The reason humans exist is to show what God is like. Sounds crazy, but it’s just plain true. According to Moses, God made Adam in his image and likeness. That might mean a lot of things, but at the very least it means that when you encountered Adam, you encountered something of God. And of course, Adam (and Eve) ate the forbidden fruit. It must have tasted like dust, because that’s what humanity has been biting ever since. You might say that whatever God intended went terribly wrong. But that wouldn’t be entirely true. God was deeply pained and responded to their betrayal by allowing Adam and Eve the break they desired from the life they knew. They had knowledge unparalleled just by virtue of their relationship to Him. They had access. But they wanted knowledge for themselves, in themselves, from themselves.
Nevertheless, God continued to show what he is like through humans. Like a sick Buddy Rich fill, God melted into 5/8 from 4/4 without missing a beat. It’s called grace. Grace is the opposite of rejection. Grace is who God is. And humanity is where he shows it. Grace from God is like a surgeon who puts human hearts in mannequins, the creepy department store ones from the 60’s that always look like they’re doing “the Robot” in a crooked wig. And they transform into real people when he has sewn them back up. God is a fantastic surgeon and the only way we know that is because we are the mannequins.
The reason God the Son became human after centuries of trying to make it clear to the Israelites, his chosen people, is to show humanity what humanity is like. Real humanity. Real reflection of God. Jesus was God’s new-fangled multimedia presentation and it went over with the Jews not unlike some of what I try to do goes over on a slow Sunday morning. Many of them just didn’t get it. But there could be no clearer picture or more effective teaching tool. Hebrews 1 says, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. Jesus is the “last Adam” according to Paul in 1 Cor 15. The Son didn’t wear a dusty wig and he didn’t model polyester suits on broad plastic shoulders. He was real. He was pre-Tree. He bit the dust hard enough to kill it, not him (for very long, that is). And because he was real, a real heart became available to us. Real humanity with real skin is all over us. God is evident through us. I love the fact that God never stops showing who he is through what he has made, even when what he made became terribly disfigured, painfully fake and poorly dressed.
