The Dunkin Donuts Gift Card is completely customizable with your own uploaded picture and you can use any picture you want, including ones you have taken. Dunkin Donuts would be happy to put whatever picture you like on the gift card.
Would you make a statement with your Dunkin Donuts Gift Card? What would be the statement you would be trying to make with your custom picture choice?
You know everyone in line behind you will be watching to see whom you are sporting on yours!” All of us are “sporting” an image whether we like it or not! Whose image do you bear?
Your image reveals your identity and your identity is who you are. “Imaging” is everything! The most important point to understand, as you consider whose image you bear as a Christian is…“who (not what) is your point of reference”?
The Bible says man is either “In Adam” or “In Christ”. We learn from this revelation that our identity is determined by the God/god that has dominion over us, either God or Satan. Due to “The Fall” of man, all men are born with a sin nature which is Satan’s nature. In this spiritual condition man is separated from God - spiritually dead - without life. Man needed a spiritual exchange, man needed life.
Man cannot bring about or produce a “spiritual exchange” in himself. Apart from the finished work of God, through Christ on the cross, man would be eternally lost and separated from God’s life, bearing Satan’s image.
Man is totally dependent on God for spiritually transformation. Man’s spiritual image is a reflection of the spiritual personage he is joined to in his human spirit. Image is not a substance in you but, rather, a “personage” or a presence in you.
When we ask the question, "whose image do you bear", we are really asking, "With whose personage are you joined?" Your human spirit was created to allow the presence of God to dwell in you - to “visibly image God”. As you allow the invisible God (the being of God or the presence of God) in you to be visibly expressed, the invisible character of God is made “manifest” through your behavior. Human behavior is the “outcome” of man choosing to depend and derive from one of two spiritual sources.
The believer has been crucified in Christ and, therefore, Christ is the spiritual “source” of every believer. Christians have been “joined” to the Lord and are one in Christ. Christians have the divine nature, as the apostle Peter proclaims. As you derive your life and activity “out of” Christ you become “the image of God” to the world in which you live.
Temptation is Satan’s attempt to deceive (distract) you to depend on his character “to get things done”. His character is sin. As the believer learns to be dependent on God, he walks by faith which is the receptivity of God’s activity, expressed through behavior.
“Whose picture would you put on your Dunkin Donuts Gift Card? Barack Obama? Sarah Plain? Something more personal? Jesus Christ!
We are all “making a statement” as the Dunkin Donuts ad suggested. Whose image is making a statement through you?
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