imago dei

This morning's session was "The Biblical Basis of Missions." Part of going to Kenya and telling people this of course begs the question of why. Why do we "do" missions? Is it just a "Christian" thing to do? A shiny little badge to add to the religious uniform we don?

Missions has everything to do with the image of God, which, surprisingly, begins with us. There is a glorious notion called imago dei--the image of God in us. In Genesis, God chooses to make man and woman in His own image, His own likeness. We reflect the Creator, our God, and missions is about reflecting this image into a broken and sinful world. The slight issue here is that we ourselves are inept mirrors, cracked and shattered as we are by our own sin. We don't properly reflect a perfect and wonderful God as we should. That is why the gospel hinges on the Jesus, who is the radiance of God the Father and the exact representation of Him (Hebrews). Jesus is the flawless image of God, and He helps transforms us back into that image.

When Michelangelo was sculpting David, he said it wasn't a matter of shaping David out of the marble. He said David was actually already in the marble, he just had to take away everything else.

God isn't working to shape us anew. We are already there, He just has to chisel away at the sin nature in the human heart to get the true self. That is why missions begins with us--Christians striving to shed the sin that so easily entangles and to reflect our Heavenly Father more clearly and more brightly to a world that needs the gospel of Jesus, the perfect image of God.

A relationship with God means becoming the image of Him that He created specifically and particularly in you. Missions is about setting up of the image of God where are few or none, and imaging Him in those places with what He has given you. That's why I love Kenya. Not because I enjoy eating rice and potatoes multiple times a day, or because I love being in the unbearable African heat, or because I want to add as many Kenya badges to my Christian uniform or whatever, but because I have experienced the work of God to make His image radiate more powerfully in myself in Kenya, and to do so in the hearts of others. And His faithfulness in wanting to do that in me, a fallible human, and the love behind it, humbles me nearly beyond belief.