This part 7 of my study series on the image of God has proven to be the most difficult part to write. It is about we followers of Jesus living out in our daily lives the reality that we are his images. There are three reasons for this being difficult to write. First is awareness of my personal inconsistencies and short-comings. I know that I don’t live up to being an image of God, and I don’t want to come across as if I am claiming to have it all mastered and can show everyone how to do it themselves. I will share what the Biblical message is and how I understand it without claiming that I have fully experienced it myself.
The second reason is the innumerable issues and subjects, attitudes and actions, that could be described. 
There’s a tendency in most of us to want a list of things to do and not do. We want each item on the list to be very clear, even rigid. We really want to be obedient children of God, so we look for very specific instructions about everything we think, believe, and decide to do. That’s kind of where I started thinking about this part, but that won’t work. For one thing, there is just too much to try to get on a list of what being God’s image looks like. But even more relevant, that’s not the kind of life God intends us to live. Yes, there are some specifics God tells us to do or not do, but most of life as a Jesus follower is not list making and rules keeping.
The third reason this part has been difficult to write is the massive disconnect between our culture and Biblical teaching. We have been “trained” by family and society to understand who we are and what is most important in life. The only place I have ever lived is the USA, so I can only speak about that as my experience. There is a monumental gap in the values and goals of this culture and the expectations God has for his people. Again, we would like to have a list, but we have to dig deeper than a list will take us to grasp what it means to be and live as the Creator’s images. I am influenced by my world, so it is difficult, even fearful, to try to differentiate what is and is not the true character of God’s child. Faith will be necessary for us to come to terms with Christianity, not as a religion, but as the way to be genuinely and fully human.
So, here’s my LIST of things that seem to be at the foundation of living as God’s images! Actually it’s a series of interconnected components.
I think we have to believe that we are not yet the true images of God. None of us are what God intends us to ultimately be. We are developing, in a process of transforming.
Colossians 3:10 says you “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” And 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 says “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
“Is being renewed” and “are being transformed.” An activity is being worked out. From creation onward, pretty much everything we know of God’s doing was done in a process, not instantaneously. The Spirit, like “hovering over the waters” of creation (Genesis 1:2), moves over our lives and moves us toward the completion of God’s will. It takes time.
This means we don’t need to fret and worry that we are not yet perfect. A friend of mine told me that he saw the commands and directions of God as goals that we are aiming for. That helped me – living as a true image of God is God’s goal for me. I haven’t reached it yet and that’s basically okay. “God’s still workin’ on me!”
Now there’s something else about this process. We are responsible for cooperating with the Spirit. We have a part in putting on the new self. We ought not be satisfied to say, “God will make me what he wants me to be when he’s ready for it to happen, so I’ll float along on the waters and just enjoy life as we know it.” There are decisions we make and actions we take.
Simon Peter instructed, “Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do” (1 Peter 1:13-15 13. Also Galatians 5:16-26, Ephesians 5:3-21, Colossians 1:21-22)
You can hear the intentional actions called for to become like God, holy. Being in God’s image was not a passive condition in Eden. Becoming God’s image certainly is not passive. It takes work.
The driving factor of this process is the understanding of where our human identity comes from and therefore what it is made of. The “normal” way of being human is the right and the ability to make ourselves into whatever we want so that we can be happy (wealthy, powerful, influential, respected, religious, safe, unrestrained, correct… – whatever your idea of happy is). That’s far from what Jesus tells us: “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). My paraphrase: If you keep making your life on your own, you’re going to end up losing it, but if you give that up for me, you will find your real life. And Paul, in that passage where he said we were dead and God raised us to new life, also said, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). We are, our identity is, what God makes us.
Christopher Watkin, an Australian professor said some good things along these lines:
“The biblical view of identity is a profound subversion of that market paradigm, because in order to know who I am biblically, I don’t start within myself. I reach outside myself… [T]he way to find myself is to lose myself in knowing Christ… Augustine has a very rich way of putting this in the Confessions. He says, If I look inside myself, what I find is a mess—an impenetrable swirl of different desires and ideas. There’s no coherence, no stable identity there. But then he says that when he reaches outside himself to God, he’s gathered together. He uses this beautiful imagery of being gathered as a self. This frames Christian identity not as a possession that is bought and sold, but as a gift, a superabundant gift from God.”
