Likeness Restoration

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. (John 5:19)

I am starting to see in this discourse by Jesus the outlines of the true reality as viewed by heaven but obscured nearly completely in our blindness produced by the deceptions and distortions of Satan. The longer I dwell on these words of Jesus the more clues begin to emerge about various aspects of how true reality fits together so perfectly and how the plan of salvation is designed to restore us to our proper relationship with God as far as possible.

As I pondered these words again this morning and prayed for insight and a right alignment of my own thinking and perceptions, this word like began to take on more significance. The next verse that was brought to my attention was a very similar reference that jolted me into realizing more clearly what Jesus' purpose was for coming to this earth in the first place.

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." (Genesis 1:26)

As our Creator, Jesus intended for humans to have a childlike resemblance to our original parents – the Godhead itself. As we were to live in close communication and intimate fellowship with our Father (and Mother, even though that may sound to many like a scandalous statement), we would naturally and automatically reflect the characteristics of God and would grow up to be more and more like Him in many ways. This was the original intent of heaven in creating this world and placing humans on it in the first place.

But as we know now, the enemy of God full of lies and insinuations about God's intentions and feelings towards us, infected the human race with the viral infection of sin and thus blinded us to the real truths about who God is and what He is really like and how He feels about us. Our hearts were suddenly filled with fear and dread even though there was no truth behind those feelings. Humans have ever since trusted in their confused feelings instigated by lies about God most of the time more than in the truth about Him that He has revealed, and the result is that humanity by in large has reflected the character of our adopted father Satan more and more as we refuse to let go of the lies about God inherited and implanted in our hearts.

God designed into humans a fundamental principle of reflection. We are created to reflect what we dwell on in our minds and hearts. Thus, when we choose to dwell on negative things and give those more credibility than truth-filled, positive things we find ourselves reaping constantly the fruit of such thinking and our fearful assumptions become reality in our experience. When that happens it appears to reinforce our opinion that we were right all along instead of becoming aware that our own choices to discount positive truths created the very atmosphere around our lives that caused us to experience even more negative experiences.

I am starting to see this more clearly in the lives of those around me as well as in my own life as I find myself dealing head-on with this internal problem in my new business. Because this is a people business more than a physical business dealing with direct hardware or building tangible things, I am starting to see the enormous power of how our lives are strongly affected by the choices we make of how to perceive reality. I know that I have struggled for many years myself to believe that things are not as negative as my feelings often lead me to believe. Now as I seek to find ways to help others to think beyond their dark broodings about imminent disaster and financial failure even while the opposite is easily within their reach, I am starting to see more clearly this principle of self-fulfilling experience based on what we choose to believe about God and about life.

Sin is in essence trying to live life apart from complete dependence on the only Source of life there is. Whenever I try to find another source of hope, of income, of provision, of worth, of love other than implicit dependence on God I am starting to worship a false god. As I have been learning for a number of years now, a god is simply anything or anyone that I look to to feel valuable and give me a sense of hope and positive feelings. Sin has caused all of us to turn to nearly anything else but God as a source of life and uplift for ourselves and the result has been the proliferation of addictions, many of which are not even recognized as such.

We are designed by God to be dependent creatures even though we often feel very confident that we can live life at least partially on our own. That is the nature of deception itself – to keep us believing that if we just had some extra help or power from outside that we could pull this thing off ourselves. But sin runs far deeper than just making external mistakes or committing acts of hostility or violence against others or even breaking a list of rules. Sin lies at the very core of our soul and causes everything we perceive to be distorted to some degree or another. Now, the only hope we have to be restored and salvaged from the ruinous effects that sin has caused in our thinking and perceptions is to trust the arrangement that the Godhead has implemented to rescue us from this pit of fear, pain and death.

For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh... (Romans 8:3 see also John 3:17)

I have observed far too many heated arguments over the true meaning of this term the likeness of sinful flesh. Members of my own family have often been at the center of this intense controversy over whether Jesus took our sinful fallen nature just like Adam had after he sinned or if Jesus simply had a nature weakened by the effects of sin but without the fatal flaws and blind spots inherent in humanity caused by Adam's fall. But one point that is seldom caught in these verses is that one of the very important reasons Jesus came to this earth was to take upon Himself the likeness of humanity itself in order to be able to have the credibility to show us what our original design and function was supposed to look like as human beings.

