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Being the image of God

Scripture reading:

 Acts 16:9-15
John 14:23-29


I have an old friend called Caleb. We haven’t spoken in years but we would still consider ourselves friends because we went through quite a lot together as teenagers. He was 2 years below me in school and we met in the most extraordinary way.

I was walking home from school one day when I got a sense that I needed to go see him. It was a miserable day, absolutely pelting it down and I felt like a plonker standing outside his house waiting for him to answer. But he let me in and we started to talk and by the end of the conversation, he had committed his life to Jesus. Caleb later referred to that conversation as my own Macedonian experience. He was convinced that God had sent me to him.

Paul’s vision of the man from Macedonia in the book of Acts is a really important turning point in the life of Paul. Paul wanted to go into Asia but we read that Holy Spirit blocked them and then Paul had his vision calling him to Macedonia. And Paul followed his calling. And the rest they say is history. Starting in Philippi Paul led a missionary journey that established some of the most famous Churches in the world. Paul’s vision was a message from God and it wasn’t the only time Paul had visions because right in the beginning of his ministry Paul had been baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Our Gospel reading today points us towards the fact that we will shortly be celebrating Pentecost. It’s that time of the church year when we celebrate God’s gift of the Spirit of Jesus which came in a magnificent way and turned the world upside down.

John’s Gospel was written around 90AD. And as I was reflecting on this I realized that John would have been looking back at 60 years of Church History through the lens of his experience as not only the disciple that Jesus loved but also as one those originally in The upper room when the Holy Spirit arrived. And I wonder as he wrote those words about Jesus promising the Holy Spirit, whether or not he thought about where things were at that moment.

John’s words then become a confirmation of a truth that Jesus promised. In other words what John is telling us as we read this passage is that what Jesus said actually came to pass.  

But as always I must ask the question what does this mean to us? We may all know that Paul established churches under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and we understand that Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit came to pass at Pentecost but what does this mean to us?

I’m going to get slightly technical here because I want to look at the Greek. Jesus says in our John passage that if we love him we will follow his teaching. It’s interesting that in our Bible the translators have used the word teaching because in the Greek the word is 'Logon' a derivative of the word Logos which means word. So in the Greek what we have is this verse actually reading ‘If anyone loves me the word of me he will keep.’ It’s easy to see how that is translated as teaching but the more I thought about it the more I came to the conclusion that perhaps a better translation would be ‘if we love Jesus, we will follow his image.’ Because if there’s one things words do well is convey images.

Jesus’ image is seen in the Holy Spirit. When Jesus said he would never leave us, he meant that he would be with us through the Holy Spirit. And the role of the Holy Spirit is to point us to Jesus and equip us so that we may be images of Jesus ourselves, we in a sense become Jesus’ word. We become the vehicle that God uses to bring a message of hope and peace to a world that is in despair and fear.

The message to Paul from the Macedonian man was to come and help them. They needed to hear the Gospel. A gospel of peace that God loves them no matter what and that the way to salvation was now open through Jesus. It’s a message people desperately need to hear today.

When we commit ourselves to being a disciple of Jesus and to being born again we are given the Holy Spirit as a seal, a guarantee that we are now children of God. The Spirit also gives us peace and power. These are gifts from God but it is up to us to take those gifts and use them.

Jesus said in verse 27: ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.’ When we are the image of Jesus that is the message we bring that in spite of all the difficulty we face there if the real possibility of hope in Jesus.

Now we are never going to be the perfect image of Jesus. Whenever I think about how we reflect the love of God I always think about those mirrors we see in fairgrounds that distort the image. I’m also reminded of Paul’s words, ‘Now I see through a mirror dimly’. We will never reflect the image of God completely. It will always be flawed but actually isn’t it better to have a flawed image than no image at all.

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