The Image of God, Part Three

 

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Mall in Washington D.C. and taking in the majestic statues honoring men like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Standing at the feet of that massive statue of Lincoln, I felt awed and humbled.  Lincoln, along with all the others enshrined on the Mall, were great men who helped form our nation and make it into the flourishing country it is today.  As a society, we have erected these statues to honor these men and to remind ourselves of their sacrifice, courage, and dignity.  Looking at these images of great men, we can clearly see the desire to honor them, to capture some of their glory and display the dignity, wisdom, and honor with which they lived their lives and led our country.

If someone spray-painted crude and offensive language across that statue of Lincoln we would not just say that he was being creative and expressing himself, we would not just say he had committed vandalism or just defaced a statue, we would say that he had dishonored and defaced Lincoln as a person.  He had taken the image of Lincoln and sinned against it.

The last few weeks we have been looking at the reality that we are created in the image of God as male and female and building out how this applies to our sexuality.

Because our bodies are created in the image of God, we are not permitted to do with our bodies as we please.  Or, I should say, we should not do with our bodies as we please.  Just as it would be a sin against Lincoln to deface his statue, it is a sin against God to deface His image, that is, our bodies.  Our bodies are meant to be monuments to God's glory, the question is, does our behavior, especially our sexuality, magnify that glory, or diminish it?

As image bearers, our bodies should be treated with dignity and respect, any behavior that violates that dignity should be considered evil and forbidden. This applies to activities like human trafficking, prostitution, pornography, and all manner of abuse.  Kidnapping, human trafficking and abuse are still rightly condemned and criminalized in our society, though prostitution is becoming more and more acceptable, with many states moving to legalize it.  For now, it is still largely outlawed.

A while back I had a cellmate who was a millionaire and was arrested for some financial shenanigans.  He would shamelessly tell of his escapades hiring prostitutes while he was on the outside.  Apparently, it was something his fiancée enjoyed as well.  He was one of several men I have met in jail and prison who had hired prostitutes and had no shame or regret around it.  This sort of moral degradation is becoming all too common, I fear.

Looking at prostitution and pornography through the lens of the image of God, we can clearly see the evil for what it is.  What prostitution and pornography do is take the human body and make it into a commodity: an object to be bought and sold.  Something to be consumed.  It defaces the dignity and honor that humans are created with as image bearers of God.

Imagine a fiancée who recently accepted a ring from her beloved, and in accepting that ring, swore her love and affection to him.  But then she succumbs to addiction and sells that ring to obtain drugs.  This sin is twofold, any jewelry like that is always far more valuable than any drug, but then that ring is not just a ring, it is a symbol of love and loyalty.  By pawning that ring she has disgraced her fiancée’s love and trampled his affections on the ground, and not just his, but her own as well.  She accepted that ring as a promise of fidelity and she dishonored herself by throwing it away.

This is what pornography, prostitution, and all sexual immorality do with the human body.  The human body is meant to be a sign of God's glory and love here on earth.  Sexuality is meant to declare God's love and affection in the sacred communion of marriage.  These sinful acts debase, degrade, and dehumanize the body and the individuals involved.  It makes people into sides of meat to be bought, sold, and devoured by greedy, lustful men and women.

It is certainly easy to shake our finger at all those in the world who commit such sins, but we must be careful ourselves.  Pornography is rampant, even among those in the church.  Odds are, if you are a man and are reading this, you have struggled with pornography, or currently are struggling with pornography.  What I want you to realize is that pornography is wrong on many levels, most foundational of which is that it is an assault on the beauty and dignity enshrined in our bodies as image bearers of God.

Husbands and wives should examine their hearts in this area as well.  It is possible for Christian men and women to turn their husbands and wives into objects of lust.  Lust is never a good thing, even within marriage.  Marriage is not a legitimate outlet for lust.  Let me be clear, to have a strong, physical desire for your spouse is not wrong.  But when that desire turns into objectification, and we are using our spouses simply to gratify our urges then we are entering into the territory of lust.  Lust happens when we devalue another person and see him or her only as an object to gratify our selfish desires.  Lust is blind to or willfully ignores the glory and beauty of the image of God in each person, and instead sees other people in purely utilitarian and mechanistic terms.  A person is only desirable and useful if they stimulate a response in my body and help me to satisfy my sexual cravings.  This is never okay, not in marriage and not in any other area of life.

The human body is to always be cherished, cared for, and nourished because it is made in the image and likeness of God.  If we are properly loving God, and our hearts are filled with His love, then we will love the image of God in other people.  We will seek to honor and nurture their bodies, and we will care for our own bodies and keep them as strong and healthy as possible.

Recognizing and honoring the image of God in our bodies means that we abstain from all behaviors that dishonor that image.  The man who uses images and videos of women to stimulate and satisfy his sexual desires dishonors that image.  The young woman who takes her clothes off and performs sexual acts for a camera is devaluing that image.  Any sexual act outside of marriage desecrates that image.

In all of our activities and especially in our sexual activities we should ask ourselves, is this an activity that will dishonor or honor the image of God stamped onto my body?  If I do this thing will God's glory shine through my body, or will it be diminished?

As our society continues to devalue the human body and sexuality, may we take up the torch and hold it high, declaring to the world the beauty and dignity that is found in our bodies as image bearers of the divine.