Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today in my worship series, I have with me James Russell. And before we get into our topic, I'm going to give him an opportunity to introduce himself.
I know him because he is one of the administrators for the Divine Council Worldview Facebook page. So I work with James quite a bit and he is such a good guy to talk to you about so many different topics. So I'm super happy to have him here for our worship series.
And James, I'm just gonna go ahead and open up the floor to have you introduce yourself and tell whatever you'd like to say about yourself.
James Russell: Thanks heaps for asking me to come on, Carey. It's been great working with you on the Divine Council stuff because yeah, all sorts of things, really interesting things come up on that page and you get to know each other [00:01:00] when you're working with the sort of questions that people come up with on that page.
It works really well to build those relationships with people over the world as you can probably hear from my accent. I'm not from your side of the world. I'm down here in Australia. It's tomorrow to you guys. So it's, it's just been really, really good and a real good blessing to be able to connect with you guys over there.
I've followed Dr. Michael Heiser's content probably for around eight years. I encountered his content when I was at Bible college, studying my theology degree. I'm a husband, been married 18 years this year. I've got three kids two of them are teenagers. I'm a pastor and an elder in my church down here in Adelaide, just a small little church of about 80, 85 people in the South of Adelaide, which is in South Australia.
Other than that. I don't know what else you listeners might be interested in knowing. I'm just a down to earth guy that enjoys hanging out with my kids. I love the Word of God. I love studying it. And I'm deeply passionate about following Jesus.[00:02:00] And that's the sort of passion I try to put into my congregation.
So I'm really looking forward to the conversation that we'll be having today. I've been listening to the podcast episodes leading in. And it's been fascinating to see where this worship topic goes. So I'm really looking forward to how we go today.
Carey Griffel: I am too. I think this is going to be a great topic.
Basically, I think what we're going to be tackling is one of the questions that I have gotten on my personal discussion group for my podcast. And this question was from Joshua Sherman, and he asks, how does our understanding of worship connect to the image of God? And I think there is so much that we can say about this topic.
James Russell: That's going to be the challenge to keep the conversation down to a manageable time frame, isn't it?
Carey Griffel: Oh, definitely. I can talk for hours, literally, about the image of God.
James Russell: I think it's one of the foundational elements of the faith and I think we'll get into that today as we talk about it specifically in the context of [00:03:00] worship.
But yeah, I think we've forgotten how important sometimes the image of God really is to who we are as humans and what it means to our relationship with our God.
Carey Griffel: so I've had a long series about the image of God and I've talked about what I think about it and the various ideas of how people have thought about the image of God.
So I'd really like to hear from you, James, of how you define or describe what the image of God is.
James Russell: I find it fascinating that You read all these theology books and you, you see the scholars over the years and the big names of Christian development over the centuries speaking about the image of God all the time and one of the things that I've found fascinating.
Is for me personally, I don't think you have to look far to actually get a definition of what the image of God is because I actually think it's right there in the text in Genesis 1 verse 26 and onwards there because I think the big debate there is usually you get these this [00:04:00] conversation going whether the image of God should be a noun or a verb.
And whether it's something you do but from what I see in the text, I can understand why people lean towards turning it into a verb as something that you do. But I think the text is reasonably clear in describing the image , as a status, you know, similar to, whatever your job might be, what role, what position you might have in your job, or even in a.
In a societal setting, you know, a king doesn't king, a prince doesn't prince, they are a king, or they are a prince, or you are a boss, or you are whatever it is, status that you have in your workplace, in your home life, whatever. But what I think, where I think the verb stuff, or what it, what comes into that, is inside the definition of that status, is a set of descriptors that are verbs.
So the image does these set sort of things, and I think that's really, really interesting and clear inside the Genesis narrative that that's what we're looking at in the [00:05:00] image of God, is humanity is made as this status of being the image of God, and then thankfully God includes in his word, The descriptors of what the image does.
And so I think it's really important to keep that a little bit separated rather than saying that image is something we do. It is something that we are. Attached to that is a list of things that we do to meet the requirements , of what the image is. That's how I see it anyway.
Carey Griffel: I think that's a really helpful distinction.
I mean, I don't think you can entirely separate nouns from verbs because nouns do verbs. But at the same time, they're not the same thing.
James Russell: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And I think to some degree, it's almost a watering down of the term, a little bit, just to narrow it down to say, oh, we image God, yes, that, that's true, but , to some degree, there's a certain amount of value that's attached to recognizing the status of image.
And so to say that we [00:06:00] all as humanity are the image of God provides this whole umbrella status that all of humanity is covered by to say that we hold the same status in the eyes of our God because he's created us to be that. To some degree, it's the defining factor between us and the rest of creation.
It's been noted in other places. I particularly like the Bible Project's way of talking about the image of God how they pay attention to the reality that in Genesis 2 and in Genesis 1, the exact same phrase is used of the creatures as of humanity. We are both given the breath of life. And so the reality is, is that the only thing that separates us from the creatures of the field is God's sovereign decision to make humanity his image.
And I think that's really, really important when we're talking about this topic.
Carey Griffel: And if we take all of us as having the same status, then that eliminates any idea of a hierarchy between [00:07:00] humans .
James Russell: Yeah, that's exactly right and I think that's really, really important to pay attention to.
Carey Griffel: So we talk a lot about the cosmic temple in relation to the image of God and I don't really want to get too deeply into that, but I do want to kind of remind the listeners or introduce the topic to them if they haven't done that kind of research into this idea before. And because I think that this idea that The image of God is connected to what creation is itself is also very important, especially when we're talking about how this relates to worship.
