RE-CREATED MAN
Romans
8:3-4
For what the law was powerless to do in
that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in
the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And
so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of
the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful
nature but according to the Spirit.
But the riddle of human nature was still unsolved. With
the loss of the God-like nature God had given him, man had forfeited the
destiny of his being, which was to be like God. In short, man had ceased to be
man. He must live without the ability to live. Herein lies the paradox of human
nature and the source of all our woe. Since that day, the sons of Adam in their
pride have striven to recover the divine image by their own efforts. The more
serious and devoted their attempt to regain the lost image and the more proud
and convincing their apparent success the greater their contradiction to God.
Their misshapen form, modeled after the god they have invented for themselves,
grows more and more like the image of Satan, though they are unaware of it. The
divine image, which God in his grace had given to man, is lost forever on this
earth.
But God does not neglect his lost creature. He plans to
re-create his image in man, to recover his first delight in his handiwork. He
is seeking in it his own image so that he may love it. But there is only one
way to achieve this purpose and that is for God, out of sheer mercy, to assume
the image and form of fallen man. As man can no longer be like the image of
God, God must become like the image of man. But this restoration of the divine
image concerns not just a part, but the whole of human nature. It is not enough
for man simply to recover right ideas about God, or to obey his will in the
isolated actions of his life. No, man must be re-fashioned as a living whole in
the image of God. His whole form, body, soul and spirit, must once more bear
that image on earth. Such is God’s purpose and destiny for man.
The
Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pg. 338.
