Systematic Theology (part 8)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for this morning, for this opportunity to look at your word, to understand,

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Father, what it means to be made in the image of God in Mago Day. I just pray,

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Lord, that you would bless this morning, bless our time together, that we would discuss things in a way that would be fruitful for one another and that would most glorify you.

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In your name we pray, Amen. Alright, so last week, and I can actually say last week, usually

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I have to say like last time because it was some mysterious time in the past, but it was actually last week which is exciting only if you're a weirdo like me or Corey.

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But last week we talked about creation and I mentioned last week that we would be talking about Mago Day this week.

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Creation is kind of this foundational topic under which we can understand some of these other things, of course,

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Mago Day pertaining specifically to creation in a certain context. So, if you remember when

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Dave taught a while ago, a month ago or so, he talked about some of the ways in which creation manifests and there was this great debate between the dichotomous constitutional nature of man and the trichotomous constitutional nature of man, talking about whether man was made up of two or three parts.

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We settled on dichotomous two -part view. We talked about the creationism view, the appropriately named creationism view of our souls, that God creates our souls at conception.

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But like I said, this week we're going to dig into Imago Dei. I know that many of us have heard this word before.

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What does Imago Dei mean? Anyone? In the image of God.

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Good, good, great. This is for the high schoolers, we have some high schoolers. This is chapter four. I would commend to you, go read chapter four.

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Not right now. All right. So, we know what this means,

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Imago Dei in the image of God. Who wants to define what that actually means?

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Like, work out a working definition, not just something we find in Webster's or whatever the Latin version of Webster's is.

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What does Imago Dei mean? How does it apply to us? We think of sharing attributes with God, okay.

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Brian? Those communicable attributes that God has deemed that we should exercise in his image.

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So, is that what you said? Okay. Anything else? Pradeep?

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Yeah. Right. No, that's good though.

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It's the way in which we reflect God's image because we're not entirely like him, right.

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And I had a whole thing about like, do we actually like look like God in any way? How is that, you know, like when we go to heaven and we see

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Jesus, are we like, oh, hey, somehow we all look like you because we look like, like, I had a whole, and there's no time for that.

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But certainly that's something that when we think about this, and we'll talk about this in a little bit, that's one of the things that comes up.

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When we think about our kids, what do we think about? Like, when I walk into a, this is not in my notes.

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When I walk into like a parent -teacher conference, I get as far as, hi, I'm, and they're like, we know, we can tell, you know, we got this, right.

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It doesn't matter. It could be Claire even, it doesn't make a difference. I mean, my two boys are basically clones of each other.

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So, you know, anyway. All right. Here's what the Lexham Bible Dictionary says. Image of God, a phrase found several times in the book of Genesis, distinguishes humankind from the animal and plant kingdoms, elevates humankind above all terrestrial created things so as to exercise benevolent and ethical stewardship over creation.

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Image of God language is found in the New Testament as part of the Christian's responsibility to imitate Christ, who is the image of God par excellence.

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That's a pretty good definition. I mean, you know, they work on these things. It does mention some passages here.

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I skipped over the references, but I'll start. I'll read the first one. Does anyone want to read scripture this morning?

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Anyone? Volunteers? Brian, will you flip to Genesis 5 verses 1 to 3? I have one more short one.

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Claire, you're volunteering, right? Okay. Mr. Wesley is saving your bottom.

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Genesis 9 -6 for you. So, the first passage where we see this idea of the image of God begins in Genesis 1.

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It's working through the creation narrative over the course of the week. Genesis 1, 7 -10, God makes the heavens and the earth, the land and the ocean.

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11 -13, he makes the flora. 14 -19, the celestial bodies. 20 -25, sea creatures, flying creatures, and creatures that walk on land.

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So, basically, what we're seeing is the process of creation.

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We see things getting progressively more complex. And then we land in verse 26, Genesis 1 -26, and we see this.

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Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

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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.

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So, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him.

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Male and female, he created them. Two ideas here, maybe.

