In God's Image

We were made in God's image. Think about that for awhile.

In the beginning, "God." Elohim is the Hebrew word. Elohim is the plural of El or Eloah. Did you get that? Plural. God is three in one. And we were made in that image. We are not just singular or dual in nature, but plural. While we talk about our spiritual, physical or emotional aspects for clarity sake, we cannot be one without the others. We cannot forget one aspect nor realize the wholeness of our being if we neglect any of these three. We are a trinity as God is.

Psychology would have you understand how the emotional aspect intersects with the physical to better understand yourself. But working without all three pieces is like trying to put together a 600 piece jigsaw puzzle with 400 pieces. You cannot neglect the spiritual. Nor can you neglect any of the three for that matter- often we Christians speaks of our spiritual being as if it can be divorced from our emotional or physical being (note to self: watch that).

Although we will never fully grasp all of God, he chooses to present himself to us in ways we can understand- e.g. a father, a lion, a shepherd, etc. Those images help us handle a small part of who God is. But understanding some parts of who God is have traditionally given us trouble. Like our struggle to understand the trinity- how can God be one and yet three? But when we look at how we are one and yet three, I think it makes a lot of sense. After all, we were made in his image! The image of the trinity.

Think of it this way:

Jesus is the Physical side of God. Easy enough.
The Holy Spirit is the Spiritual side of God. Easy too.
The Father is the Emotional side of God. Whoa!

That opens up a huge area of thought, huh? The Father as the emotional/willful side of God!

Now while you can talk about each one separately (for clarity), you can't separate either of them from the whole. That's the nature of a trinity- three in one.

I've been thinking and meditating on this concept for some time now and I am still in awe. Just when I think I'm beginning to understand it a little better, another whole area opens up and it gets even bigger! The truth is: as you increase the radius of your knowledge, the circumference of your ignorance increases!

If you keep going with this thought process, Genesis 1:27 begs another blog- "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Hmmm. In his image, we were created male and female . . .