The Image of God

[Robert]

Yeshua (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, just like your body is the image of the invisible you.

In an attempt to explain this concept, I often ask people to place their hand on a flat surface like a table. I then hit their hand and ask them if their hand said anything to their brain? If our bodies can talk to our minds, how much more can the body of God have conversation with His mind? We are so faint an image of God that there is almost no resemblance. God is righteousness; we can’t be righteous no matter what we do or don’t do. Our emotions are nothing in comparison to His. Our ability to separate one facet of our existence to interact with another facet of our existence is laughable.

Can a human exist without emotion? Can a human exist without love? Yes, but that human would be broken. How then could we ever think that God could exist without even one of the facets that makes Him who He is?

John tried to explain that God had a body. It was celestial, a God-body. God wanted companionship from us bad enough that He gave up all the glory and splendor of His body, caused it to submit to His will, reformed it into human flesh and then sacrificed it for the pleasure set before Him. God then raised His body from the dead, glorified it and returned to His former state. Yeshua (Jesus) is not sitting on the right-hand of God. This is a Hebrew idiom that means the death burial and resurrection of Yeshua is the power of God to restore His people to right standing with Him.

Our bodies will return to dust. God’s will not; His will not see corruption. The Bible does teach us that, at some point, God will gather our bodies and glorify them in much the same way He glorified His own. But again, our glorified bodies will still only be a shadow of His body.

The story of Adam and Eve was to show us why God created humans in the first place. God said, “It is not appropriate for the man to experience loneliness.” I am paraphrasing the Hebrew text, not an English Bible. Why did God deem loneliness to be inappropriate? If it is inappropriate for man to experience loneliness, it is because it is inappropriate for God to experience it. It is clear from the Hebraic perspective and from the Scriptures themselves that God created man because He desired a bride. The story shows us that Eve was taken from the man because the man needed someone like himself to truly be fulfilled. Eve was created from Adam’s substance, in his image and likeness. Now let me paraphrase the Hebrew text when Adam saw Eve for the first time. This man, he shall be called woman because everything feminine was taken out of me; therefore shall a man leave his father and mother bla, bla, bla.

I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong it is to use the part about man and woman becoming one in an attempt to explain the Trinitarian view of God. It is against every known rule of grammar and translation in Hebrew to do so. In Hebrew, we cannot mix concepts. Man and woman become one because one complete human was divided into two, half, humans. This has never been the case with God. God did not take a rib from His side to create a bride for Himself. Man is made of the dust of the ground, and woman was taken from the man. God is nothing like that. He was not created. God did not pull a rib out of His body or use His seed to create a bouncing baby boy. John said that God changed His Godly flesh into human flesh.

God is a Spirit and His Spirit had flesh, not flesh like a human, but a heavenly flesh that was glorious and unimaginable to man. God gave that up to become like us.

I’ve said all that to say this. Yeshua (Jesus) is the only flesh that God has ever had or will ever possess. Why was His flesh called His Son? Because God’s flesh was the only flesh that was ever begotten of a woman. This is important because there where so many other men born at the same time, i.e., while the bright light was in the sky, that claimed to be the Messiah and because the Gnostics had already begun to teach about a different Yeshua. The Gnostics taught that Yeshua was born naturally of Yoseph and Miryam and that there was nothing divine about Him. In the Hebrew language, this is known as teaching another Yeshua (Jesus).

A son of God is one who is born of God. Yeshua, even though He was God, was born of God via Miryam (Mary). This did not mean that there was now a Father who had a Son. It just means that this somehow came from God, and John tried to make it clear that this human was not just born of God, He was God. Isaiah 9:6, called Yeshua (Jesus), “the everlasting Father,” not the everlasting Son of the Father.

In the end, man can never be like God. God wanted a relationship with a bride bad enough that He gave up all the glory of His Heavenly body to achieve His goal. Put more plainly, man couldn’t be like God, so God became like man.

So are we only half a human when we are not married? Absolutely. However, if a half human is in Messiah, where there is no male or female, that human is just as complete. In the flesh, it is impossible for a human to be whole without a mate. But, in the Spirit, we are all one with God. This is one of the reasons why the disciples spent so much time teaching about the importance of living in the Spirit and not in the flesh.