@FirstChurchofJerusalem
Today's Early Church Wisdom
“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
~ Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD) From the Preface to his lost ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’
This week's Psalm is Psalm 31 'My Rock, My Shield, My Song'

We Can Look Increasingly Like God

Now I want to say something radical, and this is one of the most radical things about Christianity. We were made in God’s image, but that image was marred by the Fall. It was not entirely lost, but it was certainly damaged beyond repair by merely human means. At the Cross God provides a way for that image to be restored. It is the way of salvation. As men and women receive Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, they are born again, and at that very moment their spirit is made new and the image is restored. 

But are they made fully ‘like’ God at that moment? I don’t think so. One has only to look at the behaviour of some so-called Christians to see that they are very unlike God in some respects! The marvellous thing is that if they will choose to walk and talk with Jesus daily, His Spirit will transform them and they will become increasingly like God, thinking the way God thinks, and doing the things God would do. This is a truly remarkable thing.