In God’s Image

eDevotion

Encouragement for your daily walk with God 

I read an article about DNA the other day and, quite frankly, it was astounding. It’s in a field that I know little about and the details are staggering. Here’s my take away:

Your body consists of over a hundred trillion cells. Inside those cells there is about six feet of tightly interwoven DNA that is directing every cell to be where it was designed to be, and to be the kind of cell it was designed to be. That DNA is formed from a pattern of cohesion of four basic building blocks assisting amino acids in forming proteins. We can’t fathom how those proteins could possibly come together to form something so complicated and spectacular as your human body, aside from knowing that inside every cell there is a machine so complicated it is beyond comprehension.

OK, did you get that?! Let’s go a step further because another wonder of your being is something beyond the physical, your soul. Call it consciousness or your mind, but whatever you call it, evolution cannot account for it.  

There is a theological explanation, however: You are the absolute pinnacle of creation. You are more than a sophisticated, fleshly machine. According to the Bible, you are more than a “being,” you are a “living being,” something not said of the animal world. After His creation of the first “living beings,” God sat back and said, “That’s very good!”

The reason is, we were created in the “imago dei” — the image of God. We are, in some smaller way, an expression of His glory. Sure, we’ve fallen short of that glory because all have sinned [Romans 6.23]. It’s also true that we are marred and fractured by sin, born in sin, the Bible says [Psalm 51.5]. But, we were made in the image of God nonetheless.

It brings no honor to God to malign what He has made in His own image. God celebrates you as His masterpiece. You should do the same. There is no room for pride there. Take an honest look at yourself… what is there to be prideful about? It’s humbling isn’t it, to think that you were made in the image of God? You’re God’s representative on earth!

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, 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. Genesis 1.26-27