James Russell: Yeah, that's fascinating because I think we've gotten distracted over the years, I think, in Christianity as a whole, because everyone wants to have the argument about how literal the creation story is. And inside that, the conversation about how poetic it is, is missed. And the poetic nature of it, I'm sure, as I know your podcast has talked about before, really [00:08:00] does point to this idea that all of creation is the temple of God.
And that's that's purposeful. That's not an accidental thing. It's not incidental. And the idea that creation would be the temple of God has direct connections to the concept of worship. It's the purpose of a temple is to be devoted to the deity that the temple is built for. And so, when we think about creation being the temple of God.
All of a sudden, it opens up all of these avenues of consideration for what worship might be, our purpose inside that temple, and all the things that are attached to that.
Carey Griffel: So, when we're thinking about the image of God and the cosmic temple and that distinction of the correct way of looking at it in the Bible, as opposed to Pagan idolatry... you have the pagans who are using idols in a very different way than what the image of God is. And yet there's a lot of crossover [00:09:00] in, the meaning and the purpose and intent of what that means. , in the pagan temple, the image is what houses the soul of the God or the spirit of the God, we might say.
We might describe it in that kind of a way. Because they have the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony, where the Spirit of the God inhabits the idol. Now, we're not quite that exact kind of thing as the image of God, even though it's using the same word, it's using the same kind of concept there. And yet there's a very distinct difference as well.
So we're called images, which is the same word as idol, and the idols in pagan temples were the objects of worship.
So why are we not the object of worship, if we are also referred to in the same way,
James Russell: The more I think about that, and you're looking at the text, I think , you look at the way that, or the role. And I think this gets down to the verbiage that we were talking about before, because there's [00:10:00] task lists attached to what the image is.
I'm so thankful that in Genesis chapter 1 that , the statement doesn't end with God made humanity in his image and then walks away from the text. There are descriptors in that text that are helping us describe , what God exactly means by making humanity in his image. And I think that's really, really important because I think that's the difference between pagan idolatry and what God's asking and looking for when he creates humanity as his image.
When you think about pagan idolatry, yeah, you're right. That idol is, it's the object of worship, you know, between the humans and the deity. And so there is this divide between the deity and humanity. And I think that gets down to the purpose of humanity inside pagan cultures, pagan religions as well.
Because in that setting, humanity is meant to serve, be subservient, be oppressed almost by the idol or the deity that the idol represents. And so [00:11:00] there is this different sort of relationship between humanity, the idol and the deity. Whereas when you look at Genesis 1 verse 26 and onwards, you get this incredible description where it says That God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.
And God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. That's not a list of tasks that's given to a statue of metal, stone, gold, wood, whatever.
There's a specific purpose inside God making humanity his image, and that is they're meant to have direct connection to the deity, to Yahweh himself, which is missing in the pagan idolatry system. Instead of being oppressed and subservient to the deity, Yahweh's desire for [00:12:00] humanity is to be deeply connected with him and to rule and to have dominion on his behalf in all of creation.
And so we're not the object of worship because we're participating in drawing all of creation to worship God. That's a tremendously different idea and I think The idea that it's a polemic against the pagan idolatry system is really, really poignant to that.
Carey Griffel: That reminds me of the passage in the New Testament about how The creation is groaning for the revelation of the sons of God.
James Russell: Yes, that's exactly right, because creation recognizes that the intercessory object there is not a statue. It's not, it's not anything like that. It is a living being that is humanity that's been placed in that position to represent God to the rest of creation. And when that breaks due to the fall, There's that relational connection between God and the rest of creation that has had some hindrance take place.
[00:13:00] That's not to undermine God's ability to control and be sovereign over it all. It's just a recognition that something has broken down in the makeup between God and the rest of creation. The image is broken.
Carey Griffel: , and creation wants us to be fulfilling that mandate that we have in creation that's connected to our imaging.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
In the pagan world, you have the idol, which is the intermediary between the god and the humans. And usually it's really just the god and , the higher ups. It's quite often not the lower people, although they would also be going to do worship, but there would also be that distinction between. Like there's a more particular relationship that the higher up in society you were, the closer you may have been to the god and things like that. But from the Bible's perspective, us being the image of God, . We have the relationship of God with [00:14:00] humanity, and we tend to think of that as being worship.
But there's also this idea that we are the intermediary between God and the rest of creation. Do you see that as part of what worship is and The matrix of ideas that we could take in as far as thinking about worship.
James Russell: I think so. And I think part of the discussion that you were having with Cindy in the last couple of episodes touched on this a little bit, because you guys talked about the separation that we've now got in our modern day idea of spirituality and physicality where we don't necessarily naturally default to integrating our physical lives with the spiritual.
And Yeah, in the ancient mind, they did that so easily, you know, every part of their lives, as you guys talked about revolved around recognizing the role of the spiritual in their life. And now we're so materialistic and so naturalistic in our way of thinking in our Western culture that , it really [00:15:00] takes a lot of effort for us to realize that our everyday moment by moment life has a connection to the spiritual and so what we're doing in our everyday lives, whether it's going to work, parenting our kids, you know, cooking the next meal for us seems so detached from the spiritual. And yet, when you look at the image of God and how it's connected intricately to Yahweh himself in a spiritual way, it's a beautiful thing to realize that even cooking your meal at home for your family is an act of worship because you are ordering creation to fulfill a purpose that God set in place right at the beginning. And I think that's a really important thing to bring into our minds because I think that's what Paul's getting at a little bit in Romans 12. I did a weird thing with my church on Sunday and I threw away my sermon that I was prepared because God had Romans 12 in my mind all week.
