Christ the perfect image

More than once the New Testament tells us that Christ Jesus is “the image of God”. While humans at the beginning were created “in the image of God”, Jesus is said to be the image of God. He reflects God’s reality perfectly because not only was he a holy man, and like God in his holiness, but he was the “I am” in person – God himself come among us in human form. As such, we may ask how he fulfilled the role that we humans should fulfil as being God’s image in the world. He reflected God’s nature so perfectly that he said, “Whoever sees me, sees him who sent me” (John 12.45), and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14.9). Jesus shows us what God is like.

What was Jesus’ purpose? He told us plainly: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (John 6.38). Using figurative language he said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4.34). He did this so well that he could testify, “I love the Father” (John 14.31), and “I do always what is pleasing to him” ( i.e. pleasing to the Father, John 8.29).  Jesus was lovingly totally obedient to the will of God, his Father. That is the very definition of holiness.

But Jesus fleshed out what that will of his Father involved, particularly in two main services that he rendered to humankind.

The first, he stated to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who was judging him: “For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth” (John 18.37). In another passage, he refers to himself as “a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God” (John 8.40). Elsewhere he affirms, “What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me” (John 12.50). It is because of these affirmations that I have been insisting that we may know truth to answer our essential questions, since Jesus brought us truth from God. We need truth and God sent it to us through Jesus.

The second vital service, that Jesus was sent by God the Father to accomplish for us, is formulated in complementary ways by Jesus: “The Son of Man [Jesus himself] came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19.10). This was the supreme role that Jesus was sent to fulfil: we were lost, and he came to save us. How he did this deserves a fuller elaboration than I can give this time, but Jesus himself made it clear when he said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10.45). Jesus’ mission was to “give his life”; he repeats this when having just said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”, he adds: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life… I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10.11, 17-18). 

In other words, Jesus came from the Father into the world seeking to save the lost, and in order to do so, he was to give his life as a ransom. This is the deep meaning of Jesus’ death, which I hope to develop in subsequent blog posts. It is of the very essence of Jesus’ divine mission of salvation. And it was vitally necessary in order for us to find true life, to find God, and to find God’s forgiveness. 

Jesus could pray to his Father at the end of his life: “I have glorified you on the earth, having finished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17.4). Mission accomplished!

Clive Every-Clayton