People Created in God's Likeness

God Created the World

God Created People

Ephesians 4:17-24 The Message (MSG)

The Old Way Has to Go

17-19 And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion.
20-24 But that’s no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.

For Reflection

Becoming a Christian is a matter of a change of heart which leads to a new way of perceiving the world in which we live and our reason for being. It is a profound revelation and transformation. It is a recognition that one accepts fully the challenge of becoming all that God intends a human being to become. It is not about becoming a god but instead growing closer to the archetypical form into which we were born.  
God wants us to experience life as God experiences it.  God has sent Jesus to provide us with an example of the quality of living that is possible. God wants humanity to evolve into a human form that is equivalent in form, not substance, to God as Christ was equivalent to God in form. Such transformation is what is meant by "a God-fashioned life."

Pray

Pray so that you go forth in this world with the knowledge that you were created in the likeness of God with all the capacities for maturing into a God-like persona and living a productive, fulfilling life in collaboration with God to become one with God and at rest in God's creation.

Forward to a friend