Section #6

WHY DO SPIRITUALLY FORMED PEOPLE NEED TO LOVE OTHERS?

"Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself,
your neighbor is the holiest object
presented to your senses."
~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

In Section #5 we discussed the Jesus Creed. Jesus expanded the basic understanding of what a spiritually formed person looks like. Jewish people in the first century thought that the essential characteristic of a devote person was the love of God. Jesus agreed with that but added the love of others. He said that it is equally important to love other people.

This raises an important question. If God is over all and is the most important being, why then is it so important to give equal attention to loving people?

We could answer this question in many ways. Perhaps, though, we should look into something which is said in the very first chapter of the Bible. Look at Genesis 1:27 -- "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (NLT)

I want you to take special note of the phrase "image of God." In the Greek language version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint or LXX) the word used for "image" is "eikon." Eikon is the root of the English word for icon.

On computers the icons are the little pictures we click. They usually represent a word or direct us to take an action.

In Genesis 1:27 the icon or image of God is a picture or representation of God. That is, we as human beings are the image of God! This does not mean that people literally look like God -- that God has long black hair, a beard, and a mustache! Instead, it means that there is a sense in which we as human beings uniquely reflect the nature of God. And as unique beings reflecting the image of God we have been given some extra responsibilities.

Verse 29 adds, "Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” (NLT)

That is, we have become agents or representatives of God. He lets us manage and oversee the creation. We are to be the stewards of the world on his behalf. God made the fish, the sea, the birds, the sky, and the animals, according to Genesis 1:1-25. But as his special representatives we are to oversee it all on his behalf.

This same idea was expressed earlier in verse 26, "Then God said, 'Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.'"

We will see in Genesis 2 and 3 that being made in God's image also involves having fellowship with God. This means we have a unique and close relationship with him. Well, at least we, the eikons of God, were SUPPOSED to have a close relationship with him. But if you read all of Genesis 2 you will see that Adam and Eve made some poor choices and that the close relationship with God was damaged. We might say that the image -- the eikon was at that point broken and cracked!

This is the greatest tragedy in the Bible. God made people so that they could work with him in overseeing the creation. This involved being in a close relationship with God -- so close that if we love God then we also love his eikon -- his image. But as the image is damaged so also is our close relationship with God and the people he loved damaged. With this separation from God people start to have trouble getting along with each other. What was normal and natural before becomes a challenge. By Genesis 4 the two brothers, Cain and Abel, do not get along with each other. Cain kills Abel.

Matters get progressively worse as we read through the Old Testament. God sends a flood to wipe out most of the world because the world had rejected him. Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers. The people of God are enslaved in Egypt. They rebel when God rescues them and leads them through the desert. The Hebrew people start to worship local gods. There are lots and lots of people acting badly -- including kings. God sends prophets but the people reject them.

Still, there is a message of hope and salvation that runs parallel to the chaos created by the breaking of the eikon. The Lord God is busy starting to patch things up -- except he is not just going to glue the eikon together.

I have a special coffee mug that got broken. The handle broke off. I did not know how it happened. But I knew how to fix it. I went to the store and bought some "Super Glue" -- a special very powerful glue. One little drop of the glue is powerful enough to bond the heavy handle to the mug.

And it would have worked great except -- I am a little careless and I got some of the Super Glue on two of my fingers -- which accidentally then touched each other.

I am sure that you know what happened. My fingers were suddenly glued together with this special powerful glue. And I could not separate them from each other. I tried washing my glued fingers in warm water. I tried prying them apart. Nothing worked! I was afraid that I might have to go to the doctor. Fortunately, my wife Cheryl, who is a lot smarter than I am, figured out that we could "unglue" my fingers using finger-nail polish remover.

She successfully unstuck my fingers and jokingly told me that I could not ever again use Super Glue!

We did eventually get the coffee mug glued together. But it did not look like it had looked before. It looked like it was glued together.

Have you noticed that whenever you try to glue something broken back together again it isn't nearly as good as it was before. Even when you do not glue your fingers together you can still see the cracks and sometimes the pieces do not ft right.

When God decided to fix his cracked eikon he avoided glue. He knew that if it was going to be done right it needed more than putting broken pieces together. The eikon needed to be restored. It needed to be done all over again. It needed to be made new.

And that is where Jesus comes into the story. In the New Testament letter to the church at Colassae we read some very powerful words.

Christ is the visible image (eikon) of the invisible God.
He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,
for through him God created everything
in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see
and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him and for him. ~ Colossians 1:15-16 (NLT)

Notice the reference to Christ as the eikon of God. There is a new image -- a new eikon -- God himself has come to live among us as the eikon.

Colossians 1:22 adds,

Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

As the new eikon Christ has reconciled us to God through his death. So now we stand before God as faultless -- or should be say "crackless?" Christ is the image of God who came as a sacrifice to restore his image in us. Because of this we are once again in fellowship with God -- in his "presence" -- holy, blameless, and without fault.

In Romans 8:29 the apostle Paul refers to the church (us!) as the God's special people being remade in the image (eikon) of God's Son. "Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son..." (Romans 8:29, NET) The idea that we are the image of God is very important in the Bible. And we could spend a lot more time exploring the topic of the image of God. I am sure you will do so when you take a theology class. However, right about now you are probably wondering how this discussion of the image of God answers the question "why do spiritually formed people need to love others?"

Concisely the answer is this -- The reason that loving God is inseparable from loving others is that the others are the image of God. They are made in the image of God and they are also a part of the restored image of God. The idea of image is so powerful that it is impossible to separate the love of God from the love of the image of God. The love of God and the love of the image of God are Super Glued together!

1 John 4:7-12 sums it up well, even though the words image or eikon are not used here.

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. (1 John 4:7-12, NLT)

Ultimately, we love our neighbors because God loves them and sent Christ to die for them so that they might participate in the restored image. It is, therefore, impossible to love God and not love the people he loves. If we say that we love God but we do not show love toward others then we are tricking ourselves. We do not really know God.

This is most clearly demonstrated through the ministry of Jesus. And as his followers or disciples we are going to be doing the same things that he does. We'll talk more about this in the next section as we explore the relationship between spiritual formation and being disciples of Jesus.


ASSIGNMENT #6
As always make sure that your answers interact with the information above in the section reading.  You do not have to agree with the section material but if you don't, explain why. If you do agree, explain why.

1) In two or three paragraphs explain in your own words what it means to be the image of God? (10 point possible)

2) In Jesus' teaching it is impossible to separate the love of God from the love of neighbor. In three or four paragraphs explain why you think that this is such a hard teaching for us to embrace. Why do we think that we can love God and not love his people? (15 points possible)

Again, email your essay to me at bboydston@piu.edu . Write your essay in the email itself -- or if you use a word processor, copy and paste the essay into the email. Make sure that your name, the name which you used to register for this class, appears at the top of the essay.

I will respond to you as soon as possible. Do not wait for a response from me before you start working on your next assignment.