The Image-Bearer Vocation
The vocation given in Genesis 1 (tselem / demut — image and likeness) before any human earning, lost in Genesis 3, and being restored in Christ. Salvation is not merely legal acquittal but the recovery of the image-bearer commission.
- Creation and the Covenant
Creation is not neutral backstory — it is the opening act of the covenant; the image-bearer commission (Genesis 1:26-28) is a covenant calling given before humanity had done anything to earn or deserve it, establishing from the first page that relationship with God precedes and grounds all human activity.
- Sin — The Upward Grasp
Sin is not primarily rule-breaking — it is the human attempt to ascend on our own terms, the inversion of the descent theme; at Babel this becomes a civilization-scale religious project, and in the institutional church it becomes a control mechanism dressed in theological language.
- What Is Salvation?
Salvation (sōzō) is not primarily evacuation from earth to heaven but the total rescue and restoration of the human person — accomplished entirely by God's grace, declared righteous through Christ's propitiatory sacrifice (hilastērion), received by faith, and oriented toward the recovery of the image-bearer vocation lost in Genesis 3.
- Sanctification
Sanctification is not a human project of moral improvement climbing toward a God who waits at the top to reward the diligent — it is the Spirit's ongoing conformity of the believer to the image of Christ, grounded in the no-condemnation verdict already rendered, effected by beholding rather than by effort, and guaranteed by the one who began it.