Created to Bear the Image of God

Summary

This midweek teaching service opened with a plea to seek God's will and to dig deeply into Scripture. The preacher warned that without sound doctrine any teaching can sound convincing, pointing back to the Council of Nicaea and the confession that the Son of God was begotten, not created, as the answer to the ancient Arian error whose echoes are still heard today. Knowing what we believe, he said, is the foundation that nothing can shake.

The heart of the message asked what a human being really is - spirit, soul, and body - and above all what it means to carry the image of God. That image is not a physical resemblance, nor a license to become our own little gods, but the moral and spiritual character described in Ephesians and Colossians: putting off the old self and putting on the new in righteousness, holiness, and love.

Finally the teaching traced God's purpose in making us - to know, love, and serve Him, to live in fellowship, to steward His creation for good, and supremely to be shaped into the bride of Christ, the Church He cleanses and will present holy and without blemish. An opening picture of a railway worker waving an unseen warning lamp pressed home the call to live alert, righteous lives that exceed mere outward religion.

Key Points

• Sound doctrine is the foundation no false teaching can shake - know what you believe and why.
• The Council of Nicaea confessed the Son as begotten, not created, answering Arianism then and now.
• A person is spirit, soul, and body, and it is the spirit that lets us commune with God.
• The image of God is not physical but moral and spiritual - Christlike character, not self-made godhood.
• Putting off the old self and putting on the new means growing in righteousness, holiness, and love.
• God made us to know Him, to live in fellowship, to steward creation, and to become the bride of Christ.
• True righteousness must surpass outward religion, like a warning lamp the world cannot afford to ignore.