[00:16:00] And this idea that Paul says to the church there in Rome, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, pleasing to God, because this is your act of spiritual worship. that is a massive, massive statement to the people of God, to realize that every moment of their lives is in devotion to God.
That is what worship is. It's not the momentary hour that you give to God on a Sunday morning, or the 20 minutes that you listen to a worship CD in the car. It can involve that. But it's not isolated to that. It's every moment of your life, because you are the image of God, then your life is meant to be a devotion to God in whatever it's doing.
That's a tremendous thing to come to grips with, and it's empowering to the Christian mind, because, Paul said that everyone fell short of the glory of God, remember? All have sinned. And yet he's [00:17:00] provided a way in Christ to give us this perfect example of what it looks like to be the perfect image of God.
And you look at the life of Christ. And everything that he does is in adoration and in worship to the father. And we're being told to follow that. That's what discipleship is. We're meant to be following Jesus, not just in the things that we do, but in the mindset and attitudes that we adopt as believers to realize that everything in our lives is for his glory.
Carey Griffel: Oh yeah. I love that. I think that we don't often think about that connection between worship and discipleship.
James Russell: I was having some conversations with some other people about this and just getting to that realization that, one of the things I've been very passionate about lately is the Bible's understanding of what knowledge is.
I think we've put knowledge in this category that it's purely an intellectual pursuit just to fill our heads with information. But the Bible's idea of knowledge is [00:18:00] experiential. Adam knew his wife and they bore Children. He didn't just understand a new aspect of her. He didn't have an intellectual interaction with her. No, he experienced Eve and they had Children.
To know God is not just to have new information about him, but to experience him in everyday life moment by moment. And that connects all the way through to discipleship when we're being called to follow Christ to realize that Every moment of our lives is seeking to follow him and to reflect him and to , be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we can follow Christ better and better.
Discipleship is worship.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. Well that's what I was gonna ask. So every time we're taking that step in discipleship, whatever that looks like, whatever that is, that is an integral part of worship, then?
James Russell: I think it's the purest definition of it. You know, to some degree, [00:19:00] institutionalizing the church has eroded that concept a little bit.
So, to some degree, in a Christianized culture, we've fallen into the trap that thinking, oh, we'll go to church on Sunday. I've performed my act of worship and then for the rest of the week, you don't think that you're a part of the church or that you are the church for the rest of your working week or, you know, whatever it is that you're doing through the week.
Whereas the call to follow Christ is about every moment. Do you realize that in your fathering, in your mothering, in your, you know, I'm using verbs of things that could be statuses again, but you know, in those, everyday activities that we take for granted and that we sort of do in autopilot, I think the journey of discipleship is owning that those things are a part of our spiritual worship.
It is the living sacrifice of our bodies. As we glorify God in the way that we're raising our Children, that we're fulfilling our tasks at work, that we're [00:20:00] providing for our family, that we're testifying to the goodness of God in whatever aspect he's put us in, the deeper we own that, then the deeper our relationship with Christ becomes, the deeper our discipleship grows, and you can see how sanctification happens.
Because you're constantly renewing your mind and being transformed into him because he's starting to take up every moment of your mind.
Carey Griffel: So how do you think that all of that connects with the kinds of ritual that we do in churches when we take the Lord's table or we sing a worship song together or whatever that kind of worship looks like in our circumstances.
How does that relate, then, to our discipleship walk? How are those connected?
James Russell: I really think those things are about the community. They're about, you know, the whole point of coming together, you know, Hebrews tells us to not forsake the gathering, as some habitually do. The reality is that [00:21:00] the whole point of , the church, the ecclesia, the gathering of God's people is a provision of God recognizing that, yeah, we're human, we actually forget that we are the image of God. We forget that our lives are living worship to him. And so the idea of coming together and having the liturgy, having those rituals that we do are physical, tangible reminders of the thing that we're meant to have in our minds for the rest of our lives.
You know, so we come to the table and we remind ourselves that this is Christ's body that was broken for us. This is his blood that was shed for us and that highlights your week or your whole week becomes structured around that. So on Sunday or whatever day it is that you have the table or that you have that time with your church family, , you have that time and then the rest of your week becomes motivated about the next time you do that. So you're automatically drawn to the reality that you are a part of the family of God, [00:22:00] which is meant to connect you to the idea that you are the image of God. You're living like this, you're thinking like this, all of a sudden your week becomes I wonder about my brother and sister in Christ over there.
I want to, I want to minister to them in some way. We have such tremendous abilities in our technology now to be able to reach out to our church family just because a thought's popped into our head. You know, Oh, I was just thinking about you. How are you going? And how many times have you done that that someone's responded with yeah, actually. Something has happened that you could pray for me in this all of a sudden the church is being the church outside of just that hour and a half on Sunday and the temple of God, which is the church is operating and living and worshiping him throughout the week. And it's all been triggered by that liturgy that ritualism that happens on the Sunday morning.
It's just the highlight to help the human mind in its frailty have that constant reminder of their identity in Christ and in their creator.
Carey Griffel: That's beautiful. So,[00:23:00] it's not just a one or the other thing. It's not that... You just have to choose one. It's that they work integrally together in some ways.
