Word of Encouragement (2/3/2021)

We are talking about the necessity of prayer. Prayer is necessary because we are needy creatures. But the greatest need we have is God. This is so because we are made in the image of God. One important aspect of being made in the image of God is that we are made to have a relationship with our Maker. Today, I’d like to talk about another aspect of being made in the image of God in this regard.

We talked about the moral and spiritual character of God’s image we bear. But there is a metaphysical (that which is related to our being) dimension as well. What is it that we affirm about God’s being? He is a triune God—one God in three Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—equal in power and glory, but distinguished from one another. Even though there is only one God, God is a social Being, a (divine) community unto Himself. So then, to be made in the image of God is to be made as social beings. So, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). Isn’t that interesting? “God created man [a singular] in His own image.” But “male and female [plural] he created them.” Do you see an echo of the inner-trinitarian relationship (in a “binary/binitarian” way instead of trinitarian)?

But our “social” interactions extend beyond our relationship with other human beings, don’t they? We are to be “social” with God! As we saw yesterday, the reason that God made us in His own image was so that we could have this “social” (or, socio-theological) interaction with Him!

Could it be, then, that the ultimate reason for the necessity of prayer is not our creaturely needs but God’s triune Being of community/fellowship, in whose image we are made? We can say, then, that we are created to have a meaningful relationship with God as with our fellow human beings. We may even say that our relationship with God is even more fundamental to our humanness (i.e., what it means to be truly human) than our relationship with one another! If prayer is the supreme means of interacting with God, we can see how important prayer is to our life. And if Jesus came to restore us to God so we can have a proper relationship with Him, we can even say that Jesus came to save us so that we can pray!

If Jesus was willing to make the kind of costly sacrifice He made (so we can pray!), we can imagine how important our prayer is to God and what an amazing blessing it is that we can now pray to God in the name of Jesus Christ! I hope this will motivate all of us to pray more diligently and thankfully, starting today!