Jamin Bradley

Christianese: “All of you and none of me.”

Better Statement: “All of me, renewed to all of Jesus.”

While I understand the heart of the statement, “all of you and none of me,” it’s more grounded in self-hate than self-love. We are all made in the image of God and therefore we each have the capacity to image God in a unique way. When people look at you, they are supposed to get a glimpse of what God is like. When they experience your gifts and talents, they are experiencing something of what God is like.

That being said, God doesn’t want you to shrink into nothingness—nor is he looking for you to become some homogenized version of his image, as though you would look exactly like every other Christian if you shrunk down far enough to become nothing.

You, dear human, are a part of God’s good creation. God doesn’t only love you—he likes you and wants you. The call in Scripture is to fully renew the image of God in you to the image of Christ, so that you might think and live fully like Jesus. Sure, there will be things in you that don’t belong with the image of Jesus and you’ll need to chisel those things off. But Jesus is not trying to make you a full clone of himself as much as he’s trying to come fully alive in you.

God loves to collaborate with us. His Son shows us what living like the image of God looks like. And the Spirit guides and empowers us to rip the influence of Sin out of our life so that we might conform our unique image to Jesus.

All of us, renewed to all of Jesus. Help us Holy Spirit, that it may be so.