James Russell: Absolutely. If we didn't have that, I think we'd forget real quick because the tangible world is so distracting. We're taken up with our life needs moment by moment, constantly. And so it wouldn't take long for us to forget our identity. I mean, I think that's the whole point of the table. You know, do this in remembrance of me says Jesus, you know, he knows that if they don't have this, they're more than likely to forget. It's a grace. It's not a, it's not a obligation in the sense of, oh, I've got to do this to appease God. It is a grace on the part of God to say, this is what I want you to utilize to remember me so that I can be the center of your life every day.
Carey Griffel: That's beautiful. The last time I was talking to Cindy, we were comparing some ancient Near Eastern literature with the Bible. And [00:24:00] in the ancient Near Eastern literature, It's like when somebody was being frowned upon by the god and they were suffering and struggling and they didn't know why, and they were doing all of the checklist of things to try and get back into the god's good graces so they would be blessed again, well, their community abandoned them. If their community reached out to them, said a kind word, then that person would also be cursed by the god. So there was zero community fellowship in this time of suffering in this kind of a text for the pagan literature and the pagan world. But for us, that's exactly opposite.
James Russell: It's interesting that you say that, because to some degree, it wasn't just pagan. It was even in the Jewish mindset. You think about that time where Jesus and the disciples are in, they encounter this was he blind or crippled or something like that? And the disciples go, for whose sin was this guy, you know, is this guy in this state?
And Jesus said, it wasn't for that. It's to glorify me [00:25:00] now. And he heals him. It was even in the Jewish mindset that if you were poor and in the, you know, in the lower classes of society, then you're an outcast, you don't have God's blessing. And so you distance yourself from them and yet, yeah, inside the Christian ideology, Jesus completely twists that around and he sits there and goes, no, you raise those up.
He reaches out to those that are in those outcast settings that everyone else looks down upon. And to the point where the entirety of the New Testament is about Christians going through trials and being called to follow Christ and show the joy of the victory of Jesus in their lives. You know, it's if you think, really think about how you could summarize the New Testament as a whole, that would be its theme, because whatever church is being written to by Paul, Peter, James, Jude, you know, all the authors there, they're [00:26:00] addressing churches that are going through a different trial, and the call is the same. Don't take your eyes off Jesus. Maintain your composure. The peace of God is yours if you would just switch on to it.
Inside trial, you're not outcast. Inside trial, you are glorifying the creator because you are being transformed into his image. That is worship.
Carey Griffel: Okay, well, that's a good transition into this question of what is the image of God and the image of Christ? Are they two separate things, or how are they related?
James Russell: The image of God and the image of Christ. Well, I think part of that's going to come down to what Paul has ultimately said, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We are the image of God, but we're broken. You know, I love that Paul uses the full and short language of the word sin, you know, hamartia means to fall short, , inside that there's something that [00:27:00] all of humanity has failed to live up to, has not hit the target, has missed that does not remove the task from us or the status from us just means we've failed at it.
And so God's part of God's restoration act is to himself, in the Son, take on humanity and show us what it looks like to be the image. And so Paul grabs that language and he's constantly telling believers that they ought to be, as we've talked about, be transformed, you know, is it Corinthians or Colossians, sorry, it says he's the image of the invisible God, you know, the firstborn over all creation. Jesus is the ultimate demonstration in the example of what it looks like to not fail the image of God. To not fail in that status. And so as Paul's constantly telling the church to transform and grow and be sanctified to become more like Christ so that that image can be restored moment by moment, day by [00:28:00] day.
It's not that we have lost the status of the image. It's that we've fallen short of it. Whereas Christ succeeded and he fulfills it. And one day when we stand before him and we'll be clothed in his righteousness, wow, what a day when we say the only reason that I am the fulfilled image of God is because of the sacrifice of your son, that is the gospel.
And, and so it's not that we have to choose between who is the image and who is not the image, whether it's Christ or us, it's the recognition that he has perfectly fulfilled it on our behalf. And the humility that we have to adopt that we failed it. And so we lean entirely on him in that believing loyalty for our salvation, so that we can realize the purpose of our creation to be that image.
Carey Griffel: So as far as worship being part of this transformative process that we have. being [00:29:00] transformed and being conformed, are those different things or are they related? Are they the same?
James Russell: I want to go to Romans 12 and have a look at that because I think it's become so pivotal to what we're discussing.
Cause one of the things that I was talking about on Sunday with my church was, inside of all of this, Paul says, do not be conformed to this world, but so instead of being conformed to the world. Be transformed. They're a contradicting thing to not look like this world is to be transformed by the renewal of our mind.
And one of the things I was saying to my congregation was I think we put the emphasis on renewing the mind without realizing that the renewing of the mind is simply the tool for our lives to be transformed away from the world and towards Christ. That's repentance, isn't it? that loyalty that we're meant to be displaying in our lives.
So conforming seems to [00:30:00] sort of have a default inference in it when you conform to something. It's just you just go with the flow because you're being pulled along, but transformation has purpose. It has intentionality in it. And so being transformed into the image of God is something that Requires us to utilize our faculties, our decision making our purposeful pointedness in our intellectual pursuits to follow Christ rather than just default to doing what everyone else is doing.
Carey Griffel: So we are active participants then?
James Russell: Yeah. Isn't that a tremendous thing to think about? And we've been talking about the difference between pagan idolatry and this, pagan idolatry is about conforming to what the deity wants. Whereas worship and being the image of God is, yes, God's called us to do something, but it's participation.
