In the Ancient Church,
Easter was thought of as a Season of Fifty Days rather than just a day.
"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."1John:3:1-3
For Centuries many
philosophers, theologians, thinkers of every sort, and even common people have
pondered what it means to be human. What is being fully human?
Many have rightly
seen that humans beings are more than just highly "evolved"
animals, that there is something truly unique about us which sets us apart from
the other life forms which inhabit this world.
The Holy Scriptures
endorses this special place which humanity has in the economy of life upon the
Earth, that we are no random accident of a chaotic cosmos.
There is truly intent and
purposes for and in our existence and our lives as brief as they may be compared
to the eons of the creation around us. Our place here means something and we
are ever searching for the answer to who? what we are? and why we are?.
This tell us that we
being in the "image and likeness" of God is part of being
human. God, however, made humanity out of the resident
materials of the Earth, not composed of spirit, demonstrating that
human beings have a definite point of beginning and though in God's "image
and likeness" we are not God but created beings
in need of their Creator to give us life and to "form us" into
his "image and likeness"
"Then the
Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Gen:
2:7
This indicates to us,
that for us, each and all of us, that for humanity to be" fully
human" as God intends, means that we are to be in his "image and
likeness" .
Eden
This declaration of
intent to make humanity into his "image and Likeness" was
given even before humanity was even formed, telling us that it issues out of
God's own eternal purpose which he inaugurated even before the
cosmos was spoken into being, that is "in the beginning" which
we would comprehend as eternity past.
God places
humanities' first parents within the confines of the Garden of Eden
with all provisions met. This is where the Creator God intended humanity
to be in his "image and likeness”, that is, to be "fully
human". God himself was there present and accessible to give them
every advantage in the life which he had decreed for them and all humanity.
The Scripture account
in Gen: 2:8-26 describes the Garden as well watered and filled
with every good thing, a setting in which there was abundance and peace
and beauty. In this setting of rest and repose God brought forth Eve
out of the first man Adam and presented her as his wife who shared in the
very "image and likeness" of God with Adam.
Together they were to
"dress and keep the garden" which means that their lives
where to be a restful enjoyable responsible stewardship as opposed to
arduous difficult task of survival.
This is the environment
and condition, that of rest and reposes, which truly allows humanity to be
"fully human", to be in the "image and
likeness of God”.
This is what God had always
intended to be the experience and the arena for the living out being "fully
human" for humanity.
In God's Image
From the beginning of
recorded human history and the creation epic found in Genesis we find the
very Creator God actually speaking of his own divine purpose for
creating humanity.
"Then God
said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule
over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all
the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the
ground.” So God created mankind in his own image,in the image of God he
created them;male and female he created them." Gen: 1:26-27
It has been
understood that being in the "image and likeness" of God is
more than "shape or form" but speaks to us of
capacity, and tells us that God himself has in-stamped his own
characteristics and attributes upon and within humanity, both male and female.
It also is a declaration of God's divine intent and purpose for creating
us.
Yet even with all the
advantages given, by God's graciousness, to our first parents, who in truth,
represented all of what we might think of as ideal humanity,
failed, that is , they chose not to be "fully human". Gen:
3:15
Adam, the progenitor
of humanity, the best of all of humanity, who, even having access to the
very God who created all things and having no physical or mental
impairments chose wrongly and reached for the "Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil" allowing sin to
enter into the human experience and distorting the "image and likeness"
of God in which they were created, they now were less than being "fully
human". Sin kept they and all humanity from being fully human.
This choice of our first
parents is sometimes called the "Felix Lapsum" which means
"the Happy Fall" or can be rendered the "Fortunate
Fall".
This, "Felix
Lapsum" resulted in all humanity, in the persons of
our first parents, removal from the Garden and has placed us in a condition to
build our lives with a distorted "image and likeness" of our
Creator. Humanity would have to struggle, there would be no leisurely "dressing
and keeping the Garden" , rather now , it would be by the
"sweet of the brow" and "work the soil"
a midst "thorns and thistles" .
Felix Lapsum
The Apostle St.
Paul address the result of Adam's choice and the ensuing "fall"
of humanity in his Epistle to the Roman Christians.
"Therefore,
just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in
this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
To be sure, sin
was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against
anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the
time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking
a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come." Rm:
5:12-14
What St. Paul is
articulating is this; if Adam, who was created personally by God's own hand and
had complete access to the Creator, had been given full disclosure of all that
he needed to know, and was the absolute best of humanity could not make
the right choice, how can any who come after do any
better? The answer is; we cannot, and have not done better then Adam. We
all have sinned as St. Paul wrote "all have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God".
All human history proves and justifies the judgment of God to cosign all of us under the choice of Adam. How then, can we look at this situation as the "Felix Lapsum" the "Happy Fall”? and that even in the "fall" God's overarching providence is working and in full control so that whatever resulted God has and provision for redemption and all of our eternal best good.
Viewing the "fall"
as a happy event, would deify human logic which would see only the ruin
and hardship. But this view of only ruin and hardship carries with it and
unspoken and unrecognized assumption that God had a "law"
to contend with over which he has no power, and that God had to perform
some "legal maneuvering" to circumvent and to satisfy this
"law", that God is "reactionary" to the our
condition making the Cross of Jesus only contingent reaction to the "fall" of
humanity. and meant to accomplish some legal requirement.
But the Cross of Jesus is
only the historical outworking of what has eternally been true, that God will
save us and forgive us. The Cross shows us that God would love us even to his
own death through the person of his own Son Jesus Christ. God is declaring that
he loves us more than he loves himself. God loves us to death. The Cross is not
directed toward God, but toward humanity.
This is why St.
