In our modern times, value is often given to things based on economics — how much something is worth and how it can add benefit to our lives. For others, value may be placed on a moral ground — whether something is right or wrong. Even with our families, we carry a value — what makes this family different from another. Yet, none of these values are able to support a truly meaningful, fulfilled human living. So, where is the answer to that satisfaction and meaning? In the book of Genesis, God introduces a different value in the forming of man:
And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. / And God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (1:26-7)
Here, the phrases “image” and “likeness” first appear when God made man; out of all creation, only man bears the image and likeness of God, carrying the authority and expression of God on the earth. And with this final task, God says, “And indeed, it was very good” (v. 31a). According to the book of Genesis, what has value is based on whether it has His image and likeness. And, that image and likeness is not static; it comes with a very specific purpose — to be God’s expression, multiplication, and execution of authority on the earth. So what about today? When we look around us, we find that in the world, our jobs, our marriages, and our families do not reflect this value, but instead chaos, division, and opinion. Where is that value? Where is that image and likeness? What does it look like?
If you’ve ever had a specific dish from your mother’s kitchen, for example, like a spice cake she makes for particular occasions, you know that no two spice cakes are the same. When you eat a spice cake, what you are longing for is not just those ingredients; there’s an image and likeness with the taste of your mother’s cake that cannot be replicated anywhere else. The cake has the taste, the memory with an impression of the moment — including your mother and her love towards you. That specific taste and memory are an image and likeness — the value — that you compare all spice cakes from that point on. As human beings, we were made according to God’s image and likeness, which also has specific ingredients: love, light, righteousness, and holiness; however, we have buried that value under layers of other false values to run our daily lives. We are testifying something else, a different image than the Lord.
So, how do we come back to the true value of our lives as human beings? If you’re looking for that authentic taste of spice cake, you go back to your mom’s kitchen; if you’re looking for that image and likeness of God, you go back to where it’s at — deep inside of you. Paul tells us in the New Testament “…whenever their heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (2 Cor. 3:16). We have a way to be restored to our original purpose in God’s design bearing His image and likeness: “But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). Today, in this beholding our Lord, we can live His value — testifying and expressing His life through us.
(Above are notes of fellowship from a gathering of the church in Toledo on 12/15/2023, not reviewed by the speaker.)