of Heaven, thrown down to earth and became Satan or the devil.
12 “How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
13 For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’
15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the lowest depths of the Pit.16 “Those who see you will gaze at you,
And consider you, saying:
‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
Who shook kingdoms,
17 Who made the world as a wilderness
And destroyed its cities,
Who did not open the house of his prisoners?’ Isaiah 14.12-17
Humans are created in the image of God with the ability to relate to God, but we also have now another being introduced who is the devil. And, once he comes into the picture, we see humans as fallen from Grace, fallen from the position which they had, losing their position of dominion, of being regents under God to look after the Earth. We now have another one who comes in between.
The devil is described in the New Testament as being the prince of the power of the air while we are described as being the sons of disobedience who are under his power.
After Genesis 3, you have evil entering into the human race. Sin and disobedience to God is part of our identity and now includes pain in childbirth, hard work for the man, and the prospect of death which wasn’t there in the beginning.
No longer do we have access to the tree of eternal life. We’re still made in the image of God, but we’re separated from God because of the influence of the tempter, of the devil.
Now we know good and evil and, as you read in Genesis, you see that Cain kills Abel in chapter 4. By the time you get to chapter 6, in the days of Noah, it said
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Genesis 6.5
So we have our second definition of how we are our identity spelled out in a number of verses in the Bible. Jeremiah chapter 17 says,
9 “The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it? Jeremiah 17.9
Jesus, speaking in Matthew 15 says,
18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. 20 These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.” Matthew 15.18-20
Jesus is saying that out of the heart of man come all the evil things which we see today. So, don’t look into your heart to find your identity, look to God because in your heart you’re going to find all kinds of bad things.
Paul, writing in Ephesians chapter 2, which you’ve already read, but I’ll read it again, says,
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Ephesians 2.1-3
Notice it says, we all once walked, in that some people might think they’re better than others. Some people are definitely better than others. There are some people who live reasonably good lives, and some people live very wicked lives but, when it comes to God’s verdict, we’re actually all under His condemnation because we all sin and come short of the glory of God. We are all by nature children of wrath bringing forth evil things.
People don’t like that definition of themselves, so they reject it. And a lot of people in the world say, ‘I’m not a sinner, I don’t do bad things. I’m a good person‘, but God’s verdict upon the whole human race not just people like Adolf Hitler but upon all of us, is that we all fall short of the glory of God; we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
That is the problem. If you come back to what we began with, this idea of focusing on your identity; if you’re focusing your identity on this part of your life, if you’re focusing on the wrong thing, you’re focusing on our fallen human nature which is sin and unbelief, which is separated from God.
Therefore, if you want to find your identity, there is NOT actually the good place to find it. Your identity may be there, that may exist, but it’s not the place you want to be, not how you want to be defined as a person.
If you’re in Christ now, fortunately – praise God – God remains in the business of redeeming humanity even from the beginning, in Adam. In Genesis 3, the first question God asks is:
“Where are you?” Genesis 3.8 He is looking for Adam. Adam has sinned, he has gone away from God.
Remember I prayed you that song the Remember I prayed you that song by Don Francisco the other week?, ‘Adam, where are you?’ God comes in and He asks a question, ‘Where are you?’ That’s what he’s asking down through the ages to the human race: ‘Where are you?’ And as He is asking that question, He’s saying, ‘I know where you are actually, you’re in the wrong place. But I want to bring you out of that bad place into the good place of being in a relationship with me.‘
God wants to bring you into a relationship with God in which you have Christ in you, the hope of glory. He wants to redeem us through the blood of the Messiah. In Ephesians chapter 1 we read,
7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, 9 having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, 10 that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth—in Him. 11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, 12 that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. Ephesians 1.7-12
Our new identity in Christ Jesus
A wonderful verse, a wonderful passage. We did a bible study on Thursday on Ephesians chapter 1 and I learned a lot from doing the study.
This is all we inherit in Jesus Christ and all that we are given through the redemption – the redemption through His blood; the blood that He shed for us when He died for us on the cross – that transformed / translated us from being under the condemnation of God to being under the blessing of God through faith in Jesus Christ, as we repent of sin and believe in the Lord Jesus.
And as a result of this, we have a new identity: Christ in you, the hope of glory. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 says,
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. 1 Corinthians 15.22
What we inherit from Adam is our sin nature, which is heading for death. What we inherit in Christ is our new nature in Jesus, which is heading for eternal life.
