What is the Opposite of the Image of God? (Acts 17:22-31; Exodus 20:3-4)
Acts 17:22-31; Exodus 20:3-4
Since we're in a series on the Image of God, it's worth asking: What is the opposite of the image of God?
My knee-jerk answer would be to say something like, "un-human" or "beastly." But I think Scripture gives us more to run with.
In Scripture, the opposite of the image of God is idolatry. Rather than representing and reflecting God, we worship those creatures made of our own hands. And there is a destructive result.
Psalms 115 and 135 says that those who make idols become like them. 2 Kings 17 says that when God's people went after false idols, they became false themselves. Isaiah 44 says that worshiping idols makes us as unable to see, hear, or think as the blocks of wood in front of us.
This Sunday at Grace, we're going to look at Acts 17:22-31, where Paul describes the gospel to the Athenians based on the image of God, and contrasts it with the idolatry that marked their lives.
This passage is very important to understanding the image of God as a concept because it shows that in addition the image of God describing our lives, it also calls for action on our part.
I'm eager to think with you on Sunday about how we can apply this to our lives, so that we can live as joyful image bearers of Christ together.
In Christ,
Pastor Bob
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
-Exodus 20:3-4
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
- Acts 17:24-29