The Portrait Renewed on the Same Wood

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. ROMANS 8:29

Some teachers are remembered for a sentence, others for a picture. Athanasius left the church one of its best pictures of salvation, and he tucked it into a single short paragraph in the fourteenth section of On the Incarnation. Imagine, he says, a portrait painted on a wooden panel. Over time it has been spoiled by stains from outside, until the likeness can hardly be seen. What does the painter do? He does not throw the panel away. The person whose likeness it is must come again and sit for the artist, so that the portrait can be renewed on the same wood.

Here are his words: “for, for the sake of his picture, even the mere wood on which it is painted is not thrown away, but the outline is renewed upon it.” In the same way, he goes on, the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our region to renew man once made in His likeness.

The image spoiled

To feel the force of the picture we need to remember what Athanasius has already said. God made human beings in His own image, giving them a share in His Word so that they could know Him and live in blessedness. That image was the most precious thing about us. It was what made us more than animals; it was the likeness of our Maker written into our nature.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. GENESIS 1:26

But the image was spoiled. Men turned their eyes away from God and downwards, towards things of sense. They made idols of wood and stone, worshipped the creature rather than the Creator, fell into magic and the worship of demons. The likeness of God in them was smeared and darkened, until, as Athanasius says, men became so brutish that they seemed hardly rational at all.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man. ROMANS 1:22–23

Who could restore it

Athanasius asks the obvious question. Who could repair such damage? Not human beings, he says, for they are only made after the image; a copy cannot restore a copy. Not angels, for they are not the image of God either. Not creation, for creation was there all along, and men had looked at it and still gone astray. If creation had been enough, these great evils would never have come to pass.

Only one could do it: the original Himself. The Son is not merely made in the image of God; He is the Image of God. So He came, in His own person, to renew the likeness in us. Just as the painter needs the sitter to come back before the portrait can be restored, so the human race needed the very Image of the Father to come among us before the image in us could be made new.

Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. COLOSSIANS 1:15

This is one of the reasons Athanasius could never accept that the Son is a creature. A creature, however exalted, would be at best another copy. Only the Original can restore the likeness.

The same wood

Now notice the detail that makes the picture so tender. The painter does not throw away the panel. He works on the same wood. God did not scrap the human race and begin again with a new species. He did not discard our bodies, our history, our nature. He came into that very nature and restored it from within.

There is great comfort here. The stains of sin can make us feel that we are fit only to be thrown away, that God must have given up on us. Athanasius says the opposite. For the sake of His picture, the wood is kept. You are the panel on which God has painted His likeness, and He has not thrown you away. He has come to renew the outline on the same wood.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

The new creation is not a replacement of the old but its renewal. That is why Christians hope not for escape from the body but for its resurrection; not for the destruction of the world but for its making new. The same wood, restored.

Born again

Athanasius links the picture directly to the words of Jesus. The Son came, he says, to find the lost and to save them. And He told Nicodemus that a man must be born again, not meaning, as the Jews supposed, a second birth from a woman, but speaking of the soul born and created anew in the likeness of God’s image.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. JOHN 3:3

This is what salvation means for Athanasius. It is forgiveness, certainly; he speaks of the remission of sins. But it is more than forgiveness. It is restoration. The purpose of the gospel is not only that we should be let off, but that we should become again what we were made to be: men and women who bear the likeness of God and know Him.

And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. COLOSSIANS 3:10

Why He came as man

The picture also explains, for Athanasius, why the Word had to come in a body. Men had turned their eyes downwards, towards things of sense. So the Word met them there. He took a body like ours, so that those who would not know Him from His rule over the universe might know Him from the works done in His body. Like a good teacher who comes down to the level of pupils who cannot yet follow the higher lesson, He met our senses halfway, so that by seeing Him as man we might come to know Him as God.

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:6

Why it matters now

We live in an age that talks a great deal about identity, and very often we are told to find ourselves by looking inward. Athanasius offers a better way. Your true likeness is not hidden inside you, waiting to be discovered; it was given by God, spoiled by sin, and is restored by Christ. You find yourself by looking at Him, the Image of the Father, and by sitting, as it were, for the Painter, day after day, until His likeness is renewed in you.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Picture the stained portrait and the painter at work. Where in your life are the stains most visible? Name them before God without despair.

2. If you have felt that God must have given up on you, read 2 Corinthians 5:17 aloud and thank Him that He works on the same wood.

3. Spend ten minutes this week simply looking at Christ in one of the Gospels, asking the Father to renew His likeness in you through what you see.

4. Consider how you speak about other people. If each bears the stained image of God, how should that change the way you treat the hardest of them?

5. Read sections 13 and 14 of On the Incarnation and underline every word Athanasius uses for restoring or renewing.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You are the Image of the Father, and You came to restore the likeness You first gave us.

I have let it be stained and darkened, and I have looked downwards when I should have looked to You.

Thank You that You did not throw me away, but came to renew the outline on the same wood.

Sit with me, work on me, and do not stop until Your likeness is clear in me. Amen.