Let us make man in our image…and let them have dominion over…all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. (Gen. 1:26 KJV)
Image is everything. We are fixated with externals. From every magazine cover to every television program to every advertisement, we are bombarded with subliminal messages. They shout vociferously that our worth is measured by the currency of how we look, what we own, where we live, and what we wear or drive. The pressure of these subliminal messages drives many to despair over their incapability of measuring up to the standard.
Image meant everything to God as well, although not in the same way we’ve been brainwashed into thinking. The idea that the Creator fashioned you in his image is extremely telling. It is nothing less than divine intentionality. The God of heaven, whose image is so glorious that it defies description, intentionally and meticulously made you in his likeness, clothing you with imago Dei. Regardless of your ethnicity or appearance, everything about you screams imago Dei. You are royalty, and God delights in you. Royalty comes with the gift of regency, God having gifted you with both a calling and a purpose. He has called you to relationship, and he has entrusted to you the responsibility of stewarding his lesser creation.
You are no less than royalty. Your life’s calling and purpose is to glorify God through relationship and stewardship. You are who God made you, and he takes great delight in you.
Accept who God made you to be, and proudly reflect his image!
Theodore Griffin is a graduate of Houghton College and Asbury Theological Seminary and a doctoral student at Wesley Seminary. He is also lead pastor of Brown’s Chapel Wesleyan Church in Indiana.
© 2021 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version, public domain.
