In the Beginning and the Image

 

 

What do you think?

 

“In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

 

Which Beginning?

 

Was it the Beginning in terms of initiation, sequence, time – though when does time begin? Does it begin before verses 14 – 19?

 

Or is it the Beginning as in, “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the Beginning with God.” (John 1:1 – 2).

 

“I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the Beginning and the end.” (Rev. 22:13).

 

“He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church, and He is the Beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.” (Colossians 1:17 – 18).

 

Or is it the Beginning in both senses? Are they melded together in Him?

 

“Then  God said, ‘Let Us make man in our Image, according to Our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26a).

 

What is this image? Is it an “image” with a lowercase “i”, or an Image with an uppercase “I”?

 

Is it, “He is the Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”? (Colossians 1:15).

 

Are we created in His Image and then called to be transformed into His Likeness?

 

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18).

 

“For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Romans 8:29).

 

“…and have put on the New Man who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created Him – a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.” (Col. 3:10 – 11).

 

Can we see that our trajectory is Christ, “…in the fulness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and the things on the earth”? (Eph. 1:10). Can we see the glory of our union with the Father and Son and Spirit, looking forward to that Day when God will be “all in all”? (1 Cor. 15:28). Knowing that “Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly”? (1 Cor. 15:49).

 

Can we see that our antecedents are in the Beginning?

 

Can we see that we were created in the Image of God, in that “exact representation [image] of His Nature…” (Hebrews 1:3)? Can we see that in Christ that Image is restored and that we are being transformed into His likeness as we behold His glory, as we see Jesus Christ? (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; 1 John 3:1 – 3)?

 

“…the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” (Luke 3:38).

 

Well, as beautiful as Luke 3:38 is, we are now taken out of Adam, the first man from the earth, and are now living in the second Man from heaven (1 Cor. 15:45 – 49).

 

Do we know our antecedents? “…just as He chose us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.” (Eph. 1:4).

 

We may not understand this, but we are called to experience all of this in Jesus Christ.