1 Corinthians 15.42 says,
42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 43 It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. 45 And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 1 Corinthians 15.42-45
Okay, and giving his identity as both humans in a physical body but also with a spiritual part of us the God-shaped part of us which God wants to fill with His Holy Spirit and to give us new life in Jesus, be raised in incorruption, raised in glory, raised in power.
The scripture continues,
46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. 49 And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man. 1 Corinthians 15.46-49
Did you get that last verse? We bear the image of the man of dust, that’s our natural condition our natural conditions as humans born into this world into a world into a body which is subject to the power of sin because of Adam’s sin.
Yet, if we’re born again into the Kingdom of God, we bear the image of the heavenly Man who is Jesus. God wants to put His image into my life, into your life so that we bear that image in our lives, so that we are knowing ‘Christ in you’, the hope of glory.
Our last reading from Corinthians chapter 5 which we’ve already read but we’ll read again,
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Corinthians 5.17-21
Praise the Lord! That is an offer in the Gospel. We are now identified with Jesus Christ. He is our ultimate identity. We bear the image of the the heavenly Man. We are a new creation in Jesus Christ.
Sadly, much of the contemporary church is trying to affirm people who make their identity in the sinful human nature. while you have gay-affirming churches which you can’t do.
We need Jesus Christ, we need to come back to the Word of God, and we need to affirm our new nature in the Lord Yeshua ha Mashiach / Jesus the Messiah. We need Him to make us into that new creation. And, having been saved, we need to go on with Him to be sanctified, to allow Him to change us from the person we were into the person He wants us to be through keeping His Commandments, reading His Word, through praying to Him to living our lives as believers in Jesus the Messiah.
We are all a ‘work in progress’. None of us have arrived. When we do arrive, we shall be glorified and we shall be like unto His glorious body as we are with Him in eternity. Now, we need to receive the Holy Spirit, we need to continue right through our lives, we need to cooperate with God through Jesus Christ, and we need to know now that our ultimate identity is not determined by whatever race, religion we were born into, whatever our life experiences whether good or bad, whatever our sexuality is. Our identity is in Jesus Christ.
All these things may have an influence on our life of course, they do on our life experience, but our true identity if we are believers in Jesus is now in Jesus Christ, and we are all one in Jesus Christ wherever we’ve come from, our identity is defined by Christ in you, Christ in me, the hope of glory that identifies me both here on earth and throughout eternity.
Just one more thought. Once you are dead, it won’t matter what your skin colour was, what your race was, what your gender was. If you are buried, then your body will be just decomposed and all that remains will be your bones. If you are cremated, nothing will remain really, except some dust. Therefore, what we have in this physical world will be ‘dust to dust ashes to ashes’.
In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead, if you’re a believer in Jesus the Messiah, it won’t even matter what your sex is because Jesus said
30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. Matthew 22.30
Now, I don’t understand how that’s going to work out, we have to see how God does that. But we know that we have a glorious future and that
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2.9
So, what should we do? We should live out our lives in our relationship with Jesus Christ who is our true identity. If you continue in this life out of fellowship with God, and if you die in a lost condition, in rebellion against God, or you’re still in that condition when Jesus comes again, you’ll be lost forever with no chance of redemption. And you don’t want to be lost, you don’t want to go to hell because you want to go to heaven. Is that right?
Praise the Lord! You do meet people who say I want to go to hell and meet with my friends there. Well, it won’t be like that at all, they are deluded. Nobody wants to go to hell because it’s a place of eternal punishment and eternal pain.
We want to go to heaven and the only way we can go to heaven is through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
If you are saved, you’ll be saved forever in heaven and there’s no possibility of being removed from there.
Now is the day to choose God and Jesus Christ to make sure of identity in Christ alone. The signs that we are truly in the times Christ is coming are here.
Going back to what we read at the beginning: We’ll love God with all our heart, we’ll love our neighbour as ourself, and we truly love and want what is best for ourselves in this world and the next which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Praise the Lord! Amen.
Let’s just have a word of prayer and if there’s anything which I’ve touched on which hits your life and you want prayer after the service, then do come and ask me and we’ll pray with you. But let’s now bring ourselves before the Lord:
Lord, we do acknowledge before you that we have an identity which is in the world, which is the identity we’ve inherited from Adam, which is a wrong identity: our identity of sin and unbelief.
Lord, we don’t want to live in that identity, we want to turn from it and turn to you and receive our new identity, our new life in Jesus the Messiah.
Help us Lord, to come to you in sincere repentance and faith, and to let you have your Way in our lives that we might truly be that new creation, we might reflect your glory in the world. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.