Created in the Image of God
Geniuses 1:26-27 #YOLO
What I am dealing with when I am talking about YOLO is not the order of, nor the selection of words, but I am more looking at the worldview that YOLO comes from. I am not even going to argue whether or not this statement word for word is theological or Biblically correct. I think there is a little truth to the actual statement, and I think it can be torn apart. Personally I think it is dumb phrase but I do think it brings up some important worldviews.
YOLO- Trading in the Glory of the Immortal God for the foolishness of this world
For those of us who are not as hip YOLO stands for “You Only Live Once.” The cultural understanding would go something like this “YOLO, so do what ever the heck you want to do!” So where does the worldview that YOLO represents come from? It comes from our western culture, and from thinkers like Abraham Maslow. Maslow was a psychologist during the 40s’ 50s’ and 60s’. He was a leading thinker who had a huge influence on the culture of his time, which was the foundation of our western culture now. He said “the autonomous reasoning individual is improved by self-acceptance and self-love added by physiology to self-actualization, which is the defining principle of what it means to be a human.” This statement is a representative of the shift in thinking during that time. Because of that shift it created a culture and worldview that is all about us as individuals, about self, and doing what I feel and want. This is where YOLO comes from, you only live once so do whatever feels right to you at that time. But how does this line up with the bible?
[18] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. [19] For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. [20] For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. [21] For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. [22] Claiming to be wise, they became fools, [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:18-23 ESV)
YOLO vs. Romans 1:18-23... Looking at Romans 1:18-23 we see a few things that helps us better understand this worldview. We see that God has put in us some knowledge of himself, his truth, his eternal power and divine nature. He did this when he created humans and this world. But instead of honoring, and worshiping God, we turned to ourselves for understanding, we became foolish. We traded in the glory of the immortal God for the things of this world. It just sounds like YOLO fits right there! It also sounds like the reasoning Maslow gives, “self-acceptance, self-love, self-actualization.” Even in how he open’s up his statement “the autonomous reasoning individual” screams this idea of trading a connection to the Immortal God for foolish understanding we come up with on our own.
Psalm 16:11
[11] You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (ESV)
A better way to understand YOLO is this - We only do get one physical life, I need to use it well! As I did say before there is some truth in the statement YOLO, and that is we do only get one life here on earth. Because of that I went to use it well but how do we do that? Psalms 16:11 tells us that God makes our path, in his presence there is fullness of joy, and in his right hand are pleasures forevermore. You notice something here? It is all in God, and nothing of ourselves, why? Because we are made in the Image of God! We are not autonomous creatures, we cannot understand this world or ourselves outside of God no matter how hard we try. When we do try we trade the glory of God for the foolishness of man.
We are Created in the Image of God Gen. 1:26-27
[26] 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.”
[27] So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (ESV)
This is who we are, Image bearers of God, and this is how we should understand our life and should shape our worldview. If we really do believe that we do only have one life to live, and want to live it well, we need to understand why and who created us. We need to have this as a foundation for our worldview, so that we can sift through the worldview that are taught in our world today.
We are created in the image of God, we are not autonomous creatures but we were created to show and glorify God. We do this by showing some of what he is like through the way he created us. We share some of God’s attributes, these are call communicable attributes. We actually see a lot of them in our everyday life. As we look around our world today we can see God in all his creation, especially humans because he created us in his own image. Here are just a few we see everyday.
Love... We want to be loved, we love other people. This is because we share this with God. One of God’s greatest attributes is his love and his love for us. Truth... We always want to know the truth, what really happened. When someone lies to us we get angry. If someone is known as a truthful person we think of that as something good. God is the ultimate truth and has instilled the desire for truth in our hearts. Righteousness... We desire to be right, if we think something is wrong, we will fight for what is right. Again this is from God, because he is a God of righteousness.
Mercy... We see someone hurting and we want to show them compassion.
Beauty... We like beautiful things, people, art, scenery. All of these things are naturally instilled in us without us doing anything. That is because we are created in the image of God.
Not only do we share some attributes with God, we are able to do some of the same things as God. He has given us the ability in some ways to mimic things that he does. Showing emotions... anytime we show emotion we are showing that we feel, we have something in us that allows us to do that, we are wired in a way that lets us love, have joy, be sad, passionate. All of these reflect who God is. The ability to Think... We think, I have a brain that works, it can reason and process. We are not just reactionary as animals are. We can understand what God tells us in the scripture, we interpret the culture around us. Being Creative... We have something in us that wants to be creative. We make music, we draw or paint, we create things with our hands. We express ourselves in creative ways (look at how differently we all dress). God is the ultimate creator! We have an Eternal Spirit (Ecc. 3:11)... We have eternity in our hearts. God has created us to live in eternity just as he will and even now we feel that. It is that longing in us for something more, something bigger (eternity). This is what drives us to go to the moon, or create massive buildings, because we know there is something more for us to do out there so we try and find things to fill that desire but in the end it is eternity that will meet that need, and that will either be with God in heaven or separated from him in hell. This “eternity in our hearts” cannot be understood on our own, it can only be understood through a relationship with the one that put it there.
We need to have an Image Identity
So what does this all mean? Well if we want to really use this one life that we were given, if we want to make the most of it we need to know what it means to be created in the image of God. The first part (we will be looking at several parts of being created in the image of God over the next few weeks)! of understanding this is that we need to have an Image Identity. Image identity is this, The Image that I am created in forms my identity. Put another way, my identity comes from the image that I am created in. Who I really am is based on who God IS! We were not created to live autonomous lives, we were created to live connected to God. We find who we are by being connected to God. Yet we still search this world to find out who we are. I am a football player. I am a total hipster (buying a new MacBook tomorrow yo, in my Toms). I am a hip hopper DAWG! I am smart, so I work at school to make the most of it. All of these things and more (look up LeCrae’s song Identity) are things we try to find ourselves in, we turn to these for our identity, but in the end they will leave us searching and lost because they are not what we were created for or what we were created after. We have to look to God to find ourselves. We need the gospel of Jesus Christ to take us from our autonomous selves to a relationship with our creator. Now that is a good identity to have. I am Jesse Schmidt because the creator of this world created me in his image and to glorify Him. But because of my sin I sperated myself from him. He then sent his son, Jesus Christ to pay for the penalty of my sin, death and eternal seperation and bought me back. I am because he said it and then saved it. Wow talk about finding self worth!
Application (Two Things)
First you need to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior. We all have sinned, separating us from God, which is who we need to have a relationship with. Because we are unable to do anything about our sin we need someone to take that sin. Jesus did, he paid for that sin on the cross when he died for us. He then rose again defeating death, fixing the eternity that we would have lived. But we need to make him our Lord and Savior, we need to repent of our sin understanding that we cannot pay for our sin on our own and then ask Jesus to come into our lives. When we do this our relationship with God is fixed and we can find our identity in who we were created after.
For those of us how have Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior we need to find our worth in who God is and how he Created us. Stop looking to worldly things to figure out who you are, you will NEVER find it. Start looking up ward, look to your creator to find who you are as a human and not to other created creatures. When you describe yourself to people what do you use to describe yourself? Is it fill with things of this world, or things that God has instilled in you? When you are searching in your heart, asking “who am I” do you look at the things around you to answer that question or do you look to God? Are you taking time to get to know God? The more you know about God the more you know about yourself.
Do not trade the glory of the Immortal God in for the foolishness of this world. Live this one life the way you were created to, bearing God’s image. Have an Image Identity, having you identity based upon the image you (and I) were created in.
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