Dear Friends,
Life can be very confusing at times. We meet a Christian and they prove to be a total disappointment. Why? The remains of corruption that are with us all? We meet a pagan and they are surprisingly nice. Why? The remains of the image of God, twisted by sin, but still more or less evident in the lost. Today’s devotional helps see what is going on here. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Genesis 1:27-28 (ESV)

  27 So God created man in his own image,
  in the image of God he created him;
  male and female he created them.
  28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

“It is sometimes urged that this image was quite effaced when Adam fell. But it was not to protect the unfallen that the edict was spoken ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made He man.’ He was not an unfallen man of whom St. Paul said that he ‘ought not to have his head veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God;’ neither were they unfallen, of whom St. James said, ‘We curse men which are made after the likeness of God’ (Genesis 9:6; 1 Corinthians 11:7; James 3:9).” [G. A. Chadwick, “The Gospel According to St. Mark,” The Expositor’s Bible IV edited by W. Robertson Nicoll, (Hartford, CT: The S. S. Scranton Company, 1908), p. 893-894]