An Imperfect Image

 

Kintsugi is a Japanese art form in which broken pieces of a vessel, like a vase or bowl, are glued back together with lacquer or enamel that has gold or silver powder mixed into it. When the restored piece is finished, where there were dark cracks, now there is brightness and light. Where there was once brokenness now there is value and glory. If possible, the vessel is made even more beautiful and valuable than before. The vessel is not just restored, it is made into something new, something better.

When God created Adam and Eve, he made them perfect, they were flawless and without a trace of blemish. They were completely without sin or corruption. God had made them in the likeness of his Son. Adam and Eve were not exact replicas, carbon copies, of Jesus Christ. They were unique, but still similar.

Adam bore the image of God perfectly in the Garden of Eden. Then he sinned when he ate the Forbidden Fruit, and the world was plunged into chaos. The universe was wrecked because of his sin.

After his Fall, Adam still bore the image of God, but now that image is fractured and broken. It is marred. He was like the car that had been in a head-on collision. You can still recognize it as a Toyota Camry, but it has been smashed, and certainly is not going to function as well as before.

As sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, we have inherited the image of God. This means we have tremendous value and God-like capacity and potential, but that capacity and potential has been broken. That image has been wrecked by sin.

In the previous post we saw that as the only creatures made in God's image, we are rational, moral, and relational. But because of Adam's Fall and the curse of sin, we are nowhere near as rational, moral, and relational as God is, and as Adam and Eve were before the Fall.

Our capacity to reason has been broken. We don't think right many times. Our moral compass gets skewed, and we do things we know are wrong. We use our rational mind to come up with reasons to rationalize behaviors we know are wicked.

We still love. We love God and love other people, but that love is seldom pure. It is mixed with selfishness, neediness, greediness, and concupiscence. As often as not, what we really feel is lust, but we call it love to subdue the guilt we feel about our uncleanness.

We often think our logic and reasoning are sound, but too often they are corrupted by our sin and selfishness. We often lack self-awareness and get trapped in denial and self-delusion.

We sometimes believe we are on a righteous and holy path, but if we can see through the lies and delusion, we come to realize that we are only using pieties to mask our ego-centered drive for glory, status, and self-gratification.

We tell ourselves we are doing God's will, God's work, but really it is only our own selfish agenda. We only follow Christ for what we can get out of it. 

We should be skeptical of our own thinking, reasoning, and plans. We should carefully examine our own desires. Just because we want something, crave something, and find something satisfying does not mean it is the right thing.

This is why we have the Word of God and the Holy Spirit to lead us and correct us when we go astray, but we must recognize when we are following our own brokenness and surrender ourselves to God and his purposes.

From the very beginning God recognized that our brokenness and fallen, sinful state would lead us into destruction if it were not mitigated and corrected. So, he crafted a plan of redemption and restoration. This plan of redemption was from the beginning designed so that the image of God might be fully restored in us.

This is why Jesus had to die on the cross, so that through his death and resurrection we could be redeemed, born again and sanctified.

This process of sanctification is important, this basically means that we are made righteous and holy. At the point of salvation, we are placed in a sanctified position, then gradually, across our lives we become increasingly righteous in a practical, day-to-day way. We become more like Christ day by day; we are gradually shaped into his image.

We have fallen a long way from the pristine, sinless condition that Adam and Eve were in, but through Christ we can have that perfection restored. By the blood of Christ all of our sins are washed away, and we are made clean and righteous in him. We become innocent in our standing before God.

But we still have a fallen, sinful nature as part of who we are that we must battle every day. God sends the Holy Spirit and his Word to help us in this daily conflict. We must learn to surrender our will to him and allow him to lead and guide us on the path that we should follow.

On our own, we are just broken vessels.

Without the Holy Spirit we are wrecked.

The auto-restoration show is one of the more popular genres of reality shows these days. They will find some old, rusted-out, broken-down car that nobody wants, then they tow it to their shop, cut and grind out all the rust, pull out the old engine and put a new one in, patch up the body work, give it a new, shining paint job and make it fully restored, like new. Often the refurbished car is better in many ways than it ever was, even when it was new.

This is what God does with us. He knows we are broken, full of sin and corruption, so through Jesus Christ, he makes us clean and new. He sends the Holy Spirit to work on us from the inside out and make us into new creations.

This happens gradually, day by day, we grow closer and closer to the Lord, and the old, sinful nature falls away, and we become more and more like Christ. We are chiseled and molded into his image. But we must be willing to let God shape us and mold us. If we resist him by continuing in our selfishness, pride, lust, and greed then we will remain broken-down, beaten-up images of God. God wants nothing more than to restore us to the beauty and the glory that we had in Adam before the fall, and through Christ that can happen, if we are willing to let him do the work in us.

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