The Church's war, then, is not against the body but against its passions. If the man of the new creation is freed from his corrupt passions, his senses and his entire body will become pure and enlightened, and everything around him will shine with the love and glory of God. In the lives of the saints of our Church there are examples of liberation from the slavery of passions.

It is clear that the Old Testament foreshadowings point not only to the event of Christ’s crucifixion, but also to the sign of the cross itself, the “sign of the Son of Man,” which will be the banner of victory at the Lord’s triumphant coming. The cross of the Lord is an expression of God’s infinite love and of man’s infinite value. There is no greater expression of God’s love than the cross, and there is no greater elevation of man than his elevation to the reality of the cross.

The people of the Old Testament were forbidden to make and worship idols. There are several texts that explain this, but some heretics separate the first part of those texts from the second and distort their interpretation. In the Old Testament, God appeared through actions and spoke through the mouths of the prophets. In the New Testament, the Word of God became incarnate, “and we have seen his glory,” and established a personal relationship with us. Therefore, we can depict the person of Christ in the icon.

The person who is enlightened by the uncreated divine actions “has the knowledge of the glory of God, that glory which is on the face of Christ, shining in his heart, and he becomes a “partaker of the divine glory” and a “participant in the holiness of God.” The Christian who lives in the grace of God becomes a “member of the body of Christ,” that is, a part of the body of the incarnate God, living the life of Christ himself and radiating the divine light.