I recently heard this statement, “the definition of God is not that he is other than we are.” In other words, we should not think of God as being everything we are not, or that what we are is entirely and wholly foreign to God.
Certainly, we acknowledge that God is different from us, but is God completely different? Is there some commonality, that though God is not what we are and as we are, is God wholly other? If God is wholly other, how can we speak of being made in the image of God?
The reason that salvation is possible is that there is something of us to save. This is not to say we have done anything deserving of salvation, but that God himself has done in us what is worthy to be saved.
A helpful illustration is to take the literal meaning of the word salvation, which means “healing”. A wound itself cannot be healed, but a person with a wound can be healed. The wound must disappear, no longer being an injury to the skin. It must be “destroyed” so the skin of the injured person is made whole again. Obviously, there must be skin, which though damaged, can be healed.
For us to be healed, that is, saved, means we are brought to God and come into oneness with God. This is the divine fellowship, the reconciliation and reunion with him from whom we have our being. In order for this to happen, there must be something that is genuinely us which can be united with God.
Jesus prays for this salvation of being united with God when he prays that we would be one with him as he is one with the Father. If you think he only means a similar oneness to the oneness of God, but not actual oneness with God, listen to what he says, “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us.” (John 17:21). Our oneness is literally with and in God. This is the fullness of relationship.
If we are going to be one with Christ in God, and God cannot united to that which is foreign to himself any more than he can include darkness in his light, then there is something “of God” in us that can be healed of all wounds and diseases, that is, sin and corruption. What can be saved is what God has made of us, and not what we have made of ourselves. Our works must be purged so his work is all that remains.
An important implication which comes from this discussion involves Jesus’ call to love one another. This is not only the “other” who shares our same faith in Christ, nor only the “other” whose moral rectitude approximates our own understandings and aspirations of what is godly, but absolutely every other person.
We are to love all others because of the sacred presence of God in the very being of every other person, despite how we all have lived. We have all been at odds with our essence, but the divine image granted to each is due love and honor.
If to love my brother is to love God, then to hate my brother is to hate God. Herein, lies the ethic of love of all, enemies included, because the sacred is present in everyone, not because of their actions, but by the creative grace of God.
The definition of God is not that God is other than what we are. God is other than all we do out of willfulness, the fruit of our agency, but never other than the created individual who bears his image. God wills to heal us from all moral and existential corruption and bring us into full relationship with himself.
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