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Two ideas, two phrases here, certainly. In our image, after our likeness.

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So, that's our first question that we're going to look at is, are these two ways of saying the same thing, or are these two different ideas?

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All right. Brian, Genesis 5, verses 1 -3. All right. So, there's two interesting things here, right?

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You see something in verse 1, the likeness of God. Okay, we saw that in Genesis 1, so we kind of have that idea.

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But then we see, whoa, wait a minute. What do we see here in verse 3?

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Seth was fathered in Adam's likeness, after his image. Same writer, same book.

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So, now what does in the image of God mean? Because this is the same description, isn't it? So, how do we understand these things?

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Because Adam certainly is not communicating eternal attributes to his son.

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So, what's going on? Genesis 9 -6. All right.

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So, to foreshadow a little bit, what has happened between Genesis 1 and Genesis 9?

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Very high level, what has happened? Sin.

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Sin happened, right? That's really all I was going for. Like I said, very high level. Okay, so we're going to get into that in a little bit.

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But we've got man being described as being made in God's image before and after sin has entered the world, okay?

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That will be important, and we'll get to it, I promise. All right.

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And as I was putting this together, I was thinking about Corey's excellent teaching, and realized that he does this thing where he talks about all the words in the

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Hebrew and the Greek that actually are used to describe this. So, I figured I would do the same thing, which if you have a quiz, and if you don't have a quiz, there are handouts on either side.

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If there are no more left, Jose is making more, because he's awesome. You can see that.

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There's two Hebrew words, two Greek words that describe this idea of Imago Dei. Genesis 1 -26, let us make man in our own image.

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This word is Selem. S -E -L -E -M. Selem. This is also what we see in Genesis 5 -3, after his image, and what we see in Genesis 9 -6.

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Selem. But we also see it in less savory places in the

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Old Testament. We see it in 1 Samuel 6. The Philistines have stolen the Ark. What happens to the

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Philistines after they steal the Ark? They bring it back to where they live. Yeah, it's gross.

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It's like tumors and cancer and bad things are happening to them. So, they're like, all right, I'm done.

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They learned what Pharaoh apparently could not. And they return the

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Ark. They bring it back. And what do the priests and diviners say to do? Anybody remember? I mean,

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I read it. So, I feel like it's cheating. Well, but once they brought it back, what do they do?

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Make little golden tumor images. Little tumor images and little mice images.

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That's the same word, image. Making these copies, these golden copies of their tumors and the mice and stuff.

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Same image. So, when you look at Genesis 126, you can think of 1

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Samuel 6 as well to have a proper understanding of what this word is. Interestingly, ESV translates this image.

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The American Standard says likeness. The plot thickens. Same word.

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Psalm 39 is translated phantom. Okay. So, when we think of this word,

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Salem, it definitely has this idea of being a copy. There is something that's being copied.

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All right. You think of a phantom. It's a phantom. It's something that's real or it's kind of incorporeal almost kind of thing.

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A ghost thing. You know, it makes me think of like quarterbacks here, like ghost defenders.

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And they get nervous in the pocket, right? There's something that's not really there, but they think it's there. So, there's this kind of representation idea.

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It's something that's definitely other. And that's Salem. That's the first word. The second word is demut.

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Demut. D -E -M -U -T. It's transliteration. Demut. This word really is likeness, 100%.

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Second King 16, King Ahaz sent to Uriah the priest the pattern of the altar.

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He said, here's the diagram. Go build it. Demut. Same word,

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Psalm 58. They have venom like the venom of a serpent. Okay. This is a simile word.

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That's basically what demut is. There's other references of both of these.

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But it's much more a comparison word than the first word, Salem. So, that's the two words in Hebrew.

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We have Salem and we have demut. Getting into the Greek. First Corinthians 11 is the word icon.

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Icon. It's spelled in the Greek E -I -K -O -N, not I -C -O -N. But similar idea, right?