It's not oppression. it's pure liberty to rule, to be connected to the one that made us and desires us to [00:31:00] be in his family. And so our lives as worship is about not being squashed down by rules and regulations. But by being liberated to live with our God, that is a tremendous thing.
Carey Griffel: Yeah.
When I first started learning about that, when I heard Dr. Heiser talk about the image of God, I started thinking in terms of that suddenly, like, All of a sudden, this was what purpose was in life. This is why we're here. This is embedded into the very purpose of creation. And , that's part of our lives.
And I don't know how you don't get excited about that.
James Russell: How many Bible verses do we have rattling around in our heads that we've sort of missed the intensity of? I think about Proverbs, you know. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he'll direct your paths.
Have we skipped over the simplicity [00:32:00] of in all your ways acknowledge him? Like, just how, how simplistic is that? In all your ways, acknowledge him, recognize his presence, recognize your connection to him in everything you do. And the outflow of that is he will direct your path. You will not be able to help, but see that he has directed your life moment by moment.
And that's a tremendous thing. It's liberating. It's not oppressing. It's a beautiful thing to see that God is directing our lives if we would just recognize that he's there. I'm sorry, I get really passionate.
Carey Griffel: Oh, me too. Because it's less about that idea of escape. And I just want this cushy life and I want to be floating on the clouds somewhere or something that that's not anywhere in the Bible.
That's not anything of what we're talking about here.
James Russell: That's right. The peace of God that transcends all understanding is not void of trial. [00:33:00] It's incorporating trial. It's recognizing that in the midst of whatever trial, life suffering, Situation that's going on, which every single one of us will have to endure inside of that as believers comes the call to follow Christ as an act of worship to recognize that inside whatever trial it is that we're going through our eternity has been made secure by the perfect image of God because he gave himself for us, he had his body broken for us, he shed his blood for us, And we are called just to take on that mindset as Philippians 2 says of humility and, and just follow him because what awaits us is glorification, just like it did him.
You know, if we would see our life journey as Ending and being focused on that hope that is to come of glorification with Christ, it [00:34:00] would it would transform our lives. We wouldn't be living as defeated believers. We would be living victorious flying on the clouds, you know, in a metaphorical sense of the joy of the Lord, because we have peace in a world that has no hope. You think about, that we don't face trials any differently to anyone else in the world.
You know, we, cop the same curve balls that everyone else does, and yet the call of Christ is see what I've done for you and live victorious, worshiping me in the entire process, just being devoted to me. And that's, that, that is the call of being a believer. It's not it's not so high that it's unattainable.
It incorporates failing. It shows grace and mercy every step of the way. And yet it liberates the mind from being bogged down in the trial of life to see the glory of God in it.[00:35:00]
Carey Griffel: Yeah, we get so concerned about our politics or the particular situation that we're in. It's like, well, are those things really the things that Oppress us, or are they things that we should view in a different way according to , our relationship with God and how we are to conduct ourselves in the world and how we are to see our relationship with the world itself.
James Russell: Yeah, that's right. And the more that we separate the physical and the spiritual, the harder that concept is to grab a hold of. I think that's why we're talking about what we're talking about, you know, that worship is holistic living. It incorporates your Sunday morning worship. It incorporates being part, you know, gathering with the body of Christ, but to see our lives as, emanating the glory of God to the entirety of creation it shouldn't scare us.[00:36:00]
It really shouldn't. It should motivate us to be transformed into these people that are full of joy, not unreal. I'm not talking about that face mask that goes on that says everything's good all the time. No. Yeah, the trials hit, but I know where my security is. It's been bought by the precious blood of Christ, and I'm just transformed by that.
Carey Griffel: Do you have any ideas of how we can help people in our individual church situations to kind of see this idea of discipleship and the image of God and worship and how those things should be kind of packaged together and , how do we teach that to people? How do we communicate that with others?
James Russell: That's a really good question because that's the forever challenge of the pastor, isn't it? How do you get those things that seem to be so foundational when you're in the word all the time to everyone that is busy doing a 60 hour week trying to put food on the table for their family. And I think so much of it [00:37:00] is an example. So much of it is not just the pulpit.
When you as an individual have come to the realization that your life is worship, how much does God language come into your... Everyday vocabulary when you're talking with people, you know, I sit down with a real estate agent yesterday and we're talking about , what things are going on.
And all of a sudden it's just incredible how God's just provided this. And so he's taken away. Oh, look, this happened and God gets dropped into the conversation. Just letting that perpetuate your mind. How quickly do we default to worldly conversations with that, even with our church family, rather than realizing that even inside everyday life and the struggle, we need to be bringing God into the conversation constantly, you know, and so for myself, as I'm leading my church, one of the things that's important to me is never taking a backward step from acknowledging God as that [00:38:00] proverb says. . You know, if we want to see God's hand directing our paths, maybe we should put that effort into acknowledging Him in everything we do. With each other. And that's the whole point of community is that if, in your churches from the leadership down, they shouldn't be hiding their trials, you know, I think one of the things I was brought up in really, really strict verging on cultic denominations growing up and the pastors put on that face of always having everything together or, you know, I, came to know it as, the pastor's smile, you know, that one that you can see them put on and force on his, oh, that I wince at it.
