An individual tells the story about how she acquired the artifact that is in front of her. It’s been in the family for several generations, was a gift of some prominent person, was bought for a pittance at a yard sale, or was rescued from the trash. The stories in themselves are always interesting. Then the appraiser asks, “Do you know what you have here?” “Not really.” Then appraiser goes on to talk about the item, either augmenting the provenance provided or questioning the handed-down details. You already know what I’m talking about. It’s “Antiques Road Show.”
What always fascinates me is the knowledge and skill of the appraisers in identifying seemingly unidentifiable pieces. “See this mark here? This is the hallmark of an artist from a particular place and time.” “This number indicates that it was made between 1931 and 1933.” And even if there isn’t a signature or hallmark, there may be a particular detail about the piece which is a dead giveaway to the knowing eye.
Some individual items may by double signed. This is particularly true of porcelain pieces. There may be the mark of the company that produced the piece as well as a mark of the person who painted it, for example.
We are artifacts. We bear the mark of our maker. The creation stories of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 tell us that. “God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them” (Genesis 1:27). Also, “the Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life” (Genesis 2:7). Humanity didn’t just happen. We bear God’s creating imprint, God’s mold mark, God’s signature.
We are valued by God because God created us. All of the scriptures of the older testament witness to humanity’s ongoing, often fractious, relationship with God. God wrestles with our urge to ignore our origins. God struggles with our desire to obliterate God’s artist markings on us. We think that God’s signature on us devalues us in the larger social economy of the world around us. The reality is that trying to ignore or deny our creator and rub out God’s marks on us is a far greater devaluing of our worth.
Human worth was affirmed when God sent the Son, the bearer of God’s purest image, to be a flesh and blood human being like the rest of humanity, marked with God’s creativity. Everything that the Son, Jesus the Nazarene, did added value to humanity.
How can that be? Think about any stocks or mutual funds we have shares in. Most of them do produce income. For that we are thankful. But as the market goes up, the value of the shares increase. That’s unrealized gain until we cash in the investment. Or if the value goes down, that’s unrealized loss when we sell the investment.
You and I are shares in creation. Under God’s guidance, we increase in value. Under our own leadership we decrease in value. Given free rein, we could devalue ourselves to practically nothing, and our debt to God would exceed our asset value. In everyday terms, that’s bankruptcy.
Continuing the investment imagery, God sent the prophets to act as independent directors to guide us back to increasing value. Most of the time we paid no heed. Finally God sent the Son to take what we had so devalued and reset our value and bring us back to solvency and growing value.
That’s an imperfect image – all images that we try to concoct about God’s activity will never fully describe with complete accuracy God’s love, God’s care, God’s passion for the humanity which God created. Right there I am in danger of over-stating, exaggerating, inflating human value, which in investment terms would be equivalent to junk bonds. And that’s certainly not the case.
We have value which is determined by God. How do we know? John reminds us that “Jesus laid down his life for us.” Through Jesus, God has invested his entire Son so that we might come into the full value that God intends for us. Every investment is supposed to have a return. And the return on investment that God is looking for is that we love our brothers and sisters with the same kind of commitment that Jesus gave.
Jesus gave up his life – for us. That’s radical. Also not expected of every believer. If it were, there wouldn’t be any believers, would there? John goes on to put into perspective for average believers what laying down our lives might mean. “[I]f a person has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need and that person doesn’t care—how can the love of God remain in him? Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth.”
These verses give an example of how believers can lay down their lives for others—to help those in need with their worldly goods. Seldom will believers be called upon to experience martyrdom for another, even though Christians are being martyred by ISIS and Boko Haram, and being imprisoned and threatened with death in other nations.
However, every day believers will face needy people whom they ought to be willing to help if they have the resources to do so; most people have more than they need. This parallels James’ teaching: Believers should be willing to help a brother or sister in need. Believers should respond to God’s love for them by loving others, putting others’ needs before their ownership of the world’s goods. (James 2:14-17)
John says that talk is cheap and mere word or speech are worthless unsubstantiated claims. Faith which is not accompanied by love for others is worthless. Anyone can claim to have faith, but if his or her lifestyle remains selfish and worldly, then what good are the words and speeches?
What that amounts to is a forgery. Back to the “Antiques Road Show” image. Every now and then the appraiser has the decidedly unpleasant task of telling an artifact’s owner that in spite of the great story they have told, the item is not what they thought it was. It might be a forgery or an imitation. It may have great sentimental value, but it has very little value compared to the value it would have if it were what it was supposed to be.
If we fail to love in daily activity, if we only talk the talk of love but don’t walk the walk, we are nothing more than imitation Christians. The problem with imitations is that they reflect badly on the items that are real thing.
We can’t be anything more than imitations if we try to do it on our own. The challenge then is not to do it on our own. John puts it very plainly:
“This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love each other as he commanded us. The person who keeps his commandments remains in God and God remains in him; and this is how we know that he remains in us, because of the Spirit that he has given to us.”We can only be real believers when the Spirit has signed us. We already have God’s image, but when we are countersigned by the Spirit our authenticity is assured. We are not imitations. We are the real deal.
We call this the mutual indwelling of Christ and the believer. Jesus’ last discourse in the Gospel of John (chapters 14-17) contains this major theme. “Mutual indwelling” means that Christians abide in him (that is, in God) and that God abides in them. God and the believers live in one another. The presence of the Spirit in each believer’s life makes this possible. The Christian lives in the Spirit, and the Spirit lives in the Christian. The best analogy is a human being’s relationship to air. People must live “in” the air so that the air can come into them.
The Spirit is Christ’s presence in us, enabling us to be the real individuals that God created us to be. The Spirit enables us to love as Christ loved, to eat with sinners, to touch the untouchables, to align ourselves with immigrants and those pushed to the margins of existence, to give voice to the speechless, to bring hope to the hopeless and love to the unloved.
The Spirit authenticates Christ’s love radiating from us in action. We are signed by the Spirit. Thanks be to God.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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