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Image of God

Sight is a wonderful gift. We can take in an image in less than a second. In some cases that picture can be stored in our mind for life, yet retrieved countless times with no effort. This allows us to learn quickly from our mistakes. It also allows us to record, in a flash, an unpleasant image which may haunt us for weeks, months, even years.

Annual formal pictures are part of the routine for some families. More usual are casual snapshots taken at family celebrations. Photos taken at these events provide a record of the changes that occur over the years. "Look at Uncle Jim," cries his niece. "He had hair in this picture." "Did you know that Aunt Merla didn't always have a double chin?" "Look at this, you were so cute when you were little." The predictable comments come out as regularly as the photos themselves.

But these casual pictures are often cluttered with unnecessary detail. There is the picture of Grandma in Paris with the Eiffel Tower apparently sticking out of her head. There's the one where a dog in the background makes Grandpa look like he's wearing a toupee. Then there's the picture of Susie on her birthday, but all of the attention goes to little Timmy who is crying in the background.

Sketches and paintings, not to mention digitally edited photos, allow us to eliminate distracting background elements. This serves to focus the viewer's attention on the main subject. Formal photographs and paintings communicate better because they are intentional and extraneous detail is left out. This keeps us from being distracted from the message the artist was trying to get across.

But not all images start out visually. Words allow us to build mental images. A verbal description takes longer to absorb than a visual image, but word pictures can be powerful. In some ways, word pictures are more powerful than visual ones because they force the one receiving the communication to be more involved. For example, Victorian artists liked to pull at our heart strings with pictures of a dying mother. Some of them evoke tender thoughts in us. But, when a good writer describes a mother’s death, the reader gets involved and usually puts his or her own mother into the scene, making it that much more moving.

Let's do a little exercise. What do you see in your mind when I say the word "valley?" Do you have a picture? Is it clear? Now I'm going to add some words, one at a time. Observe how dramatically your mental picture of the valley changes with just one descriptor. Here we go. First word: "dark." Let's try: "sun-dappled." How about: "lush." One more for now: "parched." Images communicate powerfully. They say something. They define. They affect our perceptions. I think this is part of the reason why God forbids us to try to make graven images to represent Him. No artist could capture all of God's complexity in a sculpture, so the resulting image would always be a distortion of the truth. Even if the work of art were well-executed, observers would get an erroneous impression of what God is like.

Revelation is part of the nature of God. It's not just that He wants to show us what He is like. He must. His glory is such that it cannot be hidden. Everything God does, every word He speaks, reveals something about Him. While some people we meet strike us as interesting, God is supremely interesting. He is infinitely worth knowing.

Here's a challenge for you. Imagine you are god. You are pure spirit. You have no mass, no physical properties. You are invisible. You cannot be weighed, measured, analysed, or evaluated in any way. Yet, you have made a marvellous creature that needs to know you. You want to communicate clearly and truthfully who you are. What do you do?

Well, you could do what the God of the Bible did and use an image. While God forbade humans to make images of Him, He, Himself, communicated His nature through an image. The Lord Jesus Christ is "the image of God." In Colossians 1 we read that "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul mentions the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Speaking of "the Son" - the Lord Jesus Christ - chapter 1 of the book of Hebrews records that “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven” (Hebrews 1:3 NIV)

This is one image that is worth having fixed firmly in your mind. Remembering that God not only made Himself visible as the man, Jesus, He provided the means for our sin to be forgiven and the hope of a glorious eternal life.

Ron Hughes
© May 2008