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It suggests a copy just like demut did. When Jesus is talking, he says, show me a denarius whose likeness and inscription is on it.

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It's a representation icon. Colossians 3 .10, which is a verse we'll come back to a couple of times.

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Put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. A representation icon.

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For those whom he foreknew. Romans 8. He also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son.

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We are sanctified not to become Christ, but to become like him, right? To become like him.

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The other Greek word. So we have icon, E -I -K -O -N. The other Greek word is homeosis.

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Homeosis. H -O -M -O -I -O -S -I -S. Homoiosis.

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Excuse me. I missed a syllable on there. Homoiosis. This is kind of a...

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It's this idea of a copy, but it's more about the idea of making the copy. James 3 .9.

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With it, talking about our tongue. With our tongue, we bless our Lord and Father, and with it, we curse people who are made in the image of God.

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If you were speaking Greek to someone... This is going to surprise nobody who knows Asher, but Asher is learning

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Greek in Duolingo. So if... I know. So if Asher were to be building a model, like a model car, or a model ship, or a model rocket, let's be honest, right?

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And he were speaking Greek to describe what he was doing, this is the kind of a word that he would use. Homoiosis.

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All right. So those are our four words. So we have selen, demut, icon, homoiosis.

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I'm not really going to dig too deeply into those, but we can kind of see the flavor of this idea of image, and what we're looking at, and what we're understanding.

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It's not just a direct replica. It's a representation. It is clearly something that is different from, and it is something that involves work of creation.

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Before I move on, hard pivot, any questions, comments, thoughts? Brian. Homoiosis.

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James 3 .9 is the scripture reference where it's used in that form.

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The root word is used in a bunch of places. But James 3 .9

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is actually the only place in the New Testament where it's used in this particular way. Anything else?

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Okay. So I mentioned this kind of topic before, and we're going to dig into it a little bit.

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The great debate raged about Imago Dei. Are image and likeness two different things or not?

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Are image and likeness two different things or not? At the end of the day, this basically broke out

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Catholic Church believe one thing, Protestant Church believes another.

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So we're going to dig a little bit into if they're two different things, because if they're the same thing, then there's not a whole lot to talk about in terms of the differences between them, if that makes sense.

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If they're two different things, what do they represent? This whole thing, as I was studying this, was like, this is like the dichotomous thing.

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Irenaeus and Tertullian. Image is body, likeness is spirit.

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Made in the image of God, body, physical things, likeness, spirit, soul. Irenaeus is quoted as saying, everyone will know that we are composed of a body taken from the earth, it gathers up, right, it gathers up the dust, the ash, and a soul receiving spirit from God.

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Okay, so if I think about the Jairus narrative, that kind of makes sense to me. I can get with that. I can be like, all right,

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I'm picking up what you're putting down, right? God creates our body from the ash and the dust and breathes spirit into us.

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I get it, I see it. Clement and Origen had a slightly different perspective on this.

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They rejected the idea of any bodily analogy and held that the word image denoted the characteristics of man as man, and the word likeness, qualities which are not essential to man but may be cultivated or lost.

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So to put it in other similarly complicated terms that we've already heard, image would really refer to the constitutional nature of man, the things that make man, man, right?

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That's the image here. But the likeness would be, sort of like what you said, kind of like the communicable attributes, right?

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The things where when we are saved, we exhibit these things. When we are not saved, we do not exhibit some of these things, right?

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And we'll dig into that, unsurprisingly, a little bit more. Any questions about the difference between those two ideas, by the way?

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Clement and Origen would concede that there is something spiritual about the constitutional nature of man.

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They would say that, right? I mean, that's kind of self -evident. But they would attest to the idea that those things that are described by image are the not parts that you can take away.

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But the idea of likeness, those would be things that human beings may not exhibit.

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Does that make sense? Does that help? Yes. So Jesus would be,

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I mean, Jesus is the perfect representation of God's nature, right? So there would be a difference between how we are created in Mago Dei and Jesus, because he is the perfect representation of who

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God is. But, I mean, so it's Irenaeus is the other person,

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Irenaeus and Tertullian. But really, what they're talking about is simply that there is a physical and a spiritual component.