Writing about knowing what God is like, theologian Jurgen Moltmann said, “God reveals himself in the contradiction and the protest of Christ’s passion to be against all that is exalted and beautiful and good, all that the dehumanized man seeks for himself and therefore perverts.” (in “The Crucified God”)
God gives us our life. God gives us our identity. God is against the identity that humanity make for itself, which is a perversion of our true identity, and in Christ he calls us and makes it possible for us to receive his gift, our true identity. In the process of becoming the images of God, we look to God for what we are and what we are going to be. We don’t just make it up as we go along.
Remember that God created the first humans in his image and told them to fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over it (Genesis 1:28). This is our God-intended destiny. We have been given the responsibility and authority to operate the creation. But there is something we have to remember.
Psalm 95:3-5:
For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
Colossians 1:15-18:
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.
The world is God’s. Everything was created for him; Christ is over it all. Everything exists for him and through him. Humanity is to rule over creation, but creation belongs to God. It doesn’t belong to us. We rule only as God’s images, as his representatives. We don’t take God’s place as King; he is supreme. We serve him (a critical trait of being in his image). God decides what creation is all about. God decides what is good, what is right, what is the desired outcome. We don’t have the right or the freedom to shape life on earth in any way other than God’s will. Being transformed by the Spirit of God into the image of our Creator entails learning how God wants things to be and working with him to make it happen.
Jesus made a couple of astonishing statements about his people in Matthew 5:13-16. He said, “You are the salt of the earth.” Then he said, “You are the light of the world.”
The salt in ancient Israel was not like modern table salt (sodium chloride). It was a mixture of chlorides of sodium, magnesium, and potassium and very small amounts of calcium sulfate (gypsum). Salt was not used just for flavoring or preserving. It was also a fertilizer (Anthony Bradley). Jesus was not saying to his followers “You are the world’s seasoning, to make it tolerable” or “You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.” He was saying, “You’re here to stimulate the growth of life.” As God’s representatives, our task is to be the means for God’s kind of life (“abundant”) to grow and spread throughout the world.
And “the light of the world” – that’s what Jesus himself was. John 1:4-13:
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
We have not been given authority to rule the world as nice, decent, kind people. We are light – shining in the dark so all can see the truth and become children of God.
Our authority as God’s images, his representatives, has been given so we can participate in bringing true life, true identity – with grace and truth – to the world. We’re not political,military or economic rulers who force people to do what’s right. We are becoming like God, offering reconciliation, redemption, healing, renewing, and freedom to all of humanity. (2 Corinthians 5:17-20; Matthew 28:18-20)
The character we are developing in becoming God’s images has many facets, many traits. But of course all that comes down to one thing, as Paul wrote: “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6). Being like God is love.
1 John 4:16-17:
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us… In this world we are like Jesus.
We are like Jesus when we love like him. Like this (Philippians 2:3-8):
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Nothing selfish, nothing conceited, humble, looking out for others, servant, sacrifice.
Really, when we try to determine what it means to live as God’s images in everyday life, we need to recall that Jesus is the image of God that we are intended to be (see Part 5). When we know him, we know what we are to be like. So, trust him, follow him, commune with him, get to know him, live in him and move forward toward being God’s holy image.
THE SAME AS
“Be holy” is the Lord’s command
Holy
Set apart, sanctified, devoted, belonging to the Lord
“Be holy, because I am holy”
Holy, holy, holy
Like God, the same as God
Not the same as I was before
Not the same as I have been
Not the same as my sinful nature
Not the same morals and ethics
Not the same purposes and plans
Not the same opinions and ideas
Not the same beliefs and values
Not the same desires and goals
Not the same ways and means
Not the same
But the same as God.
Search my heart, O Lord
Show me the unholy
The not-the-same-as-you
Wash, purify, sterilize
Refine, restore, resurrect
With the Blood
In the Spirit
By your Grace
Holy
The same as you