This is like, where's the reality? You know, your life is no different for you than it is for me. You just have the knowledge that Christ is there and you're meant to be demonstrating that to the rest of the church. So my encouragement to church leaders, you know, whether they're [00:39:00] elders, ministry leaders, pastors, deacons, is to really own the trial that you're going through in life. Don't hide it from the people around you, but show the hope and the joy of Christ inside those trials, because that is what is gonna infect the church culture. That is what's going to have people go, well, how, how come he's going through a harder time than me, but he's closer to Christ than me?
I need to, I need to understand that. You know, that only happens when people are real about what they're going through. It doesn't mean that tears won't be shed. You know, I've shed tears over some of the, most minute things because that's what life does. But it's important that we're real with each other.
And... Again, that's the integration between the physical and the spiritual. The spiritual is just as real as the physical. And so when the physical trial is happening, the spiritual reality of our security in Christ and the life of [00:40:00] worship we're meant to be living should come through.
Carey Griffel: Yeah. Well, we do have that tendency , to hide our problems.
We don't want to burden others. We don't want to ask for help. We don't want to show weakness, perhaps. And I was just talking about this, again, last time I talked with Cindy, is If you're not showing any of your vulnerability, and you're not showing any of your trials, and your suffering, then you're not allowing anybody else to enter into that with you.
You're just kind of keeping it to yourself, and saying, Well, I'll just have to kind of manage this myself, instead of giving it to the body of Christ, giving it to God Himself in that way as well, and allowing that to be improved for you, and also... Allow others to participate in that and bless them through your trials, which is kind of a paradoxical thing.
James Russell: That's exactly, I was, as you were talking, I was thinking that, you know, when we hide , the [00:41:00] trials and the struggles that we go through, because we're scared of of coming across weak, or we don't want to burden others with our, with our life struggles, we are robbing them of seeing the blessing of God's provision in our lives.
The ultimate way that other people can be motivated to trust God is when they see that you've trusted him and it's come through. It's a beautiful thing to bear each other's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. You know, that's not a throwaway statement. That is a, it's a pointed command. And yeah, the family, you know, you think about even what a, what a healthy family looks like, you know, a blood family, they go through a trial together.
Yeah. You know, when one family member encounters a trauma, the reality is the family carries it with them and they experience what it's like to go through that journey, even to the point of coming out the other [00:42:00] side, looking back and going, man, God was, God was so good through it. That trial was so bad and yet somehow God showed himself to be faithful and good.
You know, inside the church, how many people will miss out on seeing God's goodness because we haven't shared our lives completely and humbly. There is no shame in expressing the reality of the life that you're living. It's real. And we get to put our arms around each other and push each other on and say, don't forget God's goodness.
Don't forget you're his image and you can show his goodness to everyone around you, even when you're struggling.
Carey Griffel: Yeah, and I think that's true also of when we're angry or any kind of strong emotion, like we have a really hard time with lament in the church and just sitting with people who are, who are complaining, who are, who are just crying out for relief.
And our tendency is [00:43:00] to throw the band aid on it and find that solution immediately, and not to say we shouldn't try and do that, we want to solve people's problems if we can, but at the same time, a lot of times, you can't solve something immediately. And We have a hard time with emotional intelligence and understanding our emotions because so often we're not allowed to feel them in public with other people.
James Russell: I had an experience a while ago with someone in my church. They came and you could see on their face that they were, they were struggling that day. And they were just sitting down in our foyer, just, just looked flat. And you know, how are you going? What's up? And, and they expressed, they said, I'm struggling, so I'm feeling the loneliness. I just, I feel, I feel lonely. I'm a married guy with with a fantastic wife and three children. Loneliness is not a problem for me. How do I connect to this, brother in Christ who's going through something that I just, [00:44:00] I don't have in my realm of experience. I didn't, I didn't have an answer and I just reached out my hand and I said, well, praise God, let's go and worship.
, let's come and do what we're here to do. Let's take our minds off of , the struggle that we're in and let's look to God's goodness. And he gave me a hug after the service, just going, that was exactly what he needed. I didn't solve, the problem didn't go away. I didn't all of a sudden magically provide any provision in a sense for the struggle he was having in his mind.
But we were able to center together on God's goodness as we came around the table and remembered Christ's sacrifice for us. And that's what I mean by that's how we spread that idea that everyday living is worship. And that it can, infect, infect our lives. Hopefully, just in saying, let's go and worship, I was able to help disciple that gentleman and bring him to a place that he can do that in his [00:45:00] everyday life, not just on a Sunday.
Carey Griffel: , that is one of the powers of worship, is it turns us from ourselves towards who we should be focused towards.
James Russell: That's exactly right. Because that's what our lives are meant to be. They're meant to be the image reflecting God, looking like God to the world. So now I'm meant to look at you, Carey, you're meant to look at me and I'm meant to think of God, you know, because you're his image, I'm his image, and we're meant to be drawn to him through each other.
It's that's a tremendous thing to come to grips with.
Carey Griffel: That is, and I think that a lot of church traditions, some historical church traditions will view that as something like veneration of , as we are the image of God, we are supposed to be reflecting that glory. We're supposed to be seeing God in each other.
And so it's not a bad thing to see that in each other and to act upon that.[00:46:00] Well, there was another question from Joshua Sherman and , this was: are acts of charity toward our fellow image bearers acts of worship? And I think that's what that speaks to directly.
James Russell: Absolutely. As long as ultimately we're looking at the motivation of the heart inside those things, you know when we're doing acts of charity towards each other, because we want them to see the love of Christ and the glory of God in what we're doing, then we are worshiping him because we're directing people's attention Back to our God.