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And when it talks about the image of God versus the likeness of God, right? Those two things come together to make a person.

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That's what they're saying. Does that, I don't know that that answers your question. On man's timeline.

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On man's timeline. So we're getting into the whole like, oh, we're outside of time thing. At least in the context of this,

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I don't know that they're really dealing with God's, Jesus's pre -incarnate body.

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I don't know that that's really a topic, at least at this point, that they're talking about. So what their beliefs are regarding that,

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I probably, well, not probably, definitely couldn't tell you. But, I mean, when, certainly when

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Jesus is incarnate, they would believe that there's a physical and a spiritual component to him. I don't know when the theology of the

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Hypostatic Union was really developed and whether or not they talked about it or not. That's a good question. I'll leave that one to Pradeep to figure out.

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Homework for Pradeep. Just Pradeep. Okay, so these are two different ideas, but they do share something.

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And what they share is that likeness deals with a way in which we are similar to God in a spiritual sense, whether it is something that can or cannot be lost.

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Likeness, in both of these definitions, deals with a way in which we're similar to God in a spiritual sense.

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By the way, I should mention that Clement and Origen, who have this, like, the constitutional nature of man and then the likeness is the thing that could be either cultivated or lost, were joined by some other theologians who you may or may not have heard of, like Athanasius, Augustine, or Augustine, depending on the

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Sunday school teacher debate of the day, Ambrose, Hillary, a lot of theological heavyweights would have co -signed with Clement and Origen.

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So, it's not really a surprise when we see these church fathers and when we consider pretty much where those church fathers ended up,

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Catholic Church, that they have this idea of the likeness of God being something that can be lost.

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Really not a surprise to us. But here's where it gets interesting. The early church, and really us as well, the

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Protestant Church, I shouldn't speak for you guys, believe, posit, that original righteousness was part of the likeness of God.

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That's capital O, capital R, original righteousness. And so, after Adam sinned, original righteousness was lost, and at least that part of likeness was no longer true.

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Original righteousness was part of man's likeness of God. So, later, and I've kind of buried this lead a little bit, the

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Reformers rejected the distinction between image and likeness, for the most part. Luther, if you know anything about Luther, this is probably not a surprise, considered the

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Imago Dei to be completely tied with original righteousness and therefore entirely lost by sin.

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Luther's position was that after Adam sinned, the image of God, being made in the image of God, no more.

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Calvin felt differently. Here's what Calvin said. Accordingly, by this term, image of God, is denoted the integrity with which

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Adam was endued when his intellect was clear, his affection subordinated to reason, all his senses duly regulated, and when he truly ascribed all his excellence to the admirable gifts of his maker.

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And, though the primary seat of the divine image was in the mind and the heart, or in the soul and its powers, there was no part even of the body in which some rays of glory did not shine.

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What does that mean? Calvin believed that sin impacted the image of God, that we are, impacted it, but it was only the spiritual likeness that was lost.

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When we think of double imputation or triple imputation, depending on how you want to look at it, that first one is what?

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Adam's sin imputed onto mankind. So, at that point, sin entered into the world, that spiritual likeness with God was lost.

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That's Calvin's position. But, there is still some aspect of the image of God that is visible through us, that is visible in us.

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He said there was no part even of the body, including the physical, this is not just a spiritual thing, even of the body in which some rays of glory did not shine.

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Make sense? Was there a hand?

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Oh, yeah, absolutely. The whole quote or just the end of it? I'll read the whole quote,

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I'll read the whole quote. Calvin, Calvin wrote that accordingly by this term, by image of God, it is denoted the integrity with which

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Adam was endued when his intellect was clear, his affection subordinated to reason, all his senses duly regulated, and when he truly ascribed all his excellence to the admiral gifts of his maker.

