Genesis 1:26a, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.....Genesis 1:27, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."
Possibly you also read this online: When God created Adam, He looked at him and said, "I can do better." Then He created Eve!
Mankind was originally created in the image of God. Actually, even God couldn't improve on that! But sin marred us all. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, every person is born with a sin nature. We are not so much sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. We are born into the world wanting our own way rather than desiring to do what pleases God, and we will do almost anything to get it. A baby gets its way by crying until someone gives it what it wants. People fight to have their way. They scheme and manipulate. We are all sinners through and through, bad to the bone. Thankfully, God loves us the way we are, because otherwise our situation would be hopeless. "But God"--what wonderful words!!! When we acknowledge that we are sinners and accept God's Son as Savior, God forgives us and gives us a new nature, His nature, to reside within us. However, there is a problem. When God gives us this new nature, He doesn't remove that old sin nature with which we were born. All our lives we will struggle because the two natures are in opposition to each other, and they both want to control us at the same time.
God's purpose for each of us is to make us more and more like Jesus, to restore us to the godly state which we lost through Adam's sinfulness. Oswald Chambers wrote, "The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but God likeness." The more we allow the nature of God, which resides in us in the Person of the Holy Spirit, to control our lives, the closer we will come to the image of God, to God likeness.
Father, make us more and more like You and Your Son Jesus through the indwelling presence of Your Holy Spirit in our lives. Amen.
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