Genesis 1:27
Created in God's Image
27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
John 15:1-17
Jesus on His Command to Love Each Other
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
God made us in His Image...And we were made by LOVE and to love...And when God made us in His Image, He made us a little bit like His Son...And as read Jesus' teaching on the vine and branches it sounds a little strange to me...Yet, love someone brings this teaching together and we have a better understanding of His teaching with love being involved...And it maybe like a mother who loves her child, long before the child knows what love is or what love is about...Yet, love brings people together and gives life and the world harmony...
Jesus wants the world to love each other and be in harmony...And this can be accomplished if all of us are like Him...
C. S. Lewis better explains this when he writes, “God sees before Him in fact a self-centred, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal...But He says "Let us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our Son...It is like Christ in so far as it is a Man, for He became Man...Let us pretend that it is also like Him in Spirit...Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not...Let us pretend in order to make the pretence into a reality."...God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one...I daresay this idea of a divine make believe sounds rather strange at first...But, is it so strange really?...Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower?...A mother teaches her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does.”...