In the Image of Christ

I read today the document from 1909 from the First Presidency entitled The Origin of Man.  One of the points that they made in the document is that we were created after the image of not only God the Father but also of Jesus Christ.  For example, in Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness.”  We know that the us must include the Father and the Son, and so man was made in their image.  The account in Moses makes this even clearer: “And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them” (Moses 2:27).  The document states, “If God made man—the first man—in His own image and likeness, He must have made him like unto Christ, and consequently like unto men of Christ’s time and of the present day. That man was made in the image of Christ is positively stated in the book of Moses.”  In the Book of Mormon, the Brother of Jared also learned this truth very explicitly when He saw the Lord on Mount Shelem.  Jehovah revealed to him, “Behold, I am Jesus Christ….  Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image.  Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh” (Ether 3:15-16).  Christ was “in the beginning with the Father, and [is] the Firstborn” of all of the spirit children of Elohim (D&C 93:21).  He was the first organized into a Spirit, and we were all created after the image of His spirit-body.  Of course this is in the end the same as saying that we were created in the image of God the Father, for Christ was, as the document reiterated, “‘the express image’ of His Father’s person (Heb. 1:3)”. 

               To me the great truth that this fact of our being in the image of the Savior symbolizes is that just as we were created physically to be like Him, we can also become spiritually like Him.  His invitation to Philip and to all of us was simple: “Follow me”—we are to follow Him in every meaningful way, in charity, in devotion, in patience, and ultimately in perfection (John 1:43).  His question and invitation to the Nephite disciples defines that one great eternal goal: “Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am” (3 Nephi 27:27).  To become like Him in love and goodness and faith and obedience is the great challenge of our existence.  The Father gave us the Son as the perfect model and created us in His very image so that we could ultimately be like Him.  The Lord “created all things… spiritually, before they were naturally upon the face of the earth,” and it seems that this order was reversed in our own progression to be like the Savior: the Father created us first physically like Jesus and then made the way possible that we can become like Him spiritually through the Savior’s redeeming power (Moses 3:5).  I love the way that C.S. Lewis put it: “Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ….  He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has — by what I call ‘good infection.’ Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”  As Christians we strive for eternal life—not just as a place that is our final destination, but as state of being: Eternal life, life after the manner of Christ’s life, for “Eternal is [His] name” (Moses 7:35).