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Image of God
Sermon preached by the Rector in Street Mission and Parish Church
19 Feb 2006
The readings were:
Col. 1:15-20 John 1:1-14
A little boy was working hard on a drawing and his daddy asked him what he was doing. The reply came back,
"Drawing a picture of God."
His daddy said,
"You can't do that, honey. Nobody knows what God looks like."
But the little boy was undeterred and continued to draw. He looked at his picture with satisfaction and said very matter-of-factly,
"They will in a few minutes."
What is God like?
It's a question that has been asked down through history.
The Jews probably thought they had the best answers to this question as they believed that they were God's chosen people.
Paul, however, knew better. In Colossians 1 he says if you want to know what God is like then look to Jesus. In our readings today John and Paul make it clear that we can discover God in Jesus.
Verse 15 of Paul's letter to the Colossians says
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
To help us to understand what Paul is saying here we need to understand the word image. To understand what Paul is really saying, we need to go back to the language that Paul wrote his letters in - Greek. Sadly I am not a Greek scholar, so I will be relying on the views of commentators to fully understand Paul.
The Greek word for Image is eikon, and like many Greek words it has a great depth of meaning.
However before looking further into the Greek, let us seek to understand our word image.
It is a word that is used in all kinds of ways today, particularly in the marketing world.
Everyone and everything has to have the right image. To be cool you need an image.
In the world of marketing the image is a representation of the best of the item that is being marketed.
Have you noticed that most adverts for cars don't really show the car? Take for example the advert for the new Honda Civic. It is a great ad. A choir, and visual effects of speed, water and safety, present an image that the company wish us to believe. It is not the car, it is their representation of it. We never really get a good look of the car.
This is not what Paul is talking about, Paul is saying that Jesus is not a representation but rather he is the perfect manifestation of God. Jesus is the image, the manifestation of God in a form that humanity, you and me can see, know and understand.
So now let us look at the Greek.
There were two things that concerned many Greek thinkers,
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Wisdom
- and Logos (the word),
and interestingly the Old Testament and Greek writers use in certain places the word eikon in relation to both Wisdom and Logos.
The Jewish wisdom books tell us that wisdom is the eikon the image of the goodness of God. Paul was a great scholar and he is telling us that in Jesus we will come to see and discover the goodness of God.
Our gospel tell us that
"In the beginning was the Logos, the word",
and goes on to say that
"and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."
Philo a Greek scholar, again and again in his writings uses the word eikon of the Logos of God. So, to those who have read Philo, Paul is saying "Jesus is the Logos, Jesus is the word, and through Him everything has come into being."
But perhaps much more interesting is another form of the word eikon, eikonion. This word was used for a portrait by the Greeks. There is a letter written by a young soldier to his father, towards the end he writes,
"I send you a little portrait (eikonion) of myself painted by Euctemon".
Now we are getting a little closer to my opening story. Jesus is a portrait of God. Some would say that eikonion is the nearest equivalent in ancient Greek to the modern word photograph. So Paul says that, in order to know what God looks like physically, to learn about the power of God and the goodness of God, we must look at Jesus.
I will come back to eikon in a minute but fist I want to introduce you to another Greek word. In verse 19 Paul uses the word pleroma. My New Internation Version of the Bible translates this word as fullness.
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.
In English 'fullness' needs to be accompanied with the word 'completeness' for us to understand the full picture that Paul seeks to convey to his readers.
So Paul is saying that Jesus is not simply a photo of God, not just a summary of God, He is the full and final revelation of God and nothing more is needed.
Now let us return to eikon, the first mention of this word can be found in the Greek version of Genesis. Right back at the beginning of creation Gen 1:26 says
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image - eikon.
Out of this I believe we can draw a wonderful truth and a great sadness.
Not only is Jesus the eikon of God: if we look to Him we discover God. He is also the eikon of man/woman.
In other words, Jesus is what man was meant to be. But sin came in. Man failed to achieve his destiny. Things went terribly wrong.
Now in these five verses Paul has more to teach us than I can do justice too in one short sermon but there is one further point we must learn before I end.
Today's society seem mesmerized by perfect form and beauty. Again the ads on TV are trying to sell all kinds of things to help us look like ... whoever. Ladies, they are even trying to sell you pollyfiller to fill up your wrinkles to help you hide the years.
How do we feel when we see perfect form and beauty?
So how do we feel when we look in a mirror?
So if we hold the mirror of the gospels up before us and see Jesus and know that we are meant to be like Him how do we feel?
Now don't go and jump off a bridge or run in front of a bus! Paul has wonderful news for us.
God did not send Jesus to make us feel suicidal. He wants the best for us. He sent Jesus to redeem us from ourselves that we might become Christ-like, not just a representation but a manifestation of Jesus.
This, Paul tells us in verse 20, is all made possible through Jesus' blood shed on the cross. For in dying and rising Jesus not only deals with our sin but offers us back what we were intended to be.
This he confirms in verse 22:
But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.
So when God now looks at you he sees not your sin stained image but the eikon of Jesus. As far as God is concerned, you are what he intended you to be if by faith you accept Jesus' work of reconciliation completed on the cross.
Therefore, it seems to me that we have a duty to know Jesus.
I don't mean know about Him. I mean know Him.
For only then can we possibly hope to manifest Jesus to those who we live and work next to everyday. It is for their sake that we as Christians must be eikons of Jesus in this world and in this generation, because if we fail, then they are destined to reap the consequences of mankind's sin-distorted eikon.
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Thursday 20th of November 2008