That is what worship is. It's being aware and devoted to him. Whereas when we're doing those acts of charity because we want the glory for ourselves, then we're falling short of the image, aren't we? Because we're not looking at directing that glory to God. We're looking at doing it for ourselves. And that's why, you know, do all things to the glory of God is [00:47:00] another pointed command of Paul's.
It's not accidental. He's seeing everything that we do , as having purposeful meaning to point each other towards God.
Carey Griffel: I don't know about you, but I've heard a lot of sermons about how abiding in God is about prayer and about reading the Bible. And I'll agree with those things. But there's so much more, and I don't know, what do you think about that?
James Russell: Oh, you're touching on a lot of things I get very passionate about.
You're exactly right, when people, that catchphrase of, I'm in the Word, you know, it means I've spent, I've spent my obligatory hour in the Bible today. What we're doing right now is being in the Word, because we're sharing the truths of God with each other. Being in the Word is having your everyday life transformed and motivated by the truths of God that you've discovered in his word [00:48:00] by experiencing him in your everyday life. And so the conversation you have with your business partner, with your wife, with your kids, with the person at the checkout, at the supermarket, . Has that so been influenced by a truth of God, you know, all of a sudden, the person that's treated you wrong behind the counter because they're having a grumpy day, all of a sudden, you're not affected by that because you've seen them as the image of God, and so you treat them with love instead of responding with evil for evil, that's what it is to live in the word, it's not about this obligation to spend a certain amount of time in prayer or a certain amount of time in the Bible, It's great to spend time in the Bible and to spend time in prayer.
We all should be doing that. But it shouldn't be out of an obligation because we think our God needs to be appeased. What we do is we liberate ourselves to realize that we live with our God. So when we spend time in the Word, when we spend time in prayer, [00:49:00] we're looking to have our lives transformed by the renewing of our minds.
So that we can know what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. , it's liberation, not oppression. I keep repeating that phrase because we default to being oppressed. That's my concern. And that puts us automatically in a victim and defeatist mentality, rather than living the joy of God in our lives.
Carey Griffel: The fact that we could be victorious through something like Suffering and the bad things and all of the things we deal with. ..That's such an upside down reality to the world. It's not what you hear in psychology books or anything like that. It's not what you hear in the Instagram posts and all of that.
But it's, it's the reality that we live.
James Russell: And we've got to be honest, it's not easy. The reality is, you know, we can talk about it and throw these [00:50:00] phrases out flippantly, but when the rubber actually hits the road, you know, if I, if something catches me by surprise today, I'm telling you right now, my flesh is going to have its moment where it wins.
It's going to default to poor me. Rather than seeing, yeah, no, God's still present. It will take time to switch into that mentality that no, this, this, this has surprised me, but it hasn't surprised him and it hasn't subtracted from his glory or his sovereignty. His hand is still in this. I just need to rest in him.
You know, that's, , what discipleship is. That's what sanctification is. It's learning to get there sooner and sooner and sooner. Through life's trials.
Carey Griffel: And it seems to me that's what repentance is all about and why we need it so often.
James Russell: Yeah, it's not that one, you know, repentance is not that one momentary time in your life where you were sorry for your sin. Repentance is [00:51:00] a permanent posture of turning to him and that's something we're gonna have to do daily
Carey Griffel: that's one thing that I haven't really gone down into as far as Repentance and that act of repentance as far as worship.
Because a lot of people have different ideas of what repentance is, and well, that just means you go to your priest and you confess, or you go and do something in order to, and that's part of what repentance can be. But there's so much that we have to repent for, and there's so many reasons that we need to turn from whatever direction we are and turn towards God, and all of that seems to be acts of repentance.
And every time we're doing that, it seems to me that would be also an act of direct worship.
James Russell: I think that's why Dr. Heiser's, you know, phrase that he utilized believing loyalty really struck home with me [00:52:00] because you're right, the word repentance has taken on traditional meanings and come to mean something that I don't think the original context was really pointing at and loyalty, I think is a really great way of understanding repentance because I've talked, with my wife regularly, you know, in a sense of if I leave my socks on the floor and don't put them in the wash, have I really acted disloyal or have I just stuffed something up, you know, I haven't betrayed the relationship as such, but it probably would be a good idea if I eventually got to the point where I defaulted to putting them where they should go, you know, just to, you know, you know, it's not, it's not that I'm going to get divorced For doing those small things, you know, but then there are things that are very, very clearly acts of disloyalty.
Repentance is, is a little bit like that, you know, in the sense that the more that we start to realize that our lives are meant to be in devotion and loyalty , to our God, [00:53:00] who's done so much for us, then the more we turn away from the obvious acts that would represent betrayal, and we actually start to see the smaller things in life that go, no, no, even Like we started off with the podcast, you know, today, even the cooking of the meal for my family is an act of devotion to my God.
If I'm doing that just to please myself, you know, am I being really loyal in that? Whereas, oh Lord, thank you for this food. Look at the provision that you provided that I can provide for my family in this way. It's just, it's such a small thing, but the joy it brings in your relationship to God just transforms life, and then your kids see it, and then when you have guests round and you give thanks to God for the food that you're eating, all of a sudden you're propagating the goodness of God because you're being his image in the small things.
And it rolls [00:54:00] over and plays into those big things. So that the repentance and the image is really, really connected because repentance is about showing everyone else that everything you do is to the glory of God.
