The Way of Christ: Spiritual Formation Series

 

SCRIPTURE 

Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27 So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” - Genesis 1:26-28

 

[Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, 16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.  - Colossians 1:15-18

 

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” - Genesis 2:18

 

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. - Romans 12:1-2

 

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” 17 But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Shun sexual immorality! Every sin that a person commits  is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against the body itself. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

- 1 Corinthians 6:15-20

 

Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the physical and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As one of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as one of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will also bear the image of the one of heaven. - 1 Corinthians 15:45-49

 

 QUOTES

No one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he “lives and moves” (Acts 17:28). For, quite clearly, the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves; indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God…Man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.  - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.1.1-2

 

Those who have come to believe and are convinced that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:17) and that Christ is the truth, according to his own statement “I am the truth” (Jn. 14:6), derive the knowledge that God calls human beings to live a good and blessed life from no other source than the very words and teaching of Christ. - Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles, Pr. 1

 

Human beings, after all, are not the sort of things that, once made and left to themselves by the one who made them, could do anything well all by themselves. No, the sum total of their good activity is to turn to him by whom they were made, and by him always to be made just, godfearing, wise, and blessed; not to be made so and leave, like being cured of some bodily ailment by a physician and going away…but in such a way that they may always be made so by him. In they very fact of their not taking their leave of him they are being justified and enlightened and blessed by his presence with them, by God ‘working and guarding’ them as the lord and master of obedient subordinates.

- Augustine of Hippo, Literal Commentary on Genesis, VIII.25

 

The human being is a kind of second world, great in smallness, placed on the earth, another angel, a composite worshiper, a beholder of the visible creation, and initiate into the intelligible, king of things on earth, subject to what is above, earthly and heavenly, transitory and immortal, visible and intelligible, a mean between greatness and lowliness. He is at once spirit and flesh, spirit on account of grace, flesh on account of pride, the one that he might remain and glorify his Benefactor, the other that he might suffer and in suffering remember and be corrected if he has ambition for greatness. He is a living creature trained here and transferred elsewhere, and, to complete the mystery, deified through inclination toward God. For the light and the truth present in measure here bear me toward this end, to see and experience the radiance of God, which is worthy of the one who has bound me [to flesh] and will release me and hereafter bind me in a higher manner.  

- Gregory of Nazianus, Oration 38.11

 

Virtue is a good quality of the mind by which we live rightly and which no one uses badly, which God works in us apart from us.

- Augustine of Hippo, On Free Will, 2.19

 

Anyone who through fixed habit participates in virtue, unquestionably participates in God, who is the substance of the virtues…for to the beautiful nature inherent in the fact that he is God's image, he freely chooses to add the likeness to God by means of the virtues, in a natural movement of ascent through which he grows in conformity to his own beginning. - Maximus Confessor, Ambiguum 7