Quote:
Originally Posted by micah6v8
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.
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Christ's obedience to His Father was because He was the Son of God and not to make Him the Son of God. His character and his person was the primary thing.
So I agree that goodness is equivalent to bearing God's image because God is good. Being conformed to the image of Christ is God's ultimate purpose for mankind, this high purpose is also prevalent in early christian writings. This was the meaning of life that the early Christians had, and an intense desire to be with the Lord. Whatever we do to become like God can be considered a good work.
The primary good work that God wants us to do is to believe in Jesus:
John 6:29 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."
They had just asked him what they had to do in verse 28. Jesus said well, the main thing you have to do is believe in me. To obey God means to believe in Christ.
Today the concept of most Christians is merely to go to heaven when they die and to do good things for other people. For this purpose there are many churches and organizations that cater to individual needs and do social work. They miss the heart of the Bible and God's purpose which is to be like Him. These churches pay little attention to sitting at Jesus's feet and learning from Him, and they put good works above good character.
When most Christians read Genesis they don't see Genesis 1:27 as the most important thing (being like God), they only see the 7 day creation story.