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

by Jen Wilkin

God is always more concerned with the decision-maker than he is with the decision itself.

For the believer wanting to know God’s will for her life, the first question to pose is not “What should I do?” but “Who should I be?”

If we focus on our actions without addressing our hearts, we may end up merely as better behaved lovers of self. Think about it. What good is it for me to choose the right job if I’m still consumed with selfishness? What good is it for me to choose the right home or spouse if I’m still eaten up with covetousness? What does it profit me to make the right choice if I’m 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 our sanctification is not simply that we would make better choices, but that we would become better people.

What is God’s will for your life? Put simply, that you would be like Christ.

Asking the question “Who should I be?” means asking for the first place to set our foot to the narrow path. With every step forward, we increasingly “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10). Yes, the will of God is the narrow path for those who walk it. But we need not wander aimlessly, as those with no sense of where his will would have us place our next step, in danger of straying off a cliff. We simply walk in the steps of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

God’s will for our lives is that we conform to the image of Christ, whose incarnation shows us humanity perfectly conformed to the image of God.

“How should the knowledge that God is ______ change the way I live?”

Holiness can be defined as the sum of all moral excellency, “the antithesis of all moral blemish or defilement.”4 It carries the ideas of being set apart, sacred, separate, of possessing utter purity of character.

God’s holiness, his utter purity of character, is what distinguishes him from all other rivals: Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders. (Ex. 15:11) There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. (1 Sam. 2:2)

R. C. Sproul writes, Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that He is merely holy, or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love; or mercy, mercy, mercy; or wrath, wrath, wrath; or justice, justice, justice. It does say that he is holy, holy, holy, that the whole earth is full of His glory.

God deserves our worship for both his love and his justice. But his love and his justice are imbued with and defined by his holiness—he does not merely love; he loves out of utter purity of character. He does not merely act justly; he acts justly out of utter purity of character.

When we apprehend his holiness, we are changed by the revelation.

Holiness is an attribute of God that we can reflect. Take a minute to marvel at that thought. Holiness permeates the entire Christian calling. It lies at the very center of the gospel. We are not merely saved from depravity; we are saved to holiness. Conversion entails consecration.

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification. . . . For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness” (1 Thess. 4:3, 7). Simply put, God’s will for your life is that you be holy. That you live a life of set-apartness. That, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you strive for utter purity of character (Heb. 12:14).

Growing in holiness means growing in our hatred of sin. But reflecting the character of God involves more than just casting off the garment of our old ways. It entails putting on the garment of our new inheritance. Growing in holiness 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 us to walk this earth as the redeemed.

Eros is the word used to describe romantic love. Philia is the word used to describe brother-sisterly love shared between peers. Storge is the word used to describe a parent’s love for a child. Agape is the word used to describe the love of God.3 How does the Bible use these terms? In its noun or verb form, the word philia is used fifty-four times in the New Testament. Storge and eros do not occur at all. The word agape occurs a whopping 259 times.

Whereas our common notion of love is that it is an emotion to be experienced, agape is an act of the will, “an intelligent, purposeful attitude of esteem and devotion; a selfless, purposeful, outgoing attitude that desires to do good to the one loved.”5 In other words, agape does not merely feel; it acts. Two hundred fifty-nine times the Bible describes a love that acts.

Agape, on the other hand, is given with no requirement that it be returned.

If I seek to be holy without agape, I add nothing, I am nothing, I gain nothing.

Unless we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will love ourselves and our neighbors inadequately. Right love of God is what enables right love of self and others. When we devote heart, soul, mind, and strength to loving him, we perceive ourselves rightly—no room for pride or self-exaltation—which prepares us to love our neighbor freely. Rightly perceiving ourselves to be the unworthy recipients of the agape of God, we become willing to love our neighbor in spite of himself because God first loved us in spite of ourselves. We do not wait to feel love; rather, we will ourselves to act in love whether we feel it or not. Agape transcends our feelings.

God’s worth is infinite, making him alone worthy to receive infinite self-love, as well as the unqualified adoration and veneration of everything in creation. It is impossible for anyone, including God, to love God too much.

If love is an act of the will—not motivated by need, not measuring worth, not requiring reciprocity—then there is no such category as “unlovable.”

The costliness of agape is evident in the cross. Thus, those who resolve to take up their cross resolve to love as Christ loved, in a costly manner.

What is the will of God for your life? That you love as you have been loved. When faced with a decision, ask yourself: Which choice enables me to grow in agape for God and others? And then choose according to his will.

God’s goodness is a light that radiates through all his other attributes. It is the reason his omnipotence (possession of all power), omniscience (possession of all knowledge), and sovereignty (possession of all control) are a comfort instead of a terror. It is the reason we can dare to believe that he is able to work all things together for good as he has said (Rom. 8:28).

