О образе и подобии Божиих в человеке

“Let us make man in our image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26), God the Trinity mysteriously consulted within Himself and with Himself before the creation of man. Man is the image and likeness of God. God, unapproachable in His greatness, God, surpassing every image, was depicted in man, depicted with clarity and glory. This is how the sun is depicted in a humble drop of water. The essence of man, his supreme power, by which he differs from all earthly animals, by which he is equal to the angels, his spirit, is the image of the being of God; The properties of the human spirit serve in a state of innocence as the likeness of the properties of God, Who, having inscribed His likeness on man with His omnipotent right hand, is above all likeness and comparison. What an excellent creature, full of diverse dignity, diverse beauty, is man?! All visible nature was created for him by the Creator, all of it was appointed to serve him, all of it is his wonderful environment. When the Creator brought into being all other creations from nothingness, He was content to pronounce His almighty command. When He wanted to complete the work of the universe by creating the most graceful, most perfect creature, He precedes the creation with a conference. The enormous substance in its boundless and incalculable variety, created before man, was - let's say affirmatively, because let's say it rightly - a preparatory creation. So the earthly king arranges and decorates a magnificent palace in order to place his image in it. The King of kings and God of gods prepares all visible nature with all its decoration, with all the amazing splendor we see. Then he places His image in this palace, as the final cause of everything. At the end of the universe, before the creation of man, God examines what He has created and finds it satisfactory: “God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1:25). After the creation of man, God again examines everything He has created and already finds His creation graceful, complete, perfect: “And God saw all the great things He had created: and this was all good” (Gen. 1:31). Human! Understand your dignity. Look at the meadows and fields, at the vast rivers, at the boundless seas, at the high mountains, at the luxurious trees, at all the animals and livestock of the earth, at all the animals and fish wandering in the expanses of water, look at the stars, at the moon, at the sun, at the sky: this is all for you, everything is assigned to your service. In addition to the world we see, there is also a world not visible with bodily eyes, incomparably superior to the visible. And the invisible world is for man. How the Lord honored His image! What a high destiny has been destined for him! The visible world is only a preliminary threshold of the monastery, incomparably more magnificent and spacious. Here, as on the eve, the image of God must be decorated with final features and colors in order to obtain the most perfect resemblance to its most holy, all-perfect Original, in order to enter in the beauty and grace of this similarity into that palace in which the Original is present incomprehensibly, as if limiting His unlimitedness, to reveal Himself to His beloved, rational creatures. The image of the Trinity-God is the Trinity-man. The three faces in the trinity of man are the three powers of his spirit, by which the existence of the spirit is manifested. Our thoughts and spiritual sensations reveal the existence of the mind, which, while manifesting itself with all obviousness, remains completely invisible and incomprehensible. In the Holy Scriptures and in the writings of the Holy Fathers, sometimes the soul is generally called spirit, sometimes the separate power of the soul is called spirit. The Fathers call this power of the soul literature or the power of words. They divide it into three particular forces: mind, thought or word and spirit. They call the mind the very source, the very beginning of both thoughts and spiritual sensations. Spirit, in a particular sense, is the ability of spiritual sensation. Often in the Fatherly writings, verbal power or spirit is called mind, and created spirits are often called minds. The whole receives its name from its main part. The very essence of our soul is the image of God. And after falling into sin, the soul remains in the image! And cast into the flames of hell, the sinful soul, in the very flames of hell, remains in the image of God! This is what the Holy Fathers teach 62. The Holy Church sings in her hymns: “I am the image of Your ineffable glory, even though I bear the wounds of sins” 63. Our mind is the image of the Father; our word (we usually call the unspoken word a thought) is the image of the Son; spirit is the image of the Holy Spirit. Just as in the Trinity-God the three Persons unfused and inseparably constitute one Divine Being, so in the Trinity-Man the three Persons constitute one being, without mixing with each other, without merging into one person, without dividing into three beings. Our mind has given birth to and does not cease to give birth to a thought; a thought, having been born, does not cease to be born again and at the same time remains born, hidden in the mind. The mind cannot exist without thought, and thought cannot exist without the mind. The beginning of one is certainly the beginning of the other; the existence of the mind is necessarily the existence of thought. In the same way, our spirit comes from the mind and contributes to thought. That is why every thought has its own spirit, every way of thinking has its own separate spirit, every book has its own spirit. Thought cannot exist without spirit; the existence of one is certainly accompanied by the existence of the other. In the existence of both is the existence of the mind. What is the human spirit? – The totality of heartfelt feelings belonging to the verbal and immortal soul, alien to the souls of cattle and animals. The human heart differs