In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character

By Jen Wilkin

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Asking the Better Question

If you’ve ever said, “I just want to know God’s will for my life,” this book is for you. Before you believed, you did what felt right or what seemed rational to your darkened mind. But now you know your feelings deceive you and your self-serving logic betrays you. Without meaning to, you can begin to regard your relationship with God primarily as a means toward better decision-making—slipping into a conception of God as a cosmic Dear Abby, a benevolent advice columnist who fields your toughest questions about relationships and circumstances. Because you do not trust your judgment, you ask him who you should marry or which job you should take.

These are not terrible questions to ask God. To some extent, they demonstrate a desire to honor him in your daily doings. But they don’t get to the heart of what it means to follow God’s will. If you want your life to align with God’s will, you need to ask a better question than “What should I do?”

Perhaps you’ve known the frustration of hearing silence, or worse, of acting on a hunch or “leading” only to find later that you apparently had not heard the Lord’s will. The questions “What should I do?” and “Who should I be?” are not unrelated, but the order in which you ask them matters. If you focus on your actions without addressing your heart, you may end up merely as a better-behaved lover of self. What good is it to choose the right job if you’re still consumed with selfishness? What good is it to choose the right home or spouse if you’re still eaten up with covetousness? What does it profit you to make the right choice if you’re still the wrong person? A lost person can make “good choices.” But only a person indwelt by the Holy Spirit can make a good choice for the purpose of glorifying God. The hope of the gospel in sanctification is not simply that you would make better choices, but that you would become a better person.

God created humankind and stamped us with his mark. He created us to bear his image, to be his representatives in our working and playing and worship.

”Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6). If you want to look like him, you will walk as he walked. This is a book that intends to answer the question of God’s will for your life. It illuminates the narrow path for those who have grown forgetful of its existence or have wondered if it can be found. It shows itself to those whose deepest desire and dearest delight is to be remade—in his image.

God Most Holy

Repetition is the mother of learning. By paying attention to what the Bible repeats, you gain an understanding of what it most wants you to learn and remember. The Bible plainly answers the question “Who should I be?” with “Be like Jesus Christ, who perfectly images God in human form.” God’s will for your life is that you conform to the image of Christ, whose incarnation shows humanity perfectly conformed to the image of God. The guiding question for every attribute becomes: “How should the knowledge that God is [blank] change the way I live?”

Human beings created to bear the image of God aspire instead to become like God. Rather than worship and trust in the omniscience of God, we desire omniscience for ourselves. Rather than celebrate and revere his omnipotence, we seek omnipotence in our own spheres of influence. Rather than rest in the immutability of God, we point to our own calcified sin patterns and declare ourselves unchanging and unchangeable. Like Adam and Eve, we long for that which is only intended for God, rejecting our God-given limits and craving the limitlessness we foolishly believe we are capable of wielding. To crave an incommunicable attribute is to listen to the Serpent’s lure, “You shall be like God.” But as those who have been given a new heart with new desires, you must learn to crave different attributes—those appropriate to a limited being, those that describe the abundant life Jesus came to give.

If it’s true that we repeat what is most important, one attribute of God emerges clearly as belonging at the top of the list: holiness. No other attribute is joined to the name of God with greater frequency. The first thing that comes to mind when angelic beings think about God is revealed in the one thing they repeat without ceasing: holy, holy, holy.

The Bible presents holiness as both given to you and asked of you. It says, “In Christ, you are made holy. Now be holy.”

For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. — Leviticus 11:44–45

You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine. — Leviticus 20:26

You might be tempted to dismiss these instructions as just one more part of a distant Old Testament book, no longer applying under the new covenant. But the New Testament finds these words echoed on the lips of Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount. Peter repeats what had been repeated to him: do not be conformed to who you were. Be re-formed to who you should be.

Every story of every figure in every corner of every book of the Bible is chanting this call: be holy, for he is holy. Growing in holiness means growing in your hatred of sin. It means growing into being loving, just, good, merciful, gracious, faithful, truthful, patient, and wise. It means learning to think, speak, and act like Christ every hour of every day that God grants you to walk this earth as the redeemed. For this is the will of God, our sanctification.

God Most Loving

Of all God’s attributes, his love is perhaps the hardest to conceive apart from the lesser, human versions of love that shape our understanding. Human love, even in its finest moments, can only whisper of the pure and holy love of God.

But agape your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. — Luke 6:35

Agape is patient and kind; it does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Agape bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Agape never ends. What makes 1 Corinthians 13 beautiful for a wedding is the way it challenges the couple to transcend mere eros, or even philia, and to express toward one another the very kind of love that God has expressed toward them—unconditional, selfless, active, sacrificing, unflagging, unending agape.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” — Matthew 22:37–40

If you refrain from murder but do not do so out of love for God and others, you have not practiced true holiness. If you refrain from slander or covetousness but not out of love, you still sin. As Paul writes: if you speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, you are a noisy gong. If you have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, you are nothing. If you give away all you have but have not love, you gain nothing. If you seek to be holy without agape, you add nothing, are nothing, gain nothing.

