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No Comments The Image of God
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
He created us and then God told us to be fruitful and create new life from our bodies. When we have a child, we are creating a life in the image of God. God loved his whole creation and declared it (including us) to be good.
With the fall of Adam and Eve, we ceased to be good. But we didn’t cease to be loved. God wanted us to be reborn into that innocent state that was good. Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and we should treat it as so. We should strive to keep it as clean and pure as possible with the Holy Spirit’s help. We are spirit beings but we still retain our bodies. In the resurrection, we will be given new bodies. We won’t be male or female or have any earthly allegiance such as race. We will have returned to that innocent perfection, the image of Jesus Christ.
Our bodies are many times marred and destroyed by the things that cause us to die. Those things can’t be helped but I believe if at all possible we should respect the body that God gave us when we are buried. Cremation is becoming fashionable and the most economical option for burial. I personally don’t believe it’s what God would prefer. To fry a person to ashes is disrespectful. I can’t imagine having my treasured wife’s body destroyed in such a way.
Reverence for a person’s body seems to be a constant theme in scripture. When Jesus died, he had been beaten beyond recognition, but at the same time, scripture tells us that none of his bones would be broken. God poured out His wrath on Christ just like the men who beat him so mercilessly but Jesus was the very image of God and I don’t believe that God wanted to have his only begotten son’s bones broken.
A rich man asked for the body of our Lord to give him a proper, respectful burial. This man loved Christ and didn’t want his body disrespected; he didn’t want the body of Jesus treated in the pagan tradition. I don’t believe God wanted that either.
Amos 2: 1 Thus saith the Lord; For three transgression of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime.
Edom was a descendant of Esau. Amongst the sins of Moab was the obliteration and cremation of the body of Edom’s king. I don’t believe God enjoys bodies created in His image to be destroyed by the hand of man.
Likewise, when we abort a child in the womb, we are crushing the head and pulling the limbs from a body that was created by the design of God himself.
I reiterate, all mankind is made in the image of God or should we say, created in a fashion to give God pleasure. Whatever destroys the body causes anguish for the Holy Spirit and anger in the heart of God. In life and death, we should respect the bodies whose image we were made in.
I realize that God is a spirit and we worship Him in spirit but everything God made is for His pleasure and like the Garden of Eden we should be maintaining it for His pleasure.