02 | The Christ: Image Restored
As we said in our introduction to this series, the Bible tells us the one big story of how the Creator is rescuing his creation through the Christ. And so, as we get ready to begin this series, we are going to start on page one of the Bible in order to see how this story begins.
Many of us fail to realize that if we are going to truly understand the story of the Christ then we need to make sure we have a clear understanding concerning the story of creation. If we are going to gain a better understanding of the man named Jesus then we need a better understanding of the man named Adam. The two are intimately connected.
Adam is the first human figure that we are introduced to in the Bible, and his story begins on the very first page of the Bible. It there that we are given some pretty significant insight into what God had in mind when he created humanity in the first-place .
These insights are described in Genesis 1 where we read:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28).
It is clear right from the start that the Creator had a specific idea in mind when he created humanity and a very specific role that humans were intended to fulfill within the creation. That role is revealed through those key words: image, dominion and fill the earth.
As the story of Adam progresses over the first few pages of the Bible, we learn that the Creator wants humanity to be the ones who help him rule over his creation, and he wants them to do so in a relationship of trusting obedience towards him. To put it more simply:
God’s plan for his creation is that it would be run by obedient humans who rule over the creation on his behalf.
To explain what we mean by this and why it’s important for us today, we are going to look at the story of Adam and how that story helps us understand the story of Jesus and how all of this ought to shape our story as Christians today. This is how each of the teachings in this series will be structured. Each teaching will basically have three movements to it:
We will look at the story of an Old Testament figure.
We will see how that story helps us understand the story of Jesus.
We will point out how all of this ought to shape our story as Christians today.
The Story of Adam
The story of Adam begins on the very first page of the Bible. It is there that we are introduced to the Creator of the universe who creates humanity for a very specific role and purpose. We are told that the Creator made human beings in his own image to have dominion over the rest of the creation. He then gave human beings his blessing and instructed them to fill the earth with more human beings made in his image who would share in this dominion (or rule) over the rest of creation.
To truly understand Adam’s intended role and responsibility, we must be clear on what the Bible means when it tells us that the first human beings were made in the image of God.
What does this phrase “in the image of God” tell us about Adam and humanity in general?
Some people would argue that the image of God refers to the fact that we are rational creatures or personal beings or that we possess some sort of moral nature. Others want to try and point to something inside of our own consciousness or an aspect of our character and declare that particular thing to be the thing that distinguishes us as creatures made in the image of God. But a better understanding of the ancient world in which Genesis was written will actually help us to see that being made in the image of God implies something much greater than merely an aspect of our nature and character. It implies a specific role or a vocation or a unique calling that we are intended to fulfill. To be made in the image of God implies that we are to be real-life expressions of God’s rule over his creation and that we are to actually rule the creation on behalf of God.
In the ancient world, kings and pharaohs were believed to be the visible ruling representatives of the gods who ruled on behalf of the gods, and so they were the ones who were often referred to as the images of the gods. And not only that, but these kings would also set up images of themselves (statues) in the various territories that they had conquered as a way of declaring that they were the rightful ruler over this territory even though their palace might be located somewhere else. The image of the king was an expression that showed he was the ruler who had dominion and authority over this particular area.
When Genesis tells us that the Creator created all of humanity in his own image to fill the earth and to have dominion over it, it is declaring a revolutionary idea in the ancient world. It was declaring that the God of creation gave all human beings (not just kings and pharaohs) this very special vocation and calling to be the real-life expressions of his authority over the creation and to rule over his world on his behalf as his special representatives.
The first page of the Bible is showing us that it has been God’s plan from the very beginning that his world would be run by obedient humans who would rule over the creation and fill the earth with his goodness and his wisdom on his behalf. This was a role that was first given to Adam, and it was a responsibility that was grounded in his special relationship with God.
So what was this special relationship supposed to look like?
Well, Adam was given the role of being a type of human-co-ruler with God over God’s creation, and a big part of that role was that he would be the main representative and mediator between the Creator God and the rest of creation. In other words, Adam was to be a kind of priest-king. The ruling over the creation on behalf of God was the kingly part, and the role of representing the creation before God was the priestly part.
The story of Adam continues in Genesis 2 with the Creator placing Adam in a garden sanctuary where he is given the commission to cultivate and to advance the creation forward while also caring for it and protecting it from corruption and disorder. Adam was given a great deal of freedom in how he would carry out this commission, but he was also given one very specific limitation. It was actually in this one limitation that his relationship of trusting obedience towards the Creator was going to be tested.
We read about this one limitation on the second page of the Bible where the author of Genesis tells us:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 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).
This was the crucial test for Adam. It was important because it was a test that could confirm his identity as the human-priest-king who was fit to rule over the creation on behalf of God. However, when we get to the third page of the Bible, we read about how Adam actually failed this crucial test.
