Holiness and the Image of God

(During 2022, these bi-monthly posts are exploring various facets of the beautiful diamond that is our holiness doctrine and heritage.)

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image.” (Genesis 1:26)

The Image Recognized 

Humanity was created in the “image of God” (Imago Dei in Latin). Humans were created with unique qualities, absent in all other creatures of the earth, that mirror the divine nature of God. We were originally good, with pure hearts and the ability to intimately commune with God and each other. Created in the Imago Dei means we were innocent and pure, we were given a will and liberty to choose our way, and we had the desire and capacity to fully love God, love others, and love self. We were created holy.

The Image Ruined

The wedding liturgy refers to marriage being established “in the innocence of Eden.” Unfortunately, when Adam and Eve sin, that innocence is lost and the Image is marred. Humanity becomes separated from God. Love becomes twisted and turned inward. Adam and Eve lose their intimacy with God, without which the Image of God cannot subsist.

Guilt, shame, blame, and death enter the world. In Romans 5:12, Paul writes, “Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.”

When Adam and Eve sin, everything changes; everything is impacted. Creation becomes broken and disturbed. Everything now needs redeemed. Our purity, our holiness, the way we think, and choose, and love—it has all become tainted by sin. And the ruined Image has been passed along to succeeding generations.

When God’s Image within us was marred, it became difficult to recognize who we were created to be. We have had identity problems ever since.

The Image Restored

It was God who initiated the rescue plan to save us from our sin and from ourselves, and to restore His Image within humanity. He provided His Son—who perfectly reflects the Image—to be our Savior. The Imago Dei is most clearly seen in Jesus Christ.

Full salvation, including sanctification, is the restoring of humanity to the Image of God, which we recognize as Christlikeness. “Renewal in the image of God” is John Wesley’s central way of conceptualizing the doctrine of sanctification. He writes, “The great end of religion is to repair our hearts in the image of God.”

Jesus came to restore all that has been broken and marred by sin, including the Image of God within humanity. Through him, we can again bear the family likeness.

You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. (Colossians 3:9-10)