In the Image of God

- Alongside the concern for the ethics of “doing” lies an ethics of “being”
- Christian social concern requires not only that we ask what we should do in a
broken world but also that we ask who we are to be
- The Bible plays a central role in the shaping of our Christian “being” or identity

The Old Testament as Scripture

- Misconceptions on the Old Testament

- ✗ The Old Testament is means to be second-class scripture
- ✓ The old testament is meant to be a witness to the activity of the same
God revealed to us fully in Jesus Christ
- ✗ The Old Testament is law while the New Testament is gospel
- ✓ The law is not important, but not as an end in itself.

The God Who Creates and Blesses

- Although the two creation stories are quite different in emphasis and detail, they are
marvelously complementary.
- Each account shows a different side of our faith understanding of God as Creator, and a
lack of either would leave us with an impoverished and incomplete theology of creation.

- In Genesis 1, the stress is on the absolute sovereignty of God.

- Nothing compels the creation except God’s own creative will.

- Genesis 2:4b-9 balances the picture with a stress on the relatedness of God.
- In this story we come to know our Creator God as a caring, intimately related
God, involved with the creation from the very beginning.
- The combination of these two unique pictures of God the Creator points us to a
unique dimension of the God of our faith.

- In these creation stories, God not only creates, God also blesses.
- The concept of a blessing from God appears in the constant divine concern for
the well-being of the creation.

- God’s intention in creation is for all to experience shalom, a Hebrew word meaning
wholeness.
- In the Old Testament, the God who creates and blesses helps to balance the
tradition of a God who saves.

- God is not found in the crises alone. God acts not only to deliver but to sustain us in all
of life.
 - We are called not only to crisis intervention in a broken world but to the creation
and maintenance of faithful systems of order that mediate the blessings of full life
to all creation, persons and environment.

The Creation and the Creatures

- ✓ Humanity is created in the image of God

- This is a clear and unambiguous affirmation of the coequal status of men and
women as creatures of God.

- Creation in the image of God is not just a gift, it is also a responsibility. To be created
in the image of God brings with it the commission to care for the earth.
- The exercise of dominion is accountable to God; it is not a license for human indulgence.

- ✓ The affirmation of the goodness of Creation

- God’s intention is that the goodness of creation be experienced by all its parts, all
persons, and all nature.

- ✓ The interrelatedness of creation

- Human beings are not self-sufficient. We are created for relationship to God, to
others, and to nature.
- Not only are we created as trustees of God to experience the goodness of
creation, we are created to be in community with all creation.
- Only in this way can we experience God’s intended wholeness (shalom).

The Brokenness Of Creation

- The gift of human freedom

- The man and the woman are given the capacity to make choices for themselves,
and the choices are either for obedience or disobedience

- Sin is the word we use to describe how shalom gets broken

- The sin of pride: the temptation to want to know everything that God knows
- It asks whether there are boundaries to human knowing that must be honored