Jesus Christ did not just come to earth to die for the sins of the world. That was his number one priority, which would enable Him to finish the full course of what God wanted Him to do. My next series of articles will deal with the other reasons why Jesus Christ came to earth as both God and Man.

Luke 19:10 says the following: “For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” When you read that verse, the first thing that comes to your mind should be, what was lost? But at the same time, the verse is also explicitly saying that something indeed was lost by mankind.

Psalm 8:1-9 tells us that God has crowned man with glory and honor. It also says God has made man do have dominion over all the works that He had done. And it also says God has put all things under his feet. When did God do all of this?

To understand and answer the question, one must go back to the beginning. At the same time, in order to know when God crown man with honor and glory one must go back to the beginning. And one must go back to the beginning, to find out when God gave man dominion over all that He had done and put everything under his feet..

Genesis 1:26 says, “And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion…over all the earth.” When God decided to make man in His image and after His likeness, He, in essence was crowning man with honor and glory. As a result God authorized man to have dominion over all that He created, thus putting everything under the feet of man.

Man, in the beginning, is the only one, who had the capacity, to reproduce the image and likeness of God. Man is the only one, in the beginning, who had the capacity, to have eternal life, fellowship with God and to worship God. All of that was lost when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden. And those three things were restored when Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world and then rose from the dead.

But there are three other things that are lost and Jesus is sitting in heaven now, at the right hand of God, seeking and saving for every believer those three things.

Before I go any further, I must say, some of you may not comprehend what I am about to say. What I am about to say is for those of you who are able to eat meat. This is not for those who are still on milk. We must all understand that the milk of God’s word refers to what Jesus Christ did while on earth, while the meat of God’s word refers to what Jesus Christ is doing in heaven after His return from earth.

What has been lost and what Jesus is helping us to find is our image, our likeness and our dominion. Now that you have salvation, your character likeness of God is being developed through the sanctification process. Your focus in your Christian life is to be more and more like God in every area of your life. This is where Satan fight you the most. Man is made in the exact image of God, but the fall of Adam has caused us to have a distorted and marred image of God. We have distorted our own image by making others as the image of God. Catholics have made the Pope a replica of the image of God. Denominations have made their bishops a replica of the image of God. Some churches, particular black churches, have made their Pastors a replica of the image of God. Because of these replicas, our image of God will only be completely restored to us when we see Jesus. That is why the bible says, when we see Him, He will look just like us.

The third thing that has been lost was our dominion over everything God has created. Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ we can get back our dominion. We can have dominion over every aspect of our lives with the right kind of faith. Remember when Jesus said, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you can tell a mountain to move and it will move. Remember when Jesus told the storm to be still and the storm ceased. Remember when Jesus told the devil, “get thee behind me Satan.” We can have that same kind of dominance in our lives if we continue to grow from faith to faith.

The Son of Man came to seek and to save our likeness, image and dominion. We can get it all back if we simply focus all our energy and faith on Him.

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By Gilbert Owens

Contributing columnist

Gilbert Owens is pastor at Kingdom of God Ministries.