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This is basically precedent. And though the primary seat of the divine image was in the mind and the heart or in the soul and its powers, there was no part even of the body in which some rays of glory did not shine.

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So, Calvin is saying, look, it's not just spiritual, it's also physical as well, when we're talking about the image of God.

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That gets back to what you said before, does that mean that we look like him, like physically look like him? I think the answer is no, but yeah,

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I don't know. Jesus is not a blonde -haired, blue -eyed Jesus, I'm sorry. You have chickens, you figure it out.

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Yeah, for sure. Well, not to get metaphysical, but like, did

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God know what Jesus was going to look like because God can look into the future or because God was already there? Like, I mean, we could go very far afield on that one.

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Brian? So, Brian's pushback, essentially, on this idea, could we possibly have lost all of Imago Dei?

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That's, I mean, that's the simple question, right? And we would disagree with Luther's assertion, which is essentially what you're doing, right?

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And we'll get there, hopefully. It's in my notes whether we get there or not, I can't tell you.

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All right, so here we go. Is there another question over there?

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Oh, no, okay, okay, we're good. So, we know that sin had some impact on man bodily.

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We know this. Question, was man, Adam, created immortal?

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Yes, no. Who says yes? Raise your hand. Who says no? Raise your hand. Okay, we have both, that's perfect.

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All right, so the answer is yes.

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When Adam sinned, what happened? Romans 3, death entered the world, right?

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Was Adam created immortal? Yes. God said everything he had made, Genesis 131, and it was very good, very good.

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Duolingo would say you're wrong if you forget the modifier for good there. Here's what

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Burkhoff says. We talked about communicable and communicable attributes. Burkhoff writes, God alone hath immortality as an essential quality, has it in and of himself, while man's immortality is an endowment.

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It is derived from God. Man was created immortal, not merely in the sense that his soul was endowed with an endless existence, but also in the sense that he did not carry within himself the seeds of physical death, and his original condition was not subject to the law of death.

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Death was threatened as a punishment for sin, Genesis 2, 17, and that this included bodily or physical death is evident from Genesis 3, 19.

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If we really want to dig into this, if we really want to look at how sin has changed us, we can just look simply at the language surrounding

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Jesus and his redemption for the lost. Look at the language that we see here.

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I mentioned Colossians 3, 10. I said we'd look at it in two different contexts. Listen, in the New Testament, this is what we see, icon for image, and having put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

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What does the word renewed mean? Re -new -ed, restored, put back together, right?

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Okay, confession time. Who here is on Facebook? Wow, I'm surprised that there's not more head, some people aren't willing to admit it.

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So, one of the things that I hate the most about Facebook is the videos that play, and when you're scrolling, because when

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I'm doom -scrolling on Facebook, when I'm doing whatever it is, and I'm just like, I have five minutes, which turns into half an hour, that's how it works.

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But when I'm scrolling, the videos that get me are the ones where you can see somebody picking up something old and really junky -looking from a junkyard or a pile, and you're like, oh, this is going to look awesome.

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And you click on it, and they've got $75 ,000 worth of sandblasting equipment to save some, it's like, it's $5, just buy a new one, right?

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But they take whatever this thing is, like my favorite ones are like old milk jugs and like apple corers and stuff like that, where they take them apart and there's like one wooden part, so of course they have to remake that, so they go into their $150 ,000 wood shop, you know, and they're doing all this ridiculous stuff.

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But people are nodding, I don't know if you know this, but we're all like, oh, those videos are awesome, right?

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But what happens at the end? What is that thing? You can't sell it as new, it's not new.

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It's like new. It's been renewed. It is restored to its former glory.

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That's what those videos are. And so, thinking through these things,

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I think that we would agree with Burkoff when he says, the image of God in which man was created certainly includes what is generally called original righteousness.

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He goes further, the condition to which he is restored in Christ is clearly not one of neutrality, neither good nor bad, in which the will is in a state of perfect equilibrium, but one of true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.

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True knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. These three elements constitute the original righteousness, which was lost by sin, but regained in Christ.

