Once we step through the gates of faith into the domain of God’s Kingdom, we must set aside the oldness of our human nature and proceed resolutely toward what lies ahead in our new nature. In the words of Paul the Apostle, we must take off the old man with its works and put on the new man, the one renewed in the knowledge of God’s image. We must enter the domain where only Christ exists in all (Colossians 3.11). We enter a world that is entirely different from “this” one, a world still suffering under the temptations of the Evil One; a world that offers a very different peace, both in content and in the ways it can be obtained, from the true peace our new King gives.
Two worlds: in one, war is waged to obtain peace; in the other, peace is obtained by serving the stranger; in one, we accumulate wealth and supplies to live in safety; in the other, we must give freely and distribute all wealth in order to walk in the way of truth and life. In the one world, we define our identity by the memory of our deeds and self-consciousness; in the other, it is the image of God that appears on our photo ID.
We listed some of the questions we must answer when we considered how to conform our individual mental and moral qualities to the image of God, thereby developing our character. God gives His grace to us not as an award for our success but as a power that enables us to bring to fruition the image of God impressed in us.
This power is not given to us as a goal to reach, but as a driving force that ferments our culture and worldview, bringing the Kingdom of God into reality. It is the light that must shine through all our deeds and thoughts, not in righteous yet merciless judgment, but in the love of the Father; not in overconfident, arrogant self-assurance, but in the hope of God; not in the snobbish haughtiness of knowledge, but in faith that instills in us the mind of God. This power is our true identity.
This identity, created in the image of God, makes us true witnesses to the Word of God, proclaiming His kingdom, and demands that our deeds truly express the faithful dimension of God. In God, His Word and His creative power are the same substance: the Father speaks, and creation becomes reality; He loves, and our salvation is accomplished; He dies, and eternal life is resurrected; He blesses, and the peace of His Holy Spirit is established.
This is our original image, according to which we were created. Even the slightest difference between our words and deeds destroys the integrity of our identity.