In Genesis 3, we read about a serpent from the wilderness who comes into the garden sanctuary and leads humanity down a path of wondering whether or not their Creator should be trusted. The serpent leads them to wonder whether or not God is holding out on them and possibly holding them back from a better life that is actually within their grasp. The serpent sows the seeds of distrust and doubt and eventually helps stir up a desire within the humans to rebel and disobey their Creator. They take the bait and take a bite of the forbidden fruit.
In this one notorious act of defiance and disobedience, Adam stirs up disorder and chaos and subjects the creation to futility and corruption. The first human-priest-king over creation became discontent with the idea of ruling on behalf of God and instead made a decision to try and define what is good and what is not good on his own terms. In doing so, he allowed evil to invade God’s good world, and he lost his role as creation’s priest-king.
But before we get too critical of Adam, we need to also recognize that this is a rebellious decision that human beings have continued to make throughout history, and one that we continue to find ourselves making today. We have all made choices that contribute to this world of broken relationships, conflict and corruption. We all experience moments in our lives where we begin to wonder whether or not God is for us and whether or not obeying God might cause us to miss out on something better that life might have to offer. We all have moments where we begin to question God’s wisdom and doubt God’s goodness. We all find ourselves at times trying to justify why our definition of good and bad, right and wrong, makes more sense than God’s, and so we all find ourselves making choices that subtly or not-so-subtly declare that we would rather rule our lives on our own terms instead.
Adam’s decision is the archetype of humanity’s desire to rule the world however we want. In a moment of weakness, Adam made a power grab and tried to grasp equality with God. It was in this act of defiance and direct disobedience that Adam disqualified himself as the human-priest-king who would rule over the creation on behalf of God.
The story of Adam ends with the Creator holding him accountable for his defiance and disobedience, but it’s also in God’s judgement of Adam that we are introduced to a great promise and hope for the future. The partnership with God had been violated, but a promise from God was graciously given.
In the midst of pronouncing his judgement to Adam and Eve, God promises that one day a new human will be born who will overcome the evil that has invaded God’s good world, and he will be the one who restores the human partnership with God.
At the end of Genesis 3, God pronounces that he would put hostility between the humans and the serpent, and that this hostility would reach a climatic point one day when a “son of the woman” would eventually crush the head of the serpent even though the serpent would wound the “son of the woman” in the struggle. This is a remarkable promise of how the Creator is going to rescue his creation through this promised “son of the woman”, and so for the rest of the biblical story we find ourselves waiting for this particular human to be born.
The Old Testament begins with Adam failing to carry out his role and responsibility as the human-priest-king who would rule over the creation in a relationship of trusting obedience towards the Creator. Then the rest of the Old Testament is full of stories of other human beings who God uses to advance his plan forward, but who also inevitably prove that they are not the promised human who was going to rescue and restore the creation. Over and over again, we see human beings and human civilizations giving in to the evil that has invaded God’s good world with little hope of any human who can set things right again.
This is one of the curious things about the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament): They end with this tension unresolved. The Old Testament is not a completed story that ties up all the loose ends. It is left open-ended and still awaiting the promised “son of the woman” who would overcome evil and who would rule over God’s creation as the new human-priest-king who sets things right again. The Old Testament ends, and the throne at the right hand of the Creator is still empty.
So how does all of this help us understand the story of Jesus?
The Story of Jesus
When we get to the New Testament (and specifically the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel), we are introduced to a genealogy of a man named Jesus who is the son of a local man named Joseph who is a distant son of an ancient king named David, who was a son in the line of the patriarch named Abraham who was in fact a son in the line of Adam himself.
The New Testament story begins by making it a top priority to point out that this Jesus was a direct descendent of Adam (Matthew 1 and Luke 3). It is in this record of his birth that we are being told that this Jesus is in fact the promised “son of the woman” that we have been waiting for all along.
Jesus is introduced as the new human who has come to set things right again. If this wasn’t clear enough, we are then told in the baptism of Jesus that he is also the beloved son of God himself — which intentionally echoes the words found in Psalm 2 — a psalm about an Anointed King who would one day rule on behalf of God over all the nations on the earth.
This is why we said at the beginning of this study that to truly understand who Jesus is and what it means for him to be the Christ, we need to start on the first page of the Bible and get a better understanding of Adam and the entire story of creation.
The word Christ is a title that comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah which means “the anointed one”. It is a word that was only used in the Old Testament to refer to the king and the high priest, and so when the New Testament uses the title of the Christ to refer to Jesus, it is picking up this idea of Jesus being a king and high priest of God.
All four of the Gospels introduce Jesus by referring to him as the Christ. The openly declare him to be a king and the main representative and mediator between God and his creation. The New Testament is declaring that Jesus is a new human-priest-king like Adam but better.
