CHRIST, OUR IMAGE OF GOD
Robert L. Johnson
It appears that God's judgment will be contingent on something besides a legal observance. A person's knowledge or his lack of knowledge may affect the degree of his responsibility. It is clearly another matter with those who profess to have the Spirit or mind of Christ, for "Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him" (Rom. 8:9). Many people who bear the name of Christ do not reflect his Spirit. As the late Prof. Charles Roberson of Abilene Christian University used to say, "The sins of the disposition will send one to hell just as fast as sins of the flesh." Paul lists for us the virtues which he calls the fruit of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22). He adds "against such there is no law." The presence of God's Spirit in any man can only be verified by the results.
If God's wrath is meted out on the basis of legal observance, then Jesus wasted his time in presenting the Judgment Scene in Mt. 25. There was of course the law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," which the "good guys" might have been observing when they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, and clothed the naked. But it doesn't appear that they were engaged in law-keeping in order to gain points. Their actions seem rather to have emanated from a spirit of love and compassion. As Jesus said, "The good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good" (Lk. 6:45).
When the image of God that begins to take shape in our minds is still faint, it can be brought into better focus as we look at Jesus, who said, "He that hath seen me has seen the Father." As we look at Jesus we sec that he was concerned with all kinds of sin, but especially with pride, bigotry, smugness, prejudice, and intolerance. These are sins most everybody denounces but nobody confesses. We assume that these are the most dangerous sins since Jesus denounced them the most. The Lord takes special aim at the Pharisees who tried to impress others with their legalistic correctness. They were self-righteous and intolerant toward those who differed with them.
Jesus was critical of those who called attention to their own righteousness, and he was impatient with those who were arrogant and had a censorious spirit. He tells us in Lk. 6:37, "Judge not and you will not be judged; condemn not and you will not be condemned," and in Lk. 6:41, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not see the log that is in your own eye?" We all have not only specks and splinters but objects of greater magnitude. However, as George Buttrick says, "A proper humility will allow God to determine which arc the tares and which the wheat."
Jesus is not of course saying that we are to be blind to the sins of our age. We are taught in other places in the Bible, such as 2 Thess. 3:14-15 and 1 Cor 5:11, that we are to admonish one another regarding sin. But we are not blameless. It is God's prerogative to forgive and not ours to establish the limits of His grace.
In constructing an image of God we are at least to see that He is a God who deals fairly and righteously with us. And He expects His will to be done. He holds people responsible according to their knowledge, and His judgment is real. He is gracious and merciful and abounds in steadfast love. He is like a Father. Jesus his Son shows us the Father more clearly than any conceptual knowledge that we can project. As Spirit, God is not far from any one of us, for we have our being in Him. For us to have the Spirit of the Son is a requisite of the spiritual life. God is love and if a man loves God he must love his brother also.
God has not left us without witness nor has he given us an uncertain course to follow, but the best that men have ever done is only an approximation to the ideal which ought to characterize the followers of Christ.
Charles Roberson was also fond of saying, "What a man thinks of God will determine his conduct." Or to put another way, "What image a person has of God will be the image he projects to his contemporaries." But if that image is distorted through faulty interpretation, or if one is affirming a position only because it is affirmed by someone else, then one is compounding the error and may be doing irreparable damage to himself and to the cause of Christ.
As Sabatier wrote, "The habit we have gotten into of putting all the truth on our side and all error on the side of others not only falsifies the judgment, but it sours the heart and poisons piety. It dries up the feeling of fraternity and is the perpetual sign of individual and collective vanity."
Our attempts to define Deity, except as seen in Christ, will usually betray the limitation of our mind. We are finite minds reaching out for a Reality that extends infinitely beyond us. But still we accept Paul's word, "He is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:27-28).
In a volume of prayers Momay Williams gives us these words, "0 God, who has' made man in thine own likeness ... teach us the unity of our family, and the breadth of thy love ... enable us ... to enter into the fellowship of the whole human family; and forbid that from pride or hardness of heart, we should despise or neglect any for whom Christ died or injure any in whom he lives ..."
Finally, the words of R. W. Church a century ago find a ready response in my heart:
There is so much inevitable ignorance in our judgments now, so much mistake, so much exaggeration in what we praise and in what we condemn; so much good of which we know and imagine nothing; such strength of virtue which we never suspect, never give men credit for, such depths of sin which perhaps here are never found out. Who can doubt what awful discrepancies will, in many cases, appear between God's judgment and ours, beyond the veil?
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known" (1 Cor. 13:12). —2208 W. Granite, Siloam Springs, AR 72761