How God-like is Man?

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This post is complementary to:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-christian-god-is-similar-to-and.html

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How God-Like is Man?

Christians cannot reply "Not at all" because we are made in the image of God, we are Sons of God and God came to earth as a mortal Man.

But  how God-like are we?

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We are, let us say, god-like (with a lower case g).

Primarily, we have God-like power to refuse salvation.

That is, we are sufficiently God-like to refuse the offer of salvation - but not sufficiently God-like to gain salvation for ourselves.

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Salvation is "by invitation only" - and Men must be humble enough to accept the invitation, and acknowledge that they were indeed invited, and that invitation is why Men have access to Heaven.

There are no gate-crashers in Heaven.

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Hell is to refuse the invitation: usually to refuse the conditions of the invitation.

Hell is to discover that Heaven can be refused, but then we must needs dwell somewhere else.

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Damnation is to revel in the power to reject salvation - to be so proud of that power, so self-admiring of our exercise of that power, that we actively choose to take the consequences of that refusal.

And to be proud of our choice to take these consequences - to look down upon those who have failed to make this choice and take these consequences.

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Damnation is to say: "I do not want Heaven at the admission price." It is to say: "If those are the conditions, then I want nothing of it!"

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Damnation is to regard oneself as having a Right of Access to Heaven; and therefore to regard the necessity for an invitation as humiliating - indeed, as a deliberate infliction of humiliation.

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