Article February 4, 2019 Issue

Resist evil with the healing truth

Ryan Vigil

Most of us would never want to hold to a mistaken or erroneous view of something. If we found out we had a mistaken view, we would naturally want to get rid of that false perspective and replace it with what’s true.

This especially includes the truth about us—about our identity, what we really are. In the Bible, the book of Genesis gives us the true, spiritual view of our identity where it says, “God created man in his own image … ; male and female created he them” (1:27), and, “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (1:31). If we are created by God as His image, then the truth about our real nature is not only that we are “very good,” but also that we are spiritual, since the Bible also says that “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24). This is the truth about what we are, and any view of us as less than “very good,” or as material instead of spiritual, is false, erroneous.

When we see ourselves as created by God in His image and likeness, expressing God’s qualities of goodness, wholeness, and freedom, we are seeing ourselves correctly. But if we see ourselves as fallen and broken, and as separated from God, then we are letting error cloud our judgment about what we are. When we hold to the truth of our spiritual identity as God’s image, and recognize and eliminate errors from our consciousness, those errors fall away from our lives as well.

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