from the heart of animals in its spirit. The hearts of animals have sensations that depend on blood and nerves, they do not have a sense of the spiritual - this feature of the Divine image, the exclusive property of man. The moral strength of a person is his spirit. Our mind, word and spirit, by the simultaneity of their beginning and by their mutual relations, serve as the image of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, coeternal, co-originating, equal in honor, one in nature. “He who has seen Me in the form of the Father,” declared the Son, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me” (John 14:9-10). The same can be said about the human mind and its thoughts: the mind, invisible in itself, appears in thought, having become familiar with the thought, has become familiar with the mind that produced this thought. The Lord called the Holy Spirit “Power from on high” (Luke 24:49), “Spirit of Truth” (John 14:17); Truth is the Son. The human spirit also has the property of strength; he is also the spirit of a person's thoughts, whether they are true or false. It manifests itself in the secret movements of the heart, in the way of thinking, and in all human actions. The spirit of a person reveals both his mind and his way of thinking; the spirit of each action reveals the thought that guided the person during the action. The merciful Lord adorned His image and His likeness. The image of God is the very essence of the soul, likeness is spiritual properties. There was a newly created image of God - man, like God, is infinite, wise, good, pure, incorruptible, holy, alien to every sinful passion, every sinful thought and feeling. A skilled artist first depicts the form, the features of the face from which he is taking a portrait. Having depicted these features with precision, he gives the face, the clothing itself the color and colors of the original, thereby perfecting the resemblance. God, having created His image, adorned it with His likeness: it is characteristic of the image of God to have a resemblance to God in everything. Otherwise, the image would be insufficient, unworthy of God, would not fulfill its purpose, would not correspond to it. Alas! Alas! Cry the heavens! Weep, sun, weep, all luminaries, weep, earth, weep, all creatures of heaven and earth! Cry, all nature! Weep, holy Angels! Weep bitterly, inconsolably! Put on deep sadness as a garment! – A disaster has occurred, a disaster that is fully worthy of being called a disaster: the image of God has fallen. Honored by autocracy from God, as one of the bright, living flowers of God's likeness, seduced by an angel who had already fallen, he communicated with the dark thoughts and spirit of the father of lies and all malice. This message was realized by action: separation from the will of God. By this he drove away the Spirit of God, distorted the Divine likeness, and made the very image obscene. Ecclesiastes vividly and accurately depicted the disaster of the fall: “what is corrupt,” he said, “cannot be corrected, and the deprivation cannot be counted” (Eccl. 1:15). It is convenient for everyone to see a disorder of image and similarity in themselves. The beauty of likeness, consisting of the totality of all virtues, is defiled by dark and foul passions. The features of the image are deprived of their correctness, their mutual agreement: thought and spirit fight among themselves, disobey the mind, rebel against it. He himself is in constant bewilderment, in a terrible darkness that closes God and the holy, infallible path to God from him. Terrible torment accompanies the destruction of the image and likeness of God. If a person carefully, in solitude, for a considerable time, constantly looks into himself, then he will be convinced that this torment operates continuously - it opens and closes, depending on how much or little his entertainment drowns out. Human! Your entertainment, your amusements are the exposer of the torment living inside you. You are looking to drown it out with a cup of noisy fun and continuous entertainment. Unhappy! As soon as you have a moment of sobriety, you are again convinced that the torment that you tried to destroy with entertainment lives in you. Entertainment serves as food for it, a means of strengthening: having rested in the shadow of entertainment, torment awakens with new strength. She is a testimony living in man himself, testifying to him of his fall. The human body is imprinted with a seal, evidence of the fall. From its very birth it is in enmity, in struggle with everything around it and with the very soul living inside it. All the elements swear against him; finally, tired of internal and external battles, struck by illnesses, oppressed by old age, it falls on the scythe of death, although it was created immortal, it crumbles into dust. And again the greatness of the image of God appears! It appears in his very fall, in the way in which a person is pulled out of his fall. God, as one of His Faces, took upon Himself His image: He became man; He rescued him from his fall, restored him to his former glory, and elevated him to a glory incomparably higher than that which was assigned to him at creation. The Lord is righteous in His mercy. At redemption, He magnified His image more than at creation: man did not invent the fall for himself, as the fallen angel invented him - he was drawn into the fall by envy, deceived by evil, hiding behind the guise of good. All the Persons of the Trinity-God participate in the work of incarnation, each in the property of its own Person. The Father remains begetting and giving birth, the Son is born, the Holy Spirit acts. And here again you can see what an exact image the man of God is. The Son accepts humanity; through Him the entire Trinity-God enters into communication with man. Our thought, in order to communicate with people, is clothed in sounds: immaterial - it is associated with matter; through it the spirit enters into communication, the mind appears. The Son became man - God's