YOU WERE MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE – DON’T SPOIL IT!

Why do you suppose man was created in God’s image?

Was it so man could go ahead and do whatever he wants to do?

I was amazed to hear the following line in a sermon in the new Christian movie, Time Changer: “Jesus will not save anyone he cannot command.” That is a very interesting statement I had never heard before. Maybe it was because I never went to a seminary. It is the theme of my whole book!

That underlined sentence combines God’s selection process and the free will of a select group of people who will be able to have beautiful homes in the New Jerusalem.(Rev. 21:16) They are the people who will trust God and try hard to follow his orders.

There seems to be a flaw in the statement in the movie because Christ repeatedly says God is the one who selects, so it should say: “God will not save anyone he cannot command.” However, it could be argued that Christ also says, “I and my father are one.” (John 10:30)

The concept that God saves only those who will follow His commands reconciles two conflicting ideas that have seemed diametrically opposed and have created major schisms in the church:

1. Jesus said: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice,

and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

(Rev. 3:20) Also: And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him

take the water of life freely.” (Rev. 22:17)

2. But the Apostle Paul said: “He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of

the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”

(Eph. 1:4)

Please read John 6:37-40, the Bread of Life section, where both ideas appear clearly. The Father gives the believers to Jesus, and he keeps, or does not lose, them. So everyone who “sees” and “believes” in Christ will be saved.

What is the problem? Christ himself says that anyone can, by exercising his free will, choose to come to him and will be accepted – yet God chose only the ones He would give to Christ before time began! How can that be? Do men choose, or does God choose? The answer is both. I will try to explain why this makes sense to me.

A Layman’s Version of the Creation Story. In the beginning God created all things and saw that they were good. He wants everything and everyone to be good! Then he said to Jesus, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Gen. 1:26, 27) They were created to be good, like He is!

Then He told them: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Gen. 2:17) He told Adam and Eve to enjoy the other pleasures in the garden, but leave the fruit of that tree alone – or they would die, like animals.

He created us to be good, righteous, holy, like he was, but by giving us free will God chose to never control our behavior. Otherwise we would be like animals or puppets and there would be no meaning to good or evil because everything designed and controlled by God would simply do what it was created to do – which God would see as good..

He built the beautiful Garden of Eden to be a paradise on this earth for us. We were to tend, control, and develop it into a community of human beings who lived in peace and prosperity and loved one another with holy love.

He gave us hungers that would make us able to survive and multiply. The hungers were very motivational and their satisfaction is always pleasurable, but he wanted us to use them as he intended, which are good ways that do not hurt anyone. And, to repeat, God chose not to control our behavior – we have to use our own will power to keep from using out urges incorrectly.

He knew that love for one another and good behavior by everyone are absolutely required if we are to live forever in such a paradise. But, by giving us unlimited free choice, he knew that we might choose to do things that would be wrong, evil, to satisfy our hungers; and that would make such a paradise impossible. We would not understand the moral absolutes for good behavior, so he would have to tell us what they were and try to persuade us to follow those rules.

If we had obeyed him perfectly in regard to right conduct we would all be doing only good, righteous things. Then we could all live forever as God’s children on earth. But this could only happen if every one of us would make a habit of doing what our Creator wants us to do – like animals and birds. Then we would never even know what evil was! And life would be so pleasant that evil would never be seen as an option.

He told his new human beings that they could not eat of a tree in the garden that he named the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” If they disobeyed him by eating its fruit, they would find out that there was an evil option that they could choose and they could enjoy the fruit of their disobedience, which would taste very good at first. This would actually ruin everything God had designed for them; so letting them live forever on the earth was out of the question if they tasted that fruit! They would have to die like animals. The tree symbolized the necessity of obedience to God if one wants to live forever. That principle is still in effect today. God’s law has never been revoked! (Rev. 22:14)

Adam ate the forbidden fruit. He chose to disobey God and by doing so he and his descendants never learned how to be good and enjoy all its blessings, which would have even included eternal life in flesh and blood on the earth, instead of in heaven.

Adam blamed Eve, and she blamed Satan, but they were both personally responsible for their disobedience. Satan did not force them to follow his deceitful suggestion to distrust God, disobey Him, and believe that man could do everything without God’s guidance. But Adam would probably have obeyed God if the serpent had not tempted Eve. The temptation was that they could be like God, which is also the goal of their tempter. The irony is that God actually created them to be like Him except for his omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence, which only God can have or we would really have turmoil!

After Adam’s breach of conduct, it was impossible for all mankind to keep living on earth, so God put man out of reach of the “tree of life” that was in the Garden. God later etched his moral directives (commandments) into stone tablets so at least some human beings would obey him and could someday be with him in a new paradise in heaven instead of on earth.

Men and women would all die on earth, but spirits can never die, so those who would obey him would live eternally with him and those who refused to obey him would have to live eternally in places like the Lake of Fire with the evil spirits who tempted them to disobey God.

