Conformed to the Image of Christ

Conformed to the Image of Christ

In Jesus Christ, the image of God has come into our midst, in the form of our fallen human life, in the likeness of sinful flesh. Jesus’ image is revealed in His teachings and His deeds, in His life and His death. In Him, God has recreated His own image on earth. Jesus’ incarnation, His words and deeds, His death on the cross, are all integral parts of this image. But this is a different image from the one Adam bore in the primal glory of Paradise. Instead, it is the image of One who comes into the midst of a world of sin and death, who takes upon Himself the misery of the human flesh, who humbly submits to God’s wrath and judgment over sinners, and who remains obedient to God’s will in death and suffering. The Man who was born into poverty, who was the friend of sinners and tax collectors and who ate with them; the Man who on the cross, was rejected by men and forsaken by God. This is God in human form, this is Man in the new image of God!

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Christ took upon Himself this human form. He became a man like us. In His humanity and His lowliness we recognize our own form. He became like men so that they could become like Him. In the incarnation of Christ, the worthiness of bearing the image of God has been restored to all mankind. Whoever now insults the lowliest of all human beings, thereby insults Christ, who has taken the form of men, and who in Himself restored the image of God to all that bear the human form. In fellowship with the One who became a man, we are restored to our true human dignity. In this way, we are torn free from the isolation that sin led to, and at the same time are given back as a gift to all mankind. To the extent that we share in the incarnate Christ, we share in the whole of humanity that is borne by Him. Since we know that we are included in Jesus’ humanity and we are borne in it, our new humanity now also consists of carrying the need and guilt of others. The Incarnate One makes His disciples to be the brothers of all men. God’s “philanthropy” (Tit. 3:4), which became manifest in Christ’s incarnation, is the basis for Christian brotherly love toward every person on earth. The incarnate form enables the church to become the body of Christ, on which the sin and need of all mankind has fallen, and only through which it is able to be borne.

The form of Christ on earth is the form of death of the Crucified One. The image of God is the image of Jesus Christ on the cross. The lives of the disciples must be transformed into this image. It is a life in the likeness of Christ’s death. Phil. 3:10, Rom. 6:4-5. It is a crucified life. Gal. 2:19. In baptism, Christ imprints the form of His death in the lives of those who belong to Him. Having died to the flesh and sin, the Christian is dead to the world, and the world is dead to him. Gal. 6:14. Those who live by their baptism live by their death. Christ characterizes the lives of those who are His through the daily death in the battle of the Spirit against the flesh, through the daily suffering resulting from the pangs of death that the devil inflicts on the Christian. These are Jesus Christ’s own sufferings that all His disciples on earth must suffer. A very few of His followers also will have their lives honored by Christ in the closest fellowship with His sufferings—martyrdom.* It is here that the disciple’s life illustrates the deepest likeness with the form of Jesus Christ’s death. In public humiliation, in suffering and death for Christ’s sake, He takes on a visible form in His church. But from baptism to martyrdom, there is the same suffering and the same death. It is the new creation of the image of God through the Crucified One.

Whoever remains in fellowship with the Incarnate and Crucified One, in whom He has taken form, will also be made like the Transformed and Resurrected One. “. . . we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.” 1 Cor. 15:49. “. . . we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. 1 John 3:2. In the same way as the image of the Crucified One, the image of the Resurrected One will transform those who behold it. Whoever beholds Christ is drawn into His image, is conformed to His likeness, indeed becomes a reflection of the divine image. The glory of Jesus Christ will be reflected in us already here on this earth. From the form of death of the Crucified One, in which we live, in tribulation and cross, the clarity and life of the Resurrected One will already shine forth. This transformation into the divine image becomes ever deeper, the image of Christ in us ever clearer; it is a development from acknowledgment to acknowledgment, from clarity to clarity, to an ever more perfect likeness with the image of the Son of God. “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 by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Cor. 3:18.

* Around the time that Bonhoeffer wrote this text, the German church had effectively been taken over by Nazism. Bonhoeffer had distinguished himself as a strong critic of Nazi interference in the church and, together with others, had started their own religious community, which was eventually declared illegal. Several of his coworkers and students were arrested by the Gestapo during this period. What he writes here about martyrdom was undoubtedly not just a theoretical possibility for him, but something he saw as a very real and perhaps probable outcome for his life.