265. A New Man in His Image
Colossians 3:10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.
God promises you a new man. This new man is God’s personality entering your human spirit and combining with your personality to give you a new human being in addition to the old man, which though crucified daily, still lives within. This new person inside is a combination of God and me in a new personality that lives as me in the world. Both “mes” are living at the same time, the “old man and the new man.”
This new man is renewed every time I repent and believe the Gospel. This new man is renewed in the image of God. We are “like Christ.” We reflect the person of God Himself. The created image of God, which we lost when we were born in sin in the image of Adam, is being restored ever since we were baptized and came to faith in Christ. The original intention of God’s creation was to have a bunch of people who would reflect back to Him the very image of God. God would be able to have a relationship of intimate love and mutual caring with a very large group of people who look like Him.
Sin and disobedience killed the image of God in Adam and his subsequent descendants, except for One. Then through that One the image is being restored again. That image is constantly being renewed in believers, and sacrificial love peeks out more and more in those renewed new people.
How do we “put on the new man?” How are we renewed? We are renewed in knowledge every time we repent and receive the Gospel. If that isn’t done at least every Sunday we gradually, and mostly unnoticeably, grow older and older and the “old man” begins to get the upper hand; sacrificial love appears less and less; selfishness appears more and more; the new Christ in us looks more and more like the old Adam. Put on the new man by receiving Absolution, remembering Baptism, partaking the Lord’s Supper, hearing the Gospel. We won’t usually see or notice a great or sudden change in behavior, but it is still true that the new human in the image of God is being renewed. Believe the truth of God’s promised cause and effect.