Kim Gentes

Being Human, Like Jesus

...because you are made in God's image, worship makes you more truly human. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive.1

In this quote, NT Wright assigns our humanity to a solemn place in God's universe- reflecting His glory back to Him through worship. If we are indeed "made in God's image", then we are the "reflecting mirrors" of God's creation that can intelligently sing or say to Him the understandings of why He is worthy of praise and honor. As Wright says :

All creation worships God; human beings, through their chosen representatives, worship God because they have grasped an essential secret: they know why God ought to be praised, and why they want to praise him- because he has made all things.2

This is very important to understand, because to know how to think and live rightly must begin with a right understanding of who God is (which I began to look last week) and then who we are. To know who we are, we must know who God made us to be, and what it means to exist in His universe as a human being. God created us in His image- that is we were created with the explicit and unique purpose of reflecting His image here on earth. Ireneaus said:

"The glory of God is a human being fully alive."3

In a reversal view of the situation, this quote says simply that God is glorified as we are fully expressing the life He gave us. How do we express that life? Dan Wilt says that our humanity centers in the fact we are the "imago Dei" (the image of God). Because of this, any clear expression will be modeled after God's character, that is in the four ways in which God reveals himself as Creator, King, Trinity, and Savior4. Wilt says this means that our identities are mirrors of God's personality in the same way we are "imago Dei". We find our humanity expressed as sub-creators (creative beings), image bearers (reflecting the King's image to his creation), community builders (representative of God's divine community building in the Trinity) and salvific storytellers (telling the story of God's salvation through Jesus)5. We find a pattern for this true humanity not in self-reflection, but in our one perfect example- Jesus himself.

Ultimately, being human is believing and living as reflective agents of the kingdom, in the manner of Jesus. Going back to NT Wright's premise, we are reflective mirrors. We reflect God's glory to others on earth and we reflect the creation praise back to God. Our humanity is never meant to contain God's glory, but reflect it to others on earth. And our humanity was never built to ingest praise from earth that was meant for God.

What do I mean by our humanity having the ability to "contain God's glory"? Frankly, we aren't meant to "contain" it, we are meant to "reflect" it. We can't contain any expression of God's glory in ourselves without the container itself becoming corrupt. The expressions and gifts God has given you are meant to shine before creation, as a testimony to God. Whenever we keep God's creative, wonderful gifts locked up in our lives, we stop the process of our own healthy humanity. Dan Wilt explains something of this in relating the stories of several people who had (for various reasons) hidden their unique creative gifting away- a woman who could knit beautiful socks, an astrophysicist who thought his abilities were not creative, and more. Each of these people had hidden their passionate creativity away, but to their own detriment. God had meant those gifts to express His glory to others. As long as it remained trapped, unspoken, and hidden away, the person containing it was neither blessing others, nor operating as a "fully alive" agent of God's kingdom in their humanity. But when that part of God's glory is released- it frees the person to be fully alive, and it showers others with gifts from God.

But what about reflecting creation's praise back to God? And how is it possible for this to go wrong and one to ingest praise? Simply put- we must continue to reflect back to God praise from our lives, from those around us, and from His creation. When we stop doing this, we "clog" up our human shell with thanksgiving meant for God. When people honor us for things, we must give the honor to God, and point those people to Him directly. When we find satisfaction in accomplishment, we must give thanks to the One who is due acknowledgment. When we (and others) consider the works of Jesus and what he did for our salvation, we must bubble up with that genuine celebration of thanks to him. When we look out on the beauty of God's handiwork in creation, we need to turn to Him and say "what you have done is marvelous, God"! When we do not find our daily lives moving to direct thanks back to God we endanger our corruptible human shell by ingesting praise meant for God.

Jesus was a perfect reflection mirror in both respects for us. First, he reflected God's glory perfectly to the earth around him "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). Jesus reflected the glory of the Father perfectly to us. Second, as a man he reflected creation's thanksgiving and praise back to God "At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure" (Luke 10:21).

Jesus helped us see our humanity rightly when he gave us His prayer for our own use (and learning). In it we learn from the first two verses that clarify how Jesus engaged his humanity:

1. Being human means reflecting human and creation's praise back to God ("Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name"- Matthew 6:9).
2. Being human also means living in the flow of God's glory from Him to the earth around us ("Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" - Matthew 6:10).

1. N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 148.
2. Ibid, 145.
3. Irenaeus of Lyons as quoted by Dan Wilt, Rise of Worship Artisan (DanWilt.com, 2007), p 5
4. Wilt/Gentry (Podcast:Two Brothers On Righteousness), WorshipTraining.com
5. Dan Wilt, Essentials in Worship Theology (Franklin, TN: Dan Wilt, 2009), 28-34.

Being Human, Like Jesus (ThinkJump Journal #19 with Kim Gentes)