Leaving off from our last post about the image and likeness of God, how do we attain to the likeness of God who is so vast and unknowable? God’s likeness looks like Jesus. Jesus told His disciples that if they had seen Him, they had seen the Father.
Hebrews 1:3 says, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…”
Jesus was not born perfect. He was born of the seed of God instead of the seed of Man and thus, like Adam, did not inherit a sinful nature. He only became perfect through being tempted in the way Adam was and overcoming sin through suffering.
When Jesus first appeared on earth, He came as the lowly suffering servant. When He explained leadership, He washed the feet of His disciples. Let’s look at this…
“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God,” (John 13:3)
It’s interesting that John started the story of the foot washing with the fact that Jesus knew that God had given all things to Him and that He was from God and going back to God. He understood the incredible humiliation involved in washing another’s feet and he surely felt that humiliation as the human that He was at that time. But He also clearly understood that He was Lord over all and that His Father loves and rules very differently than Man does. That God lifts up, instead of pressing down. He was able to see His life for who He was in God’s Kingdom, even though His body, soul, and mind were not experiencing that existence in this world, and so He was able to put aside all humiliation and suffering in order to powerfully teach and impact those in His charge. He counted this shame as nothing because He had this expanded, perfect view of Himself and reality. He knew, by faith, that God had made Him High Priest and King and so He operated in that role by loving, lifting up, and serving those God the Father showed Him, so that the Father’s Will could be made complete in their lives. He did all this while eschewing any earthly prestige or position. He had knowledge of His true position in eternity, and so as John shows us above, He was able to humble Himself of any such position to carry out the Will of the Father.
This is Part 6 in the series Bearing the Image and Likeness of God. To continue with this series, click on Pt 7. To use this as a growth tool to better understand your own calling, please read Pt 1, Pt 2, Pt 3, Pt 4 and Pt 5.
Photo credit: mawaite7815