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Knowledge, righteousness, holiness. And yet.

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Right? So, okay, so I'm kind of, I'm drawing Luther's picture here. So we've lost Imago Dei, and it's been restored in Christ.

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That's the Luther picture. Is that really true? Well, we see from scripture that although some sense of man's attributes of being made in the image of God was lost with sin and needed to be restored, clearly not all of it was lost.

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And we see that in a couple different ways. How about this language? This is language out of Hebrews talking about Jesus.

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What's the theme of Hebrews? Every time I mention Hebrews, I'm going to ask this question because it's great. What's the theme? Just tell me. Prophet, priest, king.

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Jesus is better. That's the answer. Jesus is better. What's the theme of Hebrews 1? Jesus is better.

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What's the theme of Hebrews 2? Jesus is better. Jesus is better. Hebrews 2, 17. Therefore, he,

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Jesus, had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

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Genesis 9, 6, getting back to what Brian was talking about, this is outside the context of redemption.

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Not long after the creation story, we see God talking to Noah and he says, what?

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He said, I didn't copy Genesis 9, 6. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

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This is, remember, this is after sin. We talked about that already. For God made man in his own image. There is still a consequence to murder because Imago Dei still matters after sin, but before redemption.

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Sorry, Luther. Murder is heinous because men are still made in God's image, even if it is a fallen reflection of him.

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Why are we called to preach the gospel and have compassion for the lost? They are made in the image of God.

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Okay, so, I already said this, but whatever, it's fine. So, what do you think? Image of God, likeness.

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Are they the same thing? Are they different things? We still have different? Anybody think they're the same?

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Camden looks tired. All right, here's R .C. Sproul, writing on the

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Protestant view of Imago Dei. Protestant interpreters say that the two distinct words are a hendiatis, hendiatis?

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How do you say that, Steve? Hendiatis? I'll take that. Hendiatis. I had to write it down for number five.

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So, I figured I could just copy it out of my notes, but then I had to say it out loud. Hendiatis.

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I'll take it. Which is simply a grammatical structure in which two words both refer to the same thing.

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We find another instance of this structure in Romans 1, where we are told that God's wrath is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

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Hendiatis. All ungodliness and unrighteousness. Or one thing described by either term.

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The consensus among Protestants is that both Romans 1 .18 and Genesis 1 .26 contain a hendiatis.

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In whatever sense we were created in the image of God, it is that same sense in which we were made in his likeness.

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If you have questions on that one, you're going to have to wait until glory, because that's where R .C. is. But, well, soul and spirit, as you're talking about back to constitutional nature of man

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Those two are the same. Yeah, yeah. I think that would be similar. And remember I said at the beginning, as I looked at this,

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I was kind of brought back to that whole conversation over and over again, because it's a similar idea. Now, there's a point to be made here, which is that these are kind of different ways of looking at the same thing.

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Yeah, when we think about soul and spirit, we think about how those two words of description, although describing the same thing,

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I almost said physical thing, but clearly not. When we think of soul, we think of certain attributes.

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When we think of spirit, we think of certain attributes. But they're the same thing, right? Yep, absolutely.

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Hendiatis. All right,

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I don't have enough time to list these out, so that'll be okay. Any thoughts, comments, questions on where we're at so far?

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I'm a weird guy. It's all good. Whether or not the

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Tree of Life had any impact on the immortality of man? Well, I did recently watch

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Thor. Sorry, Brian, did you have?

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Yeah, I mean, I don't have a good answer for you.

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I don't necessarily know that they're created. I think the Tree of Life, in the function of the creation narrative and of Satan tempting

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Adam and Eve to sin, is a tool more than any meaningful physical thing.

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Right? So I think it all exists under the purview of God's creation. And there's nothing particularly imbued in the apple that Adam ate that physically changed him in any way.

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Is that kind of what you mean? I just think it's just, yeah, it's just a tool that is used by God in that way, and by Satan.

