The Image of the Invisible God

Imagine the invisible God projecting an image. What kind of image would an invisible being project?

Light is invisible. But if it is focused onto a screen, it becomes visible. And yet, when we attempt to see light directly, it itself is invisible... we can never see light itself directly, but by the light, we see everything else. "For it is light that makes everything visible."

It is the light of God that makes it possible to navigate cleanly and clearly through a morally gray world. A world of greyish, gooey ethical mires. It is the light of the world, who shows us what everything really is.

Tim Stafford asks in "Knowing The Face of God" (pp. 193-4),

How then, when we see Jesus, do we see the image of God? [...] Properly speaking, nobody ever sees anything; we see an image of the original. Everything we "see" is really reflected light. When light bounces off an object or a person, its shape and color are recorded in the light. By deciphering this information, we "see" the original.

[...]

The trouble with light is that it is utterly undisciplined. Suppose that I want to look at my father's face. You would think that the light from his eyes would stay separate from the light from his nose and mouth. It does no such thing. The light from his eyes bounces off in every possible direction. The light from his nose does the same. Light from his various features is immediately so tangled up as to seem impossible to separate. That is why my film, exposed without a lens, shows no image; the images are all there, but like a sand painting that has been shaken until there is no recognizable order.

[...]

Light is naturally unintelligible. An image is light made intelligible - light sorted out for human consumption. Technically then, a photograph is not really an image; it is the recording of an image onto paper by means of chemicals. An image lives in time, always changing as the original changes. A photograph merely freezes one of its moments. The real image lives on as pure light. You cannot save it or store it or stop it. [Not even Google can do that...] It lives as its original lives and as light shines on the original.

Now let us consider how this applies to Paul's statement that Jesus is the "image of the invisible God." Right away we may notice that Paul is using the word "image" in a different way than I have used "image" in regard to my father. An image of my father is not "of one substance with him." An image is light; my father is flesh and blood. But for Paul, Christ as the "image of God" was of one substance with the Father.

This is possible of God though not of humanity because an image is formed of light, and God is pure light. John describes both Jesus and his Father as light: "God is light; in him there is no darkness" (1 John 1:5). Jesus himself said, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). Both Old and New Testaments describe God as light, a blinding light, or a light bright enough to illumine a city. Thus, we can say that God's only son is the image of God's light; he is light sorted out for us to see. [...] This is what Jesus is and does: He makes God known.

I would add: He makes God's will, God's character, God's standards, God's love, God's grace, God's truth and all the other innumerable things of God known.

"For it is light that makes everything visible."

What is the consequence of knowing that Jesus therefore is the image of the invisible God?

I think it means that personally, God has made it so much easier for us to figure out His will in morally 'gray' ethical situations. In confusing questions like which job should I choose? which sister should I consider getting into a relationship with? where shall I go? should I join or not join?

It's easier, because Jesus has shown us what the Father really is like, and what the Father would do, and what the Father wants. "He who has seen me has seen the Father."

So, it is the light of God that makes it possible to navigate cleanly and clearly through a morally gray world. A world of greyish, gooey ethical mires. It is the light of the world, who shows us what everything really represents, stands for and actually is.

The supremacy of Christ.

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace."