Erling Thu

Category: Biblical teaching

  • The covenant community is a family community

    The
    marriage covenant confirms a relationship to last for the entire life (Romans
    7:2). The family is a covenant relationship of greatest importance to any
    healthy community. The family is the basic building block of the covenant
    community at large. If the families don’t function, the covenant community
    can’t function properly (1 Tim.3:4-5).

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  • The covenant community is a community of LOVE

    The
    ultimate basis for our understanding of the covenant community lies in it’s
    relationship to the nature of the Triune God himself. The Father loves the Son.
    The Son loves the Father. That spirit of love between the Father and the Son is
    the Holy Spirit. As covenant people we are to show forth the divine reality
    which is love. The new commandment of the New Covenant:

    So now I am
    giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you
    should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that
    you are my disciples.

    Love is
    what binds us all together in perfect harmony. Col.3:14

    For God
    himself has taught you to love one another. 1Thess.4:9

  • Man in the image of God is a special covenant community

    The two
    creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2 indicate that the image of God is a
    shared, corporate reality. It is fully present only in community. Humans were
    created as social beings, created for covenant community. Like we are told that
    the woman was created to deliver man from his isolation and loneliness. It was
    not good for man to be alone. We should not be surprised that this is the case
    and that ultimately the image of God should focus on community. Throughout all
    eternity God is a covenant community, that is, the fellowship of Father, Son
    and Holy Spirit, who comprise the triune God.

    The
    creation of humanity in the image of God, therefore, can mean nothing less than,
    that humans express the relational dynamic of the God whose representation we
    are called to be. Not the individual man, not even man and woman together, but
    humanity as a whole is designed to be the fully developed image of God. In
    other words, each person can be related to the image of God only within the
    context of life in community with others. Only in covenant with others can we
    show forth what God is like, for God is the covenant community of love.

  • Man in the image of God is a eschatological reality

    In what
    sense was the image of God present in Adam? It could not have been fully
    present for he was alone and lacking a partner. God is never one single person,
    he is always one in three and three in one, as we have seen. When God had
    created Eve and presented her to Adam, he became more human and the image of
    God became more present. Likewise the fact of the Fall shows us that the first
    people not had become what they were intended to be, otherwise their choice in
    the garden would have been different. In other words we may say that even that
    because humans are created in the image of God they have the potential to
    distort that image or to let that image be developed and become more visible.

    The
    apostolic teaching of the New Testament clearly supports this idea, that each
    human person is potentially a participant in the one destiny or purpose God has
    for us, in sharing the reality to which the concept of the divine image points.

  • Man in the image of God has a special fellowship

    God’s
    intention for humanity was that we should respond to his love by loving him and
    respond to his commands by obeying because of love. This is the way humans can
    experience the true life of fellowship with God for which we were called into
    existence. Therefore humans can find no permanent home in this world but are
    dependent on God for ultimate fulfilment. God made everything beautiful from
    the beginning. He also set eternity in the hearts of men; and they will find no
    rest in the temporal world (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Man was created for a special covenant
    love relationship with God and to enjoy fellowship with him. 

  • Man in the image of God signifies a special standing

    Man’s
    divinely given destiny begins with a special standing before God in a covenant
    relationship. As humans created in the image of God, we are the recipients of
    his love; this means that each human being has special worth in God’ sight
    (Matthew 6:26). In the covenant with God we are also recipients of God’s
    commands, which mean a special responsibility. God entrusted to humanity a
    special task with reference to creation, namely, that we serve as his
    representatives. Humans are to reflect to creation the covenant nature of God.

  • The meaning of “Image of God”

    Out of all
    the creatures God made, only man is said to be made in the image of God in the
    Genesis account of the creation:

    Then God said, "Let us make man in
    our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the
    birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the
    creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in
    the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed
    them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth
    and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over
    every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:26-28).

    The fact
    that humanity was created in the image of God in the simplest terms means that
    humanity is like God and represents God. Since this is the straightforward
    meaning of the biblical expressions,     the Bible does not need to say something
    like, “The fact that man is in the image of God means that man is like God in
    the following ways: intellectual ability, moral purity, spiritual nature,
    dominion over the earth, creativity, ability to make ethical choices, and
    immortality.”

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  • Man was created in the image of God for his own glory

    The Bible clearly tells us that man was created to glorify God and bring him joy. God created man for himself – for his own glory – or “to the praise of his glory” as the apostle Paul is saying (Ephesians 1:6,12,14) . God tells us through the prophet Isaiah:

    Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth – everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. (Isaiah 43:6-7)

    This fact guarantees that our lives are significant. When we first realize that God did not need to create us and does not need us for anything, we could conclude that our lives have no importance at all. But the Bible tells us that we were created for God’s own glory, indicating that we are important to God himself. This is the final definition of genuine importance or significance to our lives: If we are truly important to God for all eternity, then what greater measure of importance or significance could we want?

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  • Love is the motivational nature of God

    Only when
    we see that God is covenant love we may begin to grasp some of the inner
    dynamics of God, in who and what the divine being is in himself, the dynamic
    relationship within the one God, and how our triune God overflows in creating
    the universe as the home of humanity and then enters into relationship with his
    creation. Love actually makes creation possible. The act of creation is the
    overflowing of the eternal love relationship within the triune God. The world
    exists because of God’s love. Everything God does is motivated by love or flows
    from his own character, which is covenant love.

    Before the
    beginning of the world, before God created, God held a council within himself.
    In love the Father, Son and Holy Spirit planned what to do according to their
    own good pleasure. The one God was under no compulsion to create as the love
    was already complete within the Trinity. But because God is covenant love, God
    is self-giving, and willingly decides to create the world. Creation is God’s
    loving act, it is free, voluntary, non-necessary, and fully in keeping with his
    character.     Since there was perfect love and fellowship among members of the
    Trinity for all eternity (John 17:5, 24), God did not create us because he was
    lonely or because he needed fellowship with other persons—God did not need us
    for any reason.

  • The essence of God is love

    To
    understand the original intention of God we need to understand the basic covenant
    nature of God which is love according to the apostle John (1.John 4:8). Love is
    a relational term which presupposes a subject and an object. There is someone
    who loves and someone who is loved. God is as to character truth and love, but
    love cannot be God. Love only exists as a relation between the lover and the
    beloved. Because God is triune, the divine being already comprehends both
    love’s subject and object. Therefore we come to understand that the essence of
    God does indeed lie in the relationship between the Father and the Son (love) which
    is the Spirit.

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