Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
The concept of most Christians is to be a good person and do good things. But the Bible teaches a greater purpose..
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Simply telling a Christian to "be a good person and do good things" is incomplete. It might be burdensome (As the Israelites in the Old Testament have shown, we cannot keep all the commandments by our own strength) or lead to the Christian thinking his salvation is by his good deeds and so become proud.
A more complete message would be to first understand man's sin and God's righteousness, forgiveness and love shown to us. After one has understood these, then be a good person and do good things. This is the pattern of Paul's writings in Romans and Ephesians:- Tell the people what God has done; and then in the second half of these letters, tell the people how they are to live in light of what God has done.
In terms of spelling, the two words (i) God and (ii) Good differ by an alphabet "o". I don't see why there needs to be a distinction between (i) image of God and (ii) good. When we do good (which, has to be judged inwardly and outwardly), we are reflecting God because God is good. (As Jesus said, “No one is good but God alone”)
Perhaps part of the misunderstandings we may have arise from our different understanding of "good"?
For example, in the story of the Good Samaritan, it is obvious that the Samaritan is good, while the people who robbed the traveller are bad.
But what about the people who just walked by? They didn't cause the trouble but they didn't help either. Society is full of such people. We might disagree on whether such people can still be considered "good". Some think that as long as they have not killed or stolen, these people are still “good”. Others like me disagree.