John wrote in the Book of Revelation, using the cultural axiom "from
the foundation of the world", calls Jesus the "lamb slain
from the foundation of the world" which meant, in that culture
and that time, as far back as we go into history, or in this case
eternity, God had forgiveness towards and for us all that we might be restored
to his "image and likeness" making us through Jesus "fully
human".
If we view God as a
loving God who wants us to share in his "image and likeness"
for eternity, the "felix lapsum" is, in
truth, seen for our good, for it proves for all time and eternity that we cannot
save ourselves, that we need someone to save us, to do what none of us could
do, not even Adam who represented the best of us. This means that we all would
have done what Adam did and we still continue to do.
This view understands that
our God would have provisions for our atonement and restoration and salvation.
God himself would do it for us, what none of us could ever do.
God would accomplish our salvation for us, for all humanity.
This then, make it truly a "happy fall" for each and all who
will but freely receive it, so that we might be "fully human"
as God intended.
Thru Jesus
St. Paul explains this
in Romans, that it is through Jesus and his perfect obedience
and righteousness that restoration and life is accomplished for all,
just as, in Adam sin and alienation and death came to all.
Consequently, just as one
trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act
resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the
disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the
obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
The law was
brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace
increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace
might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ
our Lord." (15-21)
In Jesus God has
restored the "image and Likeness" of himself to us,
God has made us human again, which means to be the bearers of his "image
and likeness. Sin had distorted the "image and likeness " of
God in humanity. God in Jesus has restored it back to his original intent, back
to the condition of Eden.
Sin and our
misconceptions about God keeps us from being "fully Human" .
Jesus the Image of God
God, through his Son,
the second person of the Holy Trinity, has come in the person of Jesus
Christ and accomplished for all humanity what none of us
could have accomplished.
Jesus, in the incarnation,
that is "God in the Flesh”, became one of us, that is human, but
without any distortion to the "image and likeness"
of God. Jesus was and is the human which God
wants all of us to be, that we each and all should perfectly
be expressing his glory and holiness bearing his "image and likeness”.
Jesus is and especially in the Resurrection, what it means to be fully human.
"The Son is
the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." Col:
1:15
Jesus was and
is the perfect expression of Who God is and his glory.
"The god of
this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the
light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God" 2Cor:4:4
Sharing Jesus' Sonship
Through the message
of the Gospel, we come to believe and accept Jesus' saving work for each
and all us, as St. Paul wrote "the Gospel is the power unto
salvation". We enter into all that Jesus has accomplished on our
behalf, we see "the glory of Christ, who is the image of God”.
When we see the truth that
Jesus is the very Son of God, then we are transformed becoming more like
Jesus, that is, in our lives the "image and likeness" of
God grows, which we all were intended to have.
This is what the ancient
Church called "Deification" it means, becoming
conformed to the image of Christ as St. Paul called on us to do, to become
the humans being we all were meant to be from
the beginning.
"For those
God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that
he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters." Rom:
8:29
Jesus has brought us
into his very Sonship and has assigned us to share all that is his except
his deity.
"In bringing
many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through
whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect
through what he suffered" Heb:2:10
As we focus on Jesus,
we grow up into him, becoming like him in his perfect expression of the
"image and likeness" of God.
"Until
we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and
become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." Eph:
4:13
Jesus looks upon us
as his true brethren who with him bear the "image and likeness" of
God.
"Both the one
who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So
Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters." Heb: 2:11
Finally, Fully
Human
Jesus has taken on
our very humanity and joined us to himself and he to us. He lived the life
we live but only without sin and always representing the perfect "image
and likeness" of the Great God in himself never distorting that
image at any time in any way in life, death and resurrection.
Though being fully God
Jesus condescended to our lowly estate and joined us to him and in so
doing elevated our humanity.
"Jesus is unique in
that only he is, and will forever be, Fully God and Fully Human we will only be
Children of God; fully human"
Jesus even joined us in
death, so that we might join him in life through the resurrection which in
truth only shows us what has been eternally true; that Jesus is the Son of
God.
That in his resurrection we
too might share in his glorified humanity. St. Paul calls this the "power
of his resurrection”, that in the resurrection we become truly "fully
human" as God had purposed from before the dawn of creation.
That when we enter
Eternity through the resurrection, we are then "fully human" from
which the flesh has thus far prevented us for experiencing to its fullest. What
this means is this, we are not even yet, this side of
Eternity, "fully human”. This will occur at the coming of our Lord
when we will be transformed into the glorified state that our Lord Jesus Christ
is even now clothed in.
The aged Apostle St.
John on the Island of Patmos encounters the Glorified Jesus, seeing him as
he is in his glorified humanity that he came to share with us all.
"I turned
around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven
golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man,
dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his
chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes
were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his
voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven
stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face
was like the sun shining in all its brilliance". Rev: 1:12-16
What Jesus now
is, is what humanity was always meant to be. Jesus shares with us his
Sonship and as his brethren we will share also in his glorified humanity.
St. John wrote of this a
few years prior to his encounter with the Gloried Jesus.
"See what
great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of
God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it
did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we
will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we
shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."1Jhn:3:1-3
St. John is telling us, that at our entrance into Eternity we will finally be "Fully Human" as God has always meant us to be. In the perfect expression of the very "image and likeness" of God. This is what it means to be "Fully Human" as our Lord Jesus is.
The Easter Season is about
us joining Jesus in being "fully human" all through his glorious
resurrection.
Benediction: May we each and all
ever grow in Jesus that we might be , as he is, "fully human"
today, tomorrow and forevermore Amen.
Rev. Todd Crouch, Pastor
Topinabee Community Church
Topinabee Michigan
If You Would Like to Know More About or to Support the Ministry of Topinabee Community Church You Can go to Our Web Site.
https://topinabeechurch.org/index.html
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“If Its Not About Jesus, Its Not About Anything!”
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