But Satan, with the help of all his deceiving principalities and powers on earth and in the air, kept winning the battle against God for the souls of men up till the time of Christ, because Satan is the “Prince of this World” and the “Power of the air” (and now of the air waves!).

Since God had created man in his own image, with free will – freedom of choice – Adam and all his descendants have chosen to disobey one or more of God’s rules of behavior. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23) People are all subject to the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil; and Adam disbelieved God and would not do what God told him, so his descendants never had a chance to find out that Adam, and they, would have been extremely happy if they had believed God! Most people still do not understand that fact, and they choose to believe that a little sin, instead of morality, is the way to happiness.

God sent Christ to die an excruciating death on the cross to salvage (save) from sin’s death penalty anyone and everyone who would believe Jesus and obey him. Believers would receive the Holy Spirit to enable them to become righteous, and would worship the holy God and Jesus who had such great love for them. So Jesus would defeat the power of Satan in anyone who desires to follow Him and to be good like God created him or her to be.

There are some people – no matter how sinful they have been in their life – who still feel a hunger to be moral, which God’s commandments require. However, they have trouble doing it, which the Apostle Paul described in Romans Seven. Human nature and the devil constantly drag them down. The conscience God originally gave them made everyone want to be good, but the devil has led most of them to permanently ignore their conscience. Christ gives us his Holy Spirit to fill that gap.

All have sinned and deserve no more special treatment than anyone else, but there are some that Christ calls bless-ed: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” (Matt. 5:6) They want to be good people. They want to do the right things, instead of the wrong things. They want to be moral instead of immoral, which is what God’s commandments are all about. They could be the worst criminals, but they really desire to be good and cannot seem to do it. They do not realize that all they have to do is to believe Jesus and keep God’s commandments, which Jesus empowers them to do.

Those who obey God are the only people that Revelation says will go to heaven when they die: “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” (Rev. 22:14) They are the ones God is calling out for his name from around the world. They are the ones who choose to believe that Christ is the Son of God, and they also want to turn from their wicked ways (2 Chron. 7:14) and do what God and Jesus tells them to do.

So (Eureka!): those are the people whom God, in his foreknowledge, “has chosen” and “has given” to Jesus (John 6:31-40) “before the foundation of the world.” (Eph. 1:4) In other words, God has chosen every person who chooses to be righteous! That is simply another way of saying that Jesus will save only the people he can command. They will make him Lord of their lives instead of just paying him lip service,

To repeat: God chooses only the people who will try to do what He wants them to do. Many others go through the motions of accepting Christ, but do not really put his righteousness, right conduct, into their hearts – and they are not saved. They only think they are. Judas was an example. Christ says: “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”(Matt. 7:23)

As a free gift, Christ gives his righteousness to the chosen ones his Father gave him. In other words, by sending them the Holy Spirit, Jesus gives them his power to resist Satan, to control their bodies, and to learn to do everything that pleases the heavenly father, obeying “every jot and tittle” of his Law. “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” (Matt. 5:18) Eventually the saved ones will accomplish what they were created for! And God, who can only accept righteous people in heaven, will finally have them! Marvel of all marvels!

The saved ones will grow toward holiness, to do what God commanded: “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16; Lev. 11:44, 45; 19:2; 20:7) Their number is relatively small, “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matt. 7:14). Jesus is the gate, but the believers still have to walk in the way making their own decisions. Jesus does not do this for them, or free will would be a farce.

God will know what is in the heart of people who are trying to obey His commandments to become moral and righteous like he is, and He will complete the process for them by giving them incorruptible bodies. They will be perfect in every way (including physically) and will enjoy untold blessings and happiness forever after! They will have matured to the image of God for which purpose they were created! And they did it by their own free will with the specific help of the Lord.

The most awe-inspiring thing about this is that one of those people can be you –if you want to be a good person in God’s eyes. Here is a way to do it: (1) Prayerfully ask Jesus to come into your heart to stay, as he says he wants to do. (Rev. 3:20) (2) Ask him sincerely to forgive you for all the times you have done what the Bible says should not be done. (3) Say that you want to do the best you can with His help to become the kind of good person Jesus wants you to be so you can be with him forever like he promises. (John 3:16) Thank you Lord! Thank you!

What father could refuse a request like that? God will accept you. You will really be started on your new life (or a revived life if you have done something like this before); and Christ will be your everyday helper to guide you and see that you get to heaven. Wow! Would you like that? Then just do it! Praise the Lord!

This Sermon is one of thirty-seven non-profit Sermonettes I wrote in a book of 57 pages.

Finished July 26, 2003 Book printing cost: $6.10 Shipping and handling extra

Contributions appreciated

God bless you!

Richard H. Strand, Ed.D.

Phone 626-287-5942