After his baptism and the announcement that he is the beloved son and Anointed King, it is no coincidence that the New Testament then records a crucial test that Jesus experienced in the wilderness. Jesus was tested and tempted by the serpent just like Adam, but unlike Adam he doesn’t give in to the serpent. Instead, he passes the test of trusting obedience and confirms his identity as the only one who is fit to rule over the creation on behalf of the Creator.
Adam had been tested in his own garden with an abundance of food all around him, but Jesus was tested in the wilderness at the brink of starvation. The serpent from the wilderness came in and invaded the garden to test Adam, but Jesus went out and invaded the wilderness in order to confront the serpent. Unlike Adam, who tried to grasp equality with God and took the forbidden fruit, Jesus did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped and gave his life as a sacrifice for human sin.
This is the paradoxical way that Jesus regained power over evil and reclaimed the throne over God’s creation. In his life of service and humility and self-giving love, he allowed himself to be humiliated and executed by human evil. It was in this selfless act of love that he reversed the selfish act of rebellion. Christ’s death overcame Adam’s disobedience, and the head of the serpent was finally crushed (Romans 16:20). God’s promise that he made in the garden on just the third page of the Bible had now been fulfilled in Jesus thousands of years later.
Adam’s shameful decision had led to his death and exile, but Jesus’ shameful death led to his resurrection and exaltation. This is something that the apostle Paul explains in his letter to the Colossians where he writes:
“Christ disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in the cross” (Colossians 2:15).
God’s plan for his creation was that it would be run by obedient humans who would rule over the creation on his behalf. Jesus came to fulfill that plan and to get it back on track by renewing the human partnership with God. The Old Testament Adam had only foreshadowed what the New Testament Jesus actually fulfilled.
Jesus is the image of God that Adam (and every human being ever since) has failed to be, and he is the firstborn of a new creation (Colossians 1:15-18). His death overcame Adam’s disobedience, and his resurrection initiated our rescue and restoration. This is why Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation”.
Jesus has shown us a new way to be human and his presence with us and his Spirit within us changes us and restores us back into being the images of God that we were intended to be from the very beginning.
This means that we as Christians are called to once again participate in God’s plan for creation and to help rule over it on his behalf. This is what Paul is getting at when he declares to the Roman Christians that we have now been given the power and the privilege of reigning through the one man Jesus Christ and what Peter implies in his first letter when he refers to Christians as a royal-priesthood (1 Peter 2:9).
So if this is a significant aspect of what it means to be a Christian, then let’s look at what it means for Christians to rule with Christ and to serve him as his royal-priesthood here on earth.
Our Story as Christians
The implications of Jesus being the new human-priest-king and empowering Christians as a new humanity and a royal-priesthood in God’s plan of a new creation are way more than we could possibly cover here. But we can hit some highlights of what this means for us today.
It first means that for many of us, we need to start seeing our Christian lives as more than just accepting Jesus as your personal savior from hell so that you can go to heaven when you die. In fact to only view him in this way is to miss out on the greater story of what God is doing and to miss out on the fullness of who Jesus really is. Although our salvation from sin is essential, we need to also begin to see the Christian life as a life that is actively engaged with making all aspects of the creation more like God wants it. We should be concerned about the world and praying that God’s will would be done here on earth as it is in heaven.
It also means that we should take care of this world with the same sense of responsibility and care that God himself has towards his own creation. Christians should work together to cultivate a world that glorifies the goodness and beauty and wisdom of our Creator.
It also means that we as a new humanity are to follow the lead of the new human named Jesus. Jesus lived and taught about a life of service and humility and self-giving love. He ruled here on earth by serving and by seeking the good of others, and so we participate in his rule by being living sacrifices who are willing to serve and to sacrifice for the good of others — even those who criticize us, mock us, reject us or who would crucify us if they could.
And then lastly, it means that we are to spread the good news about what God has accomplished through Jesus the Christ, and that we live under Christ’s authority while helping others do the same. Christians are called to live in a relationship of trusting obedience and to resist any and every temptation to define what is good and not good for ourselves.
The first page of the Bible tells us that, “In the beginning God made human beings in his own image and gave them dominion over the creation.” If you turn to the last page of the Bible you realize that it looks forward to the new creation and informs us that, “Christians will reign with Christ forever and ever.” The Bible is bookended with this vision of God’s creation being run by obedient humans who rule over the creation with him and on his behalf.
And so, as you enter into this next week, realize that through the work of Christ you have been restored back into being the image of God. You are now a special representative of the Creator and therefore responsible to bring order and goodness and peace to your circles of influence on his behalf.
You are to take care of the garden that he has placed you in.
Pray that God’s will would be done in your city and in your home as it is in heaven. Show the people around you the new way to be human and share the good news with them that Jesus is the Priest-King over all of Creation who restores us back into being the humans we were intended to be and who has invited us back into a special partnership with the Creator.
