In the Image of Man

This poem doesn’t need much explaining.

The following is a poetized version of 2 Timothy 3:1-5, which talks about what will characterize the last days. At that time, people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, and lovers of pleasure among other things, but not lovers of God. They will be ungrateful, unholy, unforgiving, and disobedient to their parents. (Whoa.) They will have a form of godliness but deny its power.

While God made us in His image, the last line refers to our attempt to remake God in ours. As noted before, behind our sin is a lesser love. There’s a god we have made to suit ourselves, that won’t bother, convict, or confront us. This is a mark of the last days.

So if that’s the case, it’s not crazy to think that’s what we’re living in. The good news is that one day God will make all things new, and we’ll experience full freedom.

The Last Days

We quake today at heinous crimes;

Mark this: To come are terrible times.

I think we all may safely agree

That in the last days men shall be

Lovers of self and lovers of gold—

Selfish and un-self-controlled—

Boastful, abusive, belligerent, proud,

Who do as they please while their backs are unbowed—

Defiant, ungrateful, unholy, unjust—

Forgetting they too will return to the dust.

Unloving, unruly, they’ll fail to obey

And bitter and stubborn live their own way.

Lovers of vanity, lovers of youth,

They’ll compromise, hate, and dishonor the truth.

They’ll envy the wealth and glory of kings,

Be entertained by lesser things,

Refuse to do the work they should—

Lovers of praise, not lovers of good—

Slanderous, brutal, rash, and conceited;

All law but their own goes wholly unheeded.

They’ll threaten their neighbor, their brother defraud—

Lovers of pleasure, not lovers of God—

And defend to the death the lies they’ve believed,

Go on deceiving and being deceived,

Feigning the goodness they love to profess,

Profaning the Power of virtuousness.

But are not these evils the marks of today?

O God of heaven, do not delay!

Free us from evil that always began,

“Let us make God in the image of man.”

It was the greatest honor God did to man that he made man in the image of God; but it is the greatest dishonor man has done to God that he has made God in the image of man.

Matthew Henry