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Yeah. You mean the tree is a symbol of immortality?

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Well, I just... Janet? Right, right.

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So let's rewrite the sin narrative for a moment here and ask a hypothetical question.

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So Adam comes along. Eve says, oh, look at this apple. It's delicious. Adam's purpose is to eat of the apple.

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Has the apple in his hand. Begins to lift it to his mouth. And God sends a woodchuck along.

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Comes flying through air. Knocks the apple out of Adam's hand. He has not bitten the apple.

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Did Adam sin? Yes, no. Yes. Then it's not the apple. Well, I mean, that's not the point.

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But then it's not the apple, right? So then it's not a physical attribute of the tree. To Janet's point.

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I also like the woodchuck torpedo. Claire, get on that.

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Draw me a picture of a woodchuck torpedo. All right. I'll send it out to BBC Announce later. I figured you were right there.

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That hand came up so hard, you almost dislocated your shoulder. This is exactly what

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God did. Well, he just said stop. He didn't hurl the goat across.

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Yes, it was. I Abraham made a decision. He made the decision.

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He fully committed to obedience to God. I mean, that's the entire point of that whole passage in Matthew five.

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Right. That's exactly what Jesus is talking about. It's like partial hand raising.

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Maybe people are twitching like torpedo woodchucks. All right. I didn't talk about things I didn't expect to talk about this morning.

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All right. Okay. So we've got a little. What's that?

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God did make the woodchuck too. No woodchucks were harmed in the making of this story.

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All right. So with the Protestant view of image and likeness being the same, there are still components of the

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Imago Dei that can be articulated, that can be described. Courtesy of the woodchuck,

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I'm just going to read these to you. We're not really going to dig into any of these. It's pretty much straight out of Birkhoff, although I rephrase them so that you could actually write them.

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As the answers to question six. But if you want to find it in the book,

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I can point you to the right place. So it may be said that the image, the Imago Dei, consists of five things.

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Number one, the existence of spirit or soul in man, which is defined by things like simplicity, spirituality, invisibility, immortality.

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The spirit or soul, that's for us, in man. That's number one.

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Number two, the intellect and will in man, and the ability to discern and make decisions.

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That's a big one. That's one that we really look at, and we're like, okay, well, we're not putting woodchucks on trial for making bad decisions.

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The intellect and will in man, and the ability to discern and make decisions. Number three, morality and integrity, revealing itself in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.

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The idea of original righteousness, but it's part of this Imago Dei. Morality and integrity.

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Number four, man's position, having dominion over the earth. And number five, in the body as an organ or a tool to exercise said dominion over the earth.

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Imago Dei, the existence of spirit or soul in man, the intellect and will in man, morality and integrity, man's position as having dominion over the earth, and in the body as an organ or tool to exercise dominion.

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The interesting thing here is that Westminster Shorter Catechism question number one is not represented in the

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Imago Dei according to this definition. Us being created in order to worship and glorify

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God and enjoy him forever is not part of the Imago Dei. That's weird. It is a necessary response to it, but it is not part of the image itself.

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That is merely my observation. Like I said, I pulled this directly out of the book. All right, we have a couple of minutes left.

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So, I just want to pivot very briefly to talk about not the differences between image and likeness and how these two things that are actually one thing are expressed differently, but instead let's talk about some of the ramifications of being made in the image of God.

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The ramifications of this. How does the knowledge of knowing that we are not created things like animals or trees affect us?

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Do you live differently knowing that God breathed life into you and fashioned you in his image?

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I think we would all say we want to, right? I think so. I hope so. Should this knowledge change the way that you interact with the world around you?

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I'll just ask that question. What are some of the implications of the Imago Dei? It makes us responsible.

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We're supposed to act accordingly. What does that act accordingly look like? What are some examples of that? You want to do what's right.

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What's right? Loving, forgiving, etc.

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We have and are beholden to morals and the faculty of choice.

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I think I wrote that at one in the morning, but I hope it makes sense. We don't judge animals for what they do, but my cat is pretty dumb.

