It’s Not About Image

Today it all about image! Magazines sell it. Advertisers promote it. People crave it. But what they sell, promote, and crave is overrated, unfair, and does more harm to people’s sense of who God made them to be. 

This whole idea of image has created a multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry, transportation industry, construction industry, etc. And while they are creating jobs for millions, they are also harming billions more financially and emotionally. 

It’s creating within us a discontent with who God made us to be, along with an overall feeling of inferiority by comparing ourselves to others, and even ourselves. We make others the standard of what and who we should be instead of what God created us to be. 

The Apostle Paul saw this danger and said, “For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us.” (2 Corinthians 10:12-13)

Image is all about an outward showing of what you want others to see. But God isn’t interested in the outward man, but the inward. The only image you should be concerned with is not the image the world sells, but the image God wants to work within you; the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. 

“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.” (Romans 8:29a)

And so instead of comparing ourselves to the world’s misguided standards, cultivate what God has uniquely created us to be, and start growing into the likeness of Jesus. 

“But we … are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

So let’s reject the image of this world and start accepting the design of our Creator, our loving and gracious Heavenly Father.