God could have created a much duller creation and much duller creatures to fill it, but in his goodness, he formed and filled it with color, cacophony, cornucopia. Anyone who has passed a gardenia bush at dusk has known the redolent goodness of God. Anyone who has halted at a sunrise, stilled to the calling of a bird, wept at a harmony, rolled a raspberry across the tongue, reveled in dew-laden grass underfoot, or marveled at the symmetry of a spider web knows that goodness lies scattered around us, like so many diamonds for the gathering. We are fairly tripping over it at every turn. Even in a fallen world.

But what does it mean to be good as his children? As those who are the recipients of the good and perfect gifts of God, goodness toward others means generosity. It means we recognize that God gives us good things not so that they might terminate on us, but so that we might steward them on behalf of others.

Be good. Be the person who seeks the welfare of others. Be the person who gives without counting the cost. Be the person who serves joyfully with no expectation of thanks or recognition. Be good employees, good next-door neighbors, good parents, good children, good musicians and public servants and artists and volunteers and caregivers and bankers. If you are, you’ll draw attention like a city on a hill at midnight in the desert.

What is the will of God for your life? That you would be good as he is good. That generosity would be your first impulse in the morning and your last thought at night. That you would walk in the light as he is in the light. There is no darkness in him and no room for it in us.

God is a judge who possesses every fact of every case. Though earthly courts labor to reconstruct what really happened, God knows exactly who did what to whom, on what day, in which location, and for what purpose. He knows not only the external facts of the case, but the internal motives of all involved.

God’s discipline is his justice without wrath, for the purpose of training us in godliness.

Because of Christ, we receive training from God’s law as those who can no longer be condemned by it. We may be slow to recognize it as an expression of his love, but it gives us good government. It teaches us to walk as children of the light, to walk as Christ walked.

Until the day when all accounts are settled, we labor as his servants to live obediently and to seek justice for those who do not have it. What is the will of God for your life? That you be just as he is just, delighting in his law, extolling his good government, doing justice daily as children of your heavenly Father.

Depth of mercy! Can there be Mercy still reserved for me? Charles Wesley, 1740

Justice, mercy, and grace coexist in the character of God.

Justice is getting what we deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we do not deserve.

God is infinitely merciful, but he exercises his mercy as he chooses, according to his sovereign will. He chooses upon whom he will have mercy (Rom. 9:15). He is obligated to show mercy to none, but we find him throughout the Bible demonstrating mercy toward sinner and saint alike.

As the children of God, as those toward whom he has been mercy-seated, we now live with mercy always in view. The result of this perspective is the sacrificial laying down of our lives for others. As far as we are able, we allow mercy to triumph over judgment.

Withholding mercy from others reveals that we do not recognize what we ourselves have received. The vast mercy of God has fallen from our view. We must obey the will of God for our lives to “be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

Come to the table in view of God’s mercy. Come once. Come again. How many times is the table of his body and blood spread before you? Forgive that many times. Forgive, and keep forgiving. He presented his body as a sacrifice. Now present yours, as your reasonable act of worship (Rom. 12:1). Mercy triumphs over justice.

Love expresses itself in grace. The grace of God is his unmerited favor, but to define it merely as such is to miss the extravagant nature of that favor.

God in his sovereignty extends grace to us before we can even contemplate its possibility or its worth. Eternally, grace is unearned and undeserved.

A. W. Tozer describes the eternal nature of grace: No one was ever saved other than by grace, from Abel to the present moment. Since mankind was banished from the eastward Garden, none has ever returned to the divine favor except through the sheer goodness of God. And wherever grace found any man it was always by Jesus Christ. Grace indeed came by Jesus Christ, but it did not wait for His birth in the manger or His death on the cross before it became operative. Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The first man in human history to be reinstated in the fellowship of God came through faith in Christ. In olden times men looked forward to Christ’s redeeming work; in later times they gaze back upon it, but always they came and they come by grace, through faith.

Contrary to what the world would say, Jesus describes the abundant life as the life lived in humility. As his brother James would later say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6; cf. Prov. 3:34).

If grace is seen only as a free gift to cover our sins and not also as a means to growing in holiness, we will grow lax in our obedience.

What is the will of God for your life? That you may have life, and that you may have it abundantly. That you may show preference to others, even as it has been shown to you in Christ. And that you would walk the narrow path, daily assured by the grace you received at the cross and daily strengthened by the grace you receive for every step forward toward holiness.

In his faithfulness “from of old,” God does what he says he will do, always. Those he saves, he is able to save to the uttermost, so complete is his faithfulness. He is faithful to his children because he cannot be unfaithful to himself. He is incapable of infidelity on any level.

When trials beset us, we can know that our faithful God has not abandoned us. Though we may not be able to perceive his goodness and lovingkindness in the moment, we can rely on the record of his past faithfulness as evidence that we can count on him in the present.

Trials always prove the faithfulness of God, though it may take years to see. And as they prove the faithfulness of God, they produce faithfulness in us.