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Ben Felix is pretty dumb. He's dumb. He's a dumb cat. There is no day of judgment for your parakeet.

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Like I said, I wrote this at one in the morning. I'm sorry. There is a day of judgment for us. Sproul. Humans are moral agents.

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They are volitional creatures. God gave human beings the directive to be holy even as he is holy and to reflect something of his righteousness, which we could not possibly do unless we were rational, moral creatures, and unless we had some sense of feeling or affection.

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Historically, the church has seen these characteristics found both in God and in human beings as comprising the essence of his image.

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So we have a responsibility to act rightly, and we have a picture of what acting rightly is through the word of God.

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Anything else? Any other thoughts? Crowdsourcing answers? What are some implications of the

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Imago Dei? You guys are making me nervous.

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I'm really glad you said that. How we look at other people. We are all made in his likeness.

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We are all made in the image of God. That includes everyone. It doesn't matter how bad they act or what they think or whether they reject the word of God or not.

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That doesn't change the fact that they are image bearers. Nielsen, high schoolers, Nielsen wrote,

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This does not mean, of course, that we agree with everything that every human being says or does. Many people who are made in the image of God make terrible choices about life and belief.

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Yet it does mean that we value every human being as a creature made with the Imago Dei. People are weird.

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You studied that? All right. Everybody's got hobbies.

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This is anthropology? People trying to look like reptiles? Sure, whatever.

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I'll give you my example of this. To my shame, whatever. I'm in Germany last year.

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I'm on my way back to the airport, blessedly returning home to my wonderful and loving family that supports me in every way.

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Why are you laughing? Anyway, I'm sitting on the train. I am. I'm tired, right?

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So big time difference. I've been working all week. I'm on the train to go back to the airport. This guy literally physically stumbles onto the train and collapses in the corner.

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He's got a pint -sized can of beer in his hand, open. He's drinking from it.

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He passes out, spills the beer, wakes up, soils himself. This guy is very, very intoxicated.

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What is my reaction to that? My reaction is like, all right,

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I'm going to just slide over in my seat a little bit over here, like, yuck, right? That's my reaction.

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It's a physical reaction. And yet, this man, although lost, although making terrible life decisions, is made in the image of God.

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And maybe in a different situation, when I had more time or something, maybe I could have done, I don't know. I'm not going to say that I would have been, you know, a paragon of humanity or anything in that moment.

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Whatever. Anyway, but we absolutely have those physical reactions.

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And it is on us to remember. Now, I mean, look, safety is clearly, like if somebody's being violent or, you know, they're doing something kind of insane, like maybe we avoid that situation.

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But a heart of compassion is something that we are absolutely called to have. Any more hands?

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We're almost out of time. I think there's, yeah, I think there's some truth to that.

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I think that it is not incorrect to acknowledge that someone who isn't a

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Christian, who is doing something, is not motivated by doing it for God's glory.

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They're not. They're motivated by whatever it is. But instead of us looking at them in a very deprecatory way, the issue is that that person needs to hear the gospel, right?

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That person needs to get saved. And I don't really think that their generosity is, you know, necessarily opposed to their need to get saved.

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One last thing. Oh, OK. Does that make sense? I don't think that we should put these things against one another in that way.

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The last thing I have on my list is that, look, we have eternal value, too. And this gets back to what Steve was saying. God cares about all of his creation,

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Matthew 10. But the rest of creation doesn't have souls. They're not immortal. Our value is eternal.

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And finally, we are God's representatives to creation. In the same way that we are image bearers, we reflect his glory.

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And we ought to submit to his will so that we might be better reflectors of his glory.

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We're totally out of time. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for this opportunity to look at who you are and how you have created us.

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I praise you, Lord, for being so kind to us that you would make us as volitional creatures,

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Father, that are in your image. There's so much more that we could talk about here,

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Lord. But I just praise you that we have the opportunity to consider how you have made us and how we might glorify you.