Unless you love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you will love yourself and your neighbors inadequately. Right love of God is what enables right love of self and others. Agape transcends your feelings. When you encounter difficulty loving your neighbor, you often attempt to remedy the problem by trying harder at the task. Yet a deficit in your love of neighbor always points to a deficit in your love of God.

Restoring the vertical relationship is the first step to righting the horizontal one. When you hesitate to show agape because someone has hurt or disappointed you, you reveal that you believe agape is earned. Reminding yourself of God’s unconditional, sacrificial love stirs you to love God more, and prompts you to extend love freely, as you have received it. Right vertical relationship looks like the full deployment of your heart, soul, mind, and strength—the totality of your being—in the active love of God.

But it is possible to love the love of God too much. You do this when you emphasize his love at the expense of his other attributes. Sin can cause you to love a version of God that is not accurate—the basic definition of idolatry, a disordered love. No longer can you parse your fellow humans into the categories of “lovable” and “unlovable.”

When you begin to follow Christ, you resolve to love your neighbor even if it costs you. And it does cost you—your preferences, your time, your financial resources, your entitlement, your stereotypes. At times, it costs your popularity, respect, and more. But in laying these aside, you learn the brokenness of the object of your love in a deeper way. You find increasing empathy, and as you mature, you resolve to love your neighbor no matter what it costs you.

God Most Good

The evidence of God’s attributes is waiting in Scripture, like so many gems to be unearthed. Though the Bible is an obvious place to search, you must excavate all the way to Genesis 18 to find the first explicit mention of God’s justice, and to Genesis 24 for his love. But scarcely four verses into its opening chapter, the Bible eagerly places the brilliant diamond of God’s goodness in plain sight, no digging required: “And God saw that the light was good” (Genesis 1:4). God sees that the light is good—not as an act of recognition, but as a reflection of his own goodness, originating in him and issuing from him. God is the source of all good and is himself wholly good.

The Bible’s first chapter goes on to methodically reiterate this goodness in the rest of what he creates. Sea, expanse, land—good. Plants—good. Sun, moon, stars—good. Fish, birds, beasts—good. Humans—good. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Very good, exquisitely rendered from the hand of a very good God. Not only is God infinitely good, but he is immutably good—unchangingly good. The psalmist writes no less than five times: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.”

Even in our rebellious state, God’s goodness endures toward us in a thousand circumstances. He gives daily bread, and often more, though we are given to the habit of complaining for what we lack rather than contentment with what we possess. He gives the joy of family and friends, though we are more prone to rage against him for the hard relationships than to thank him for the sweet ones. He grants, on the whole, more days of joy than of sorrow, though our darkened hearts are more apt to curse him for the hard times than to bless him for the happy ones.

Just as Christ radiates the goodness of God, so now should you. Be good. Be the person who seeks the welfare of others, who gives without counting the cost, who serves joyfully with no expectation of thanks or recognition. Be good employees, good next-door neighbors, good parents, good children. If you are, you’ll draw attention like a city on a hill at midnight in the desert.

Paul encourages that goodness may be wearying, but that it yields a harvest: “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). The fight for goodness is one that will take time and effort. You may grow weary of your own internal resistance to growing in goodness, or you may grow weary of the resistance of others to your goodness lived out.

God Most Just

Those who do not cast themselves upon the perfect sacrifice of Christ will spend their lives attempting to make atonement by offering their own good works to a God of their own imagining. And though God disciplines in love, you may not immediately perceive it as loving.

You have no need to self-justify. You need only confess your sins. Self-justification reveals a lack of understanding of the forgiveness you received through the cross. The cross of Christ means that the score is settled. The life of the believer who loves the justice of God will be marked not by scorekeeping, but by reverent obedience. It will be marked by a love of the moral law that reshapes your desires to reflect those of your heavenly Father. It will be marked by humble submission to where your good Governor sets the limits of what is right. The immediate effect of apprehending God’s justice will be an inward-facing desire to obey. The long-term effect will be an outward-facing desire to do justice for others.

Those who have any form of advantage must seek to use it to benefit their neighbors. Those who have more than their daily bread each day must have open eyes and open hands for those who are still awaiting theirs.

God Most Merciful

Though many conceive of the God of the Old Testament as a God of towering justice and absent mercy, the Old Testament mentions his mercy more than four times as often as the New.

”If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Seeing God as faithful to forgive confessed sins seems intuitive, but that reference to justice is what confounds: how can God’s forgiveness of your sins be just? Shouldn’t it say “faithful and merciful” rather than “faithful and just”? It takes slowing down to understand how this verse can be true—that through the cross, God’s justice and mercy meet.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. — Romans 12:1

You must never forget that Jesus instituted a table of mercy on the night in which he was betrayed. On that night, he said of the bread, “This is my body.” On that night, he said of the wine, “This is my blood.”

God Most Gracious

As the hymn writer John Newton put it: “‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.” God in his sovereignty extends grace to you before you can even contemplate its possibility or its worth.