Carey Griffel: Oh man, we, we often think of repentance as just an internal, this is about me thing
James Russell: Or even just, I'm sorry.
Repentance means saying sorry. No, no, it doesn't. It means completely turning around and devoting it to where it should be devoted to... . That's loyalty.
Carey Griffel: And again, that's got that connection of how we bring creation and other people and Everything around us into relationship with God in a better way every time we're doing something like that.
James Russell: That's right. And just think about how that applies to being a witness and being a testimony to the gospel. You know, that's why, , in my mind, the gospel is not just a verbal message. It's a lived out [00:55:00] message. You know, it's pointless telling people that Jesus loves them when Your life isn't displaying the love of Jesus in your own life.
You know, if you're a defeated person and you're trying to tell other people that Jesus loves them so much that he died for them, there's a disconnect. The only way that message that Jesus loves them can ring true is if you're living that Jesus loves you. And , that has transformed your life to see his glory in every aspect of what you're living.
Carey Griffel: Including your sin, including your suffering, including everything.
James Russell: Including your sin. Amen to that. , it's holistic living and I know I'm repeating it a little bit, but that's liberating. It's motivating. It's empowering. , it's not oppressing. , it's a beautiful thing to see that God can be glorified through our failings and through our weaknesses.[00:56:00]
Carey Griffel: Yeah. We have so many messages today that , are that oppressive message of You're not good enough, or you need to feel bad because of this, or look at all of these people over here who are oppressing you in this way, and all of these other things, and from the way our sin affects our lives to the way our families are and our friends and society in general, like it's all that kind of a message.
It's not liberating. It's not a message of love. It's not God reaching out into humanity and us responding to him and and connecting with him. That's a very different kind of upside down message. But I think a lot of Christians still don't quite grasp that.
James Russell: That's exactly right. And that's exactly why I get excited about it too, because we're talking about the same thing where we're seeing the power of the gospel, the power of the God that has made us to be his image.
[00:57:00] And he calls us to follow him and to, you know, that song to give our lives as a daily offering of service to the servant King, you know, Jesus example of rulership was not void of trial. I mean, you think about the life of Jesus and the opposition that he sought ultimately culminating , in the cross.
And Hebrews says for the joy that was set before him, he endured it and despised the shame. You know, do we see our Christian lives in that way? , do we see that the world sees our faith with shame? And yet do we despise the shame because we know the glory that's to come. Because we are being transformed into his image because we've fallen short of it.
We are the image of God and one day it will be fulfilled and our imaginations can only grapple a small percentage of what it's going to be like when we [00:58:00] are fulfilled image bearers of God. I've used that phrase purposely, fulfilled image bearers of God. Right now, we've got failings to deal with and praise God for his grace and mercy in our everyday lives.
Carey Griffel: Praise God. Indeed. Was there anything else you wanted to add to our conversation before we wrap up here?
James Russell: I think we've covered pretty much everything and probably a little bit more than what we were planning. So , I'm really thankful for having, for having the opportunity to come on and speak with you.
This has been really, really encouraging. And I think that topic of worship is so important for us to understand, and I hope it's an encouragement to your listeners as well, to realize that. Having Christ in your life, I mean, we didn't even touch on what it means for the spirit of God to be present in the believer's life, you know, and what that means for worship.
Maybe that's a discussion for another day, but[00:59:00] we have God's presence with us. His spirit is indwelling us constantly reminding us that we are his, he is the guarantee, remember he's the guarantee of our salvation. And so that should be motivating us to live victorious, joyous lives in worship to our God.
Carey Griffel: Beautifully said. Thank you so much for joining me today, James.
James Russell: No worries. Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed it.
Carey Griffel: Well, I do hope you will join me for another episode in this series.
James Russell: We'd love
Carey Griffel: We have much more to cover, so.
James Russell: No, that's beautiful. Thanks so much, Carey.
Really appreciate it.
Carey Griffel: All right. Thank you. So wrapping up this week's episode, I am struck by how much worship has to do with the image of God. And I'm not going to say that this is not a topic that you don't hear from the pulpit. But I've not heard a whole lot of [01:00:00] sermons that equate these two things, and yet they're so tightly wound in the biblical narrative and the biblical mindset.
And the fact that discipleship just overflows in those topics is, it's a beautiful thing. You know, in a lot of churches, you have worship on Sundays and you have maybe another type of thing that goes on that is called a discipleship program. But I love the idea of wedding those two things together, and seeing that both worship and discipleship are much broader topics than we tend to think about.
But that is our tendency, isn't it? We box things in, we define something, and then Once we define something, it sits in its little box, and we don't tend to bring it out to play with the other definitions. But this is something we need to do a whole lot because the world is so integrated, and the Bible [01:01:00] is such a beautiful thing that brings together so many topics in unexpected ways once we start looking.
I hope you guys enjoyed that. I hope you got something out of it. I hope it gets you excited like I am excited. Just thinking about what it means to be a Christian. What it means to be the image of God and how that relates to other people around us. I doubt this will be the only episode that we bring up the topic of the image of God in this series.
so at least I'm looking forward to more. I don't know about you. At any rate, thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing these episodes with other people. And thank you to my Patreon and PayPal supporters. You guys are the best. If you want to contact me, you can find me on Facebook, you can find me in my discussion group, you can find me on email, you can find me through my website.
If you've got any more questions for the worship series, please submit those in one of those [01:02:00] places. But until next time, I hope you all have a blessed week, and we will see you later.
