God’s Selfie

Selfie – it is now part of the Oxford English Dictionary. Selfie defined: A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.

Some folks are pretty compulsive about trying to capture the perfect selfie. They try different angles and expressions in an attempt to wow their social media friends. In my research for this post, I read about people who literally spend hours trying to get that perfect selfie.

Do you know we have one perfect selfie of God? We do – but not the kind taken by a smartphone.  <Tweet this

God reveals Himself all through scripture so we can be in relationship with Him.  Jesus told His followers in John 17:3, “This is eternal life, that they may know Him, the only true God…” But God went a step further so we could KNOW Him intimately – He sent Himself-ie to earth wrapped in flesh.

God’s one perfect selfie was Jesus. John 1:18 tells us that Jesus has explained God. God knew our finite minds would need something tangible and concrete to help explain His greatness.  To deeply know God is to know and be in relationship with His Son. Furthermore, Hebrews 1:3 says, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.”

In other words, if you want to know God, just look to Jesus – He is God’s explanation and His exact representation.

Can I stretch this analogy another inch or two? If we are in Christ, then we become a secondary selfie of God too. Prove it you say? Ok – take a look at 2 Corinthians 3:18…

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

This verse is describing a metamorphosis, a transformation, as we become more like Jesus each day. For this transformation to happen, we need to spend hours with God in His Word and in prayer, instead of spending hours on our smartphones. Rather than trying to engineer the perfect selfie, we stare bare-faced in the mirror of scripture to transform into the same image as Christ.

As this happens, we present our Christ-like selfie to those in our circle of influence, our social network so to speak. When people interact with us, they should see more and more Jesus as time goes by, and less and less of our “selfies”.