From Matthew Henry
“That man was made in God’s image and after his likeness, two words to express the same thing and making each other the more expressive; image and likeness denote the likest image, the nearest resemblance of any of the visible creatures. Man was not made in the likeness of any creature that went before him, but in the likeness of his Creator; yet still between God and man there is an infinite distance. Christ only is the express image of God’s person, as the Son of his Father, having the same nature. It is only some of God’s honour that is put upon man, who is God’s image only as the shadow in the glass, or the king’s impress upon the coin....”
This is why we do not have any true image of The Christ, because (though a human as born possesses not the substance of The God as The Christ did/does), each human is imprinted with the face of The God, as The Christ was. Christ in form and face was accepted by mankind as of their/our kind, not necessarily being particularly 'beautiful' according to worldly standards (Is. 53:2), yet not being deformed by the effects of inborn Sin, as for some of us occurs.
Of course, though unique, certainly His face represented one of a thousand million ways The God chooses to show each of us as being a likeness of Him. Having a face of God does not make one of the substance of God, but it does stamp us as His Special Creation, made for fellowship with and love for/by Him, which no other creature was made to enjoy.
We need to realize that the most noxious, sin-ravaged, God-rejecting fellow creature is less repugnant to the Righteous God than His Only-begotten-in-the-flesh Son was when He bore all our sins in His Body on The Tree, and for which He suffered the eternal burning of Hell and the Lake of Fire in our place.
His Blood shed there was sufficient to wash away any fault in a human's flesh, soul, and spirit that would prevent The God from offering again his friendship, the Love of God in Christ Jesus. Would Christ loving a human wreck not be His seeing His own face and form imprinted on that poor creature? Were/are you not one of those? Is not loving another with the sovereign love of God the same as discerning the face of The God stamped upon another human?
For that is exactly what taking forth The Gospel of Christ to bring the news of reconciliation really is. Without it, you have no Gospel.
This is why we do not have any true image of The Christ, because (though a human as born possesses not the substance of The God as The Christ did/does), each human is imprinted with the face of The God, as The Christ was. Christ in form and face was accepted by mankind as of their/our kind, not necessarily being particularly 'beautiful' according to worldly standards (Is. 53:2), yet not being deformed by the effects of inborn Sin, as for some of us occurs.
Of course, though unique, certainly His face represented one of a thousand million ways The God chooses to show each of us as being a likeness of Him. Having a face of God does not make one of the substance of God, but it does stamp us as His Special Creation, made for fellowship with and love for/by Him, which no other creature was made to enjoy.
We need to realize that the most noxious, sin-ravaged, God-rejecting fellow creature is less repugnant to the Righteous God than His Only-begotten-in-the-flesh Son was when He bore all our sins in His Body on The Tree, and for which He suffered the eternal burning of Hell and the Lake of Fire in our place.
His Blood shed there was sufficient to wash away any fault in a human's flesh, soul, and spirit that would prevent The God from offering again his friendship, the Love of God in Christ Jesus. Would Christ loving a human wreck not be His seeing His own face and form imprinted on that poor creature? Were/are you not one of those? Is not loving another with the sovereign love of God the same as discerning the face of The God stamped upon another human?
For that is exactly what taking forth The Gospel of Christ to bring the news of reconciliation really is. Without it, you have no Gospel.