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Kingdom Living Image Bearers of God

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John Piper once wrote “Christian living is supernatural or it is nothing.” I must confess that, I agree wholeheartedly. When I look at the man that Jesus Christ was and read the scriptures in the bible that detail His life, His ministry and all that He has freely given to us as His beloved, who could arrive at any other conclusion?

What does it mean to say that the Christian life is supernatural? Is it only relating to Gods existence or His nature? Does it refer only to our spiritual being having no connection to our physical and mental existence or the natural world in which we live?

As Christians, we should dig into the truth of what it means to have the Spirit of God alive in us. Exploring the possibilities of what it is to be called “sons of God”. I want to ponder and experience living a life that espouses not only living in a natural world that we understand through reason, logic, science and our senses, but also exploring what the scriptures demonstrate and speak of that infuses the supernatural into the natural and the spiritual into the physical. As we search the scriptures we will find the truth that God has created us in His image and we simultaneously live a life that is natural and supernatural, temporal and eternal and physical and spiritual. To understand what it means to live a supernatural life, we must start at the beginning. We have to understand what it is in fact that makes us supernatural beings that live a life that is not summed up merely by mental and biological functions. There is a part of us in fact that is eternal and has its origins in the heart of God.

To understand this, we have to go back to the origin as it is recorded in the Bible. The account of Genesis, is where mankind is taken from the supernaturally exclusive position in the heart and mind of God and breathed into a natural, physical existence.

Genesis 1:26-27 - NKJV

26  Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over  [a] all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”  27  So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Almost every Christian is familiar with the previous scriptures. After all, it is the genesis of mankind we are talking about and for all intents and purposes it is a large part of where our religious doctrines have their foundations. I wonder though, how often Christians think on these scriptures and ask what that implies? The simple fact that we are made in the image of God (in His likeness or ashioned after His personhood) should awake an arousing curiosity in our minds.

This is only the foundations of our existence but even in our limited understanding of the magnitude of God’s existence in its most basic sense of understanding should as Christians strike awe into our minds on the realm of possibilities that truth alone offers to us.

Despite this, it amazes me that there are so many people who are opposed to the idea that we are the creative handiwork of an omniscient God.

When you look at just the physical characteristics of our makeup, it is mind boggling to consider the sheer magnitude of genetics and the intelligent organization and fabrication of our physical being based on these singular things. Our entire body is made up from unique pairings of nucleotide bases. As humans we have 3 billion of these base pairs, which reside in the 23 pairs of chromosomes within the nucleus of all our cells. Each chromosome contains hundreds to thousands of genes, which carry the instructions for making proteins.

The sheer complexity of that construction and the biological programming of each cell to carry out its function in a prescribed manner for a predetermined length of time is something that computer and software engineers can only dream would be possible in a sense of real-world technological developments.

Never mind that we haven’t even gotten into the realm of the psyche and how the mind works, encoding and translating information from outward stimuli. Our bodies and brains are thousands of times, perhaps millions of times more sophisticated and adapted than any developed artificial systems, yet so many people will not allow

themselves to embrace even the possibility of any intelligent design behind it.

God in His completion is mind, body and spirit. God has a mind, a soul, or a will if you prefer. He is full of emotions and thoughts and is an intelligent existence. Paul explains to us in his writings in 1 Corinthians 2:11 that it is possible to know the mind of God and what and how God thinks if His spirit lives in us:

1 Corinthians 2:11 - NKJV

11  For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

In addition to having a mind, God is a spirit. Jesus Himself makes this very clear when teaching the Samarian woman at the well about worshipping God in spirit and in truth:

John 4:23-24 - NKJV

23  But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.  24  God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Lastly, God is flesh and has a physical body in the form of Jesus Christ:

John 1:14 - NKJV

14  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Just as Jesus was united with the Father as one before He became flesh, Eve was created and existed in Adam before God took a rib and fashioned a physical body to house the feminine characteristics of God’s nature. I also want to explain that my earlier comment “sons of God” includes both men and women. There is no separation in the relational standing we have with the Father through Jesus Christ based on our natural gender, our nationality, skin color or status.

Genesis 5:2 - NKJV

2  He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created.

Galatians 3:28 - NKJV

28  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.



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