Word, God's Truth. Through the truth, our thoughts have been corrected, our thoughts have been purified, our spirit has become capable of communion with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit revives our eternal spirit, deadened by death. Then the mind entered into the knowledge and vision of the Father. The Trinity-man is healed by the Trinity-God: With the Word, thought is healed, transferred from the realm of lies, from the realm of self-delusion, into the realm of Truth, the spirit is revived by the Holy Spirit, transferred from carnal and mental sensations to spiritual sensations; The Father appears to the mind - and the mind becomes the mind of God. “The mind of Christ is imams” (1 Cor. 2:16), says the Apostle. Before the coming of the Holy Spirit, man, as if dead in spirit, asked: “Lord, show us the Father” (John 14:8). Upon receiving the Spirit of Sonship, having felt his sonship, having become alive in spirit for God and salvation, from the action of the Holy Spirit, he relates to the Father as known, as the Father: “Abba Father” (Rom. 8:15–16)! In the baptismal font the fallen image is restored, man is born into eternal life by water and spirit. Henceforth, the Spirit, having retreated from a person during his fall, begins to be present with him during his earthly life, healing with repentance the damage caused to a person by sin after baptism, and thus making salvation possible for him through repentance until his last breath. The beauty of the likeness is restored by the Spirit, as is the image at baptism. It develops and is perfected by the fulfillment of the Gospel commandments. The example of this beauty, the fullness of this beauty is the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ. “Be an imitator of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1), proclaims the Apostle, calling on the faithful to restore and improve the Divine likeness in themselves, pointing to the Most Sacred Model of the perfection of new people, recreated and renewed by redemption. “Be clothed with our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14). God the Trinity, in the redemption of His image - man, gave such an opportunity for success in improving the likeness that the likeness turns into the union of the image with the Original, the poor creature with its all-perfect Creator. Marvelous, wonderful is the image of God, the image from which God shines and acts! The shadow of Peter the Apostle healed! The one who lied before him fell suddenly dead, just like the one who lied before God! The Ubrists and the headbands of the Apostle Paul performed signs! The bones of Elisha the Prophet resurrected a dead man, whose body the carelessness of the burials allowed to touch the bones of the Spirit-Bearer, which had long been buried in the tomb! The closest similarity, the connection, is obtained and, upon receipt, is maintained by staying in the Gospel commandments. “Be in Me,” the Savior commands His disciples, “and I will be in you. I am the vine, and you are the generation, and whoever is in Me and I in him will produce much fruit” (John 15:4–5). The most blessed union is achieved when, with a clear conscience, cleansed by the removal of all sin, by the exact fulfillment of the Gospel commandments, a Christian partakes of the most holy body of Christ and His most holy blood, and together with His Divinity united with them. “He who eats My flesh,” said the Savior, “and drinks My blood, remains in Me, and I in him” (John 6:56). Reasonable image of God! Consider: to what glory, to what perfection, to what greatness are you called, destined by God! The incomprehensible wisdom of the Creator allowed you to make of yourself what you want to make. Reasonable image of God! Don’t you really want to remain in the worthy image of God, do you want to distort yourself, destroy the likeness, turn into the image of the devil, descend to the dignity of the dumb? God did not pour out His blessings in vain, did not create the wonderful universe in vain, did not in vain honor the creation of His image with a preliminary consultation, did not unconsciously redeem it with Himself when it fell! He will demand an account of all His gifts. He will judge how His generosity is used, how His incarnation is valued, how His blood shed for us at our redemption is valued. Woe, woe to the creatures who neglected the benefits of God, the Creator-Redeemer! The eternal fire, the abyss of fire, kindled long ago, unquenchable, prepared for the devil and his angels, awaits the images of God, distorted and made obscene. There they will burn forever, not burn forever! Brethren! As long as we wander on earth, as long as we, on the eve of eternity - in this visible world - will try to correct the features of the image of God, imprinted by God on our souls, to give the shades and colors of the likeness beauty, liveliness, freshness, and God, in a terrible test, recognizes us as capable of entering His eternal, blissful palace, on His eternal day, on His eternal holiday and triumph. Let us take heart, you of little faith! Let's get moving, lazy ones! The man who is obsequious to us, who at first in his darkness persecuted the Church of God, who was an adversary, an enemy of God, has corrected so much in himself, upon his conversion, the God-given Divine image, has perfected the likeness so much that he boldly proclaims about himself: “I am not the one who lives, but Christ lives in me!” (Gal. 2:20). Let no one doubt the truth of this voice! This voice was so filled with the all-holy Truth, the Holy Spirit assisted it so much that at the voice of Paul the dead were resurrected, demons came out of the people they were tormenting, demonic prophecies fell silent, the enemies of the Light of God were deprived of the light of their eyes, the pagans rejected their idols, came to know Christ - the true God, and worshiped Him. Amen. St. Demetrius of Rostov. Chronicle. Troparion for the Immaculates on Saturday, ch. 5. Psalter with reproach. You might be interested in: