“Reflecting The Image Of God!”

“Reflecting The Image Of God!”(Gen.1:1-5,26-27&31).
When God had created all other things, he then “created man in his own image…male and female he created them.” God created man in his image and made man superior to all other creatures as man was to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
The beauty of God’s handiwork is summed up in these words: “God saw all that he had made and it was very good.”
Those who play with words say if you add the letter ‘o’ to God and you have ‘Good’, or take away the letter ‘o’ from Good and you have ‘God.’ (The etymology of the word is not our concern for now).
The question arises, “If God saw all that he had made and it was very good, where did evil come from?” Again, to play on words, it is enough to put the letter ‘d’ before evil and you have the word ‘devil’, or take away the letter ‘d’ from devil and you have the word ‘evil.’
God saw all that he had made and it was very good, until the fall of man through disobedience. When man chose to listen and act on the enticing words of the serpent than on the words of God, the result has been “paradise lost” for humanity.
Thank God that in his goodness he has initiated and offered us “paradise regained” in the person of Jesus Christ.
The beauty of God’s creation and the bliss of paradise is still available to us. The basic requirement is to listen and act in obedience to the voice of the Lord.
There is the argument of infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism which does not offer us any solution to sin or not to sin. It doesn’t matter whether the tree at the center of the garden contained the knowledge of good and evil; the problem is about disobeying God who said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die”(Gen. 2:16-17).
God has given us rulership of all creatures in the sea, on land and in the air. But we are stewards and not owners. Even so, he has set limits of what we should touch and eat. Let us strive each day to live in the beauty of the image of God that we are, so that we become co-creator stewards and not destroyers of God’s beautiful creation that he saw that it was very good.
Prayer of the week: Holy Spirit lead me through the redemptive work of Christ Jesus to reflect the image of God in me. Amen!
Welcome back to a new working day and week! Have a blessed day and week! Peace be with you!
Rev Babila Fochang.