This all revolves around this issue of being created to be like someone else – like we sometimes are similar in many ways to our earthly parents. The laws of heredity and the many similarities caused by living in close fellowship with those around us while growing up all contribute powerfully to producing a generation of children that reflect very much the attitudes, behaviors and culture of the previous generation. Even physically children are predisposed to resemble their parents in many ways and this is simply a demonstration of the principles of reality created by God.

It is this very issue – the credibility that we give to someone based on how similar they are to us in so many ways and how much they have been immersed in our ways and our culture – it is for this very reason that God chose to send His Son to become a human and to grow up as one of us in order for us to be able to trust Him to make credible decisions when it came to the final day of judgment and the final fate of all will be revealed.

For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son. (John 5:22)

When we begin to grasp and appreciate the true meaning of what judgment is all about and even more importantly what it is not, then this passage begins to take on much more clarity. If our Judge had no experience living as a human in the midst of the experiences and temptations that we are forced to encounter in our lives, then we would consider the whole issue of Judgment as a totally unfair imposition, an arbitrary determination much like the kind of distorted 'justice' that is largely practiced here on this earth.

But Jesus is not a distant, disconnected, unaffected deity out there somewhere waiting to punish anyone who dares to deviate from His dictates and rules. And neither is God the Father like this in any way. For even though the Father did not take upon Himself the form of human flesh, He sent His clone so to speak, to participate in flesh and blood in order to elicit the credibility in our minds needed for humanity to believe that God really can relate to what we are going through on this earth.

He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. (John 5:27)

Notice that just two verses before this Jesus is referred to as the Son of God. In that context it is referring to the resurrection of the dead and in that role it involves the power inherent in Jesus as God to produce that kind of activity. But when it comes to having the credibility to make the determinations for humanity and all who are making eternal choices about their destiny, Jesus is referred to as the Son of Man. This is vitally important to believe because it lies at the very core of our willingness to believe in God and in His fairness and justice and mercy. If we don't really appreciate that Jesus entered into the very heart of our struggles as a human being and faced life in the weakened condition caused by the physical effects of sin over thousands of years, then we will find it very hard to respond to the invitations of Jesus to trust in His provision for our salvation and move outside our restricted perception of reality into the grand freedom of a life in Christ.

One of the main purposes that Jesus came to this earth was to demonstrate what it is like to live in a totally dependent way as a human reflecting the characteristics of a loving but invisible Parent. As God in heaven before He became human it would be impossible for Jesus to credibly convey to us how we were designed to live in this manner. But as a human, as a Son of Man, Jesus was able to demonstrate clearly that it really is possible, in fact vitally essential, for every human being to live in total distrust of their own perceptions of reality, their own natural tendencies to figure things out for themselves, their own natural desires to live life at least partially dependent on their own resources and to live in total dependence on God. (Prov. 3:5,6)

Even though Jesus was the only human being who had the very real ability to live life depending on His own power and resources and wisdom, He came to demonstrate as a human being weakened by 4,000 years of the effects of sin on the human body and mind how we can also live just like He did, in total distrust of our own wisdom and abilities and in total childlike dependence on a wise, loving, caring Father who is ready to provide and protect and guide in every situation and in every moment.

Because Jesus lived such a life as a human being under the conditions that He did, He is uniquely qualified to be the only being in the entire universe that can be truly trusted to be the final Judge of every being that has been created. In the final Judgment there will be no question left about the fairness or validity of what is fully exposed in the lives and hearts of every being. But this will happen, not because God will impose or force His determinations on anyone but because it will be fully revealed in very surprising ways that He has done everything in total selfless love and that Jesus indeed lived a life of complete submission and deference to His Father just as He invites us to follow in His example.

Our only safety and hope is in following the perfect example of Jesus in His demonstration of living in total dependence on a power and in relationship with a Person outside of Himself with total submission in every moment to that outside authority. As we learn to better perceive what God is showing us, just like Jesus spoke of here in these verses of His experience, we too will begin to enjoy the kind of life that will reflect the characteristics of our true Father in heaven instead of the father of lies that we all started out with. Our only hope is to allow our Redeemer to dwell in us and to submit all of our preferences and desires and fears and pain to the One who came to salvage all who will be willing to be transformed back into His likeness.