God Most Faithful

Trials bring you to your knees and remind you of your limits. They reorient you toward God. But trials are not the only difficulty God uses to train you in righteousness. God also uses temptation to shape you. James reminds us that God does not tempt us and is himself unable to be tempted (James 1:13). This makes sense when we consider his omniscience.

Use your time faithfully, not squandering it as those who serve only themselves might do. Use your abilities faithfully, to bring glory to the One who gave them. Guard your thoughts faithfully, centering them on what is true, honest, just, pure, and lovely. Use your words faithfully—to edify and encourage, to exhort and rebuke, to pray without ceasing. Reflect on your reputation before others: are you known as faithful in your marriages, your business dealings, your parenting, your volunteer commitments, your friendships, your charitable works? Ultimately, every act of faithfulness toward others is an act of faithfulness toward God himself.

God Most Patient

When God first declares his character to Moses, he describes himself as slow to anger (Exodus 34:6), a trait that is then extolled in eight other Old Testament references. It is not surprising that the Bible gives ample indication that patience is the path of wisdom.

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. — James 1:19–20

God Most Truthful

Moral relativism—the idea that “what’s right for you may not be right for me”—is the product of finite minds. It accommodates the limited perspective that each of us necessarily operates from, asserting that personal truth is the highest form of truth we can possess and that no higher, absolute truth exists. The classic illustration is the story of the blind men and the elephant: depending on what part each man touches, he perceives a different animal—a wall, a serpent, a spear. We are to conclude that all the men are correct, albeit partially so.

The Bible declares that God himself is the benchmark for truth, the definer of reality, and that his creatures are subject to his definitions. Like the story of the elephant, it declares that people love darkness. But it also speaks of light coming into that darkness, resulting in the revelation of truth to those who were once blind.

The most compelling reason to believe the truthfulness of the Bible’s claims is that it answers these questions—where we came from, why we are here, what is wrong, and what fixes what is wrong—in a more compelling way than any other belief system. The way it describes sin is accurate. The solution it proposes for sin transcends human effort. The purpose it gives for human existence, if embraced, causes people to live sacrificially.

Instead of “living your truth,” may God direct you into living his—the only truth there really is, the truth that rejects isolation instead of creating it. To do so is to plunge yourself into the community that only a shared truth preserves.

Even as those with spiritual eyes to recognize truth, you can become too fixated on one part of the elephant, loving one part to the detriment of the whole. The believer is charged to seek and observe the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The full counsel of God’s Word is necessary to fulfilling this charge.

God Most Wise

Because God is not bound by time, he is able to determine the end from the beginning, acting within time with perfect awareness of all outcomes. Think, then, how much wisdom resides in the One who holds all knowledge. Because God holds all knowledge, he is able to choose perfect ends. It is possible to live a life of folly from start to finish. Because we are designed to live in community with others, a life spent in folly always affects more than just the individual who chooses it.

For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” — 1 Corinthians 3:18–20

We love to deceive ourselves that in choosing self, we have chosen rightly. And we love to deceive others that our choosing of self is actually not selfish. We become wise in our own eyes, as Proverbs says, giving the appearance of wisdom, but inwardly desiring the approval of others.

Simply put, any thought, word, or deed that compromises your ability to love God and neighbor is folly—utter foolishness. But the same writer who implores you to distinguish and avoid worldly wisdom is also eager for you to know how to possess godly wisdom. James reminds you that it is yours for the asking: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5). This is a stupendous statement. Lack wisdom? Just ask. God will give it.

Having been granted an internal framework for making decisions, Solomon did not ask for knowledge in the moment of the decision point. He used the knowledge he had to make the best decision he could. Wisdom is a mark of spiritual maturity. The mature are transformed by the renewing of their minds, “that by testing they may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

But the rest of Solomon’s story is a warning. He wandered from the path of godly wisdom onto the path of folly. The man who wrote that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10) traded the fear of the Lord for the fear of man, thereby trading wisdom for folly. He devoted himself to sensuality, wealth, and power. His story teaches that there is no such thing as “once wise, always wise” for anyone but God. Like patience, mercy, and grace, you must remain constantly aware of your need for a sustaining supply of wisdom.

The Word of God gives you discernment into what is arguably the area you need it most: the thoughts and intentions of your own heart. The most basic act of wisdom is repentance.

Engraved with His Image

By asking the better question of “Who should I be?” you find that the will of God for your life is not hidden. The Bible is filled with exhortations for how you can reflect your Creator as you become increasingly like Christ. But in suggesting that you are to become a better person, how do you avoid succumbing to something resembling a Christianized self-help program? How do you keep from slipping into a mind-set that accomplishes nothing more than behavior modification?

Make no mistake: the Bible teaches that behavior modification should absolutely follow salvation. But it occurs for a different reason than it does in the life of the unbeliever. There is a difference between self-help and sanctification, and that difference is the motive of the heart.

As you grow in holiness, love, goodness, justice, mercy, grace, faith, patience, truth, and wisdom, you look increasingly like Christ, who looks exactly like God. God’s will for your life is that you be restored to mint condition.