In His Image
In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character
By: Jen Wilkin
So thankful for Jen Wilkin writing meaty and theologically sound material for us to learn from!
Just finished doing this as a women’s Bible study. It’s a great book for studying God and His Word together and spurs lots of good conversation. It’s a book you need that you may not even realize yet.
Seeking to address the question- ‘What is God’s will for my life?’ Wilkin responds by posing a different question. Instead of trying to figure out what we should DO, we need to ask ‘Who should I BE?’ “our sanctification is not simply that we would make better choices, but that we would become better people.” And the way we do that is by looking at who God calls us to be in His image.
This is somewhat of a companion book to her book “None Like Him” (that I haven’t read yet) that explores how God is different than us. “In His Image” explores the characteristics of God that we can reflect: holiness, love, goodness, justice, mercy, grace, faithfulness, patience, truth, and wisdom.
When we seek God’s will, it’s not a process of behavior modification and earning our faith by making the ‘right’ choices, but it’s a process of being transformed from the inside out to reflect God’s character. And it is a process. In our discussions of each chapter every week we touched on how we fall short in each of these areas- we will never perfect our character this side of heaven- but that through his spirit, God enables us and grows us little by little.
Wilkin will challenge you and encourage you and remind you of the freedom we have in Christ. You’ll come back to this one when you’ve forgotten what it means that we were created in his image. As she points out, when Jesus is asked about paying taxes and he responds by asking them whose image is on the coin, “He says, in effect, ‘The coin is engraved with the image of a ‘god,’ marking what belongs to him. You, on the other hand, are engraved with the image of God himself, marking what belongs to him. Will you concern yourself with earthly obligations to the neglect of the heavenly ones required by the image engraved in you? You bear the very marks of the Creator. Render unto God what is God’s.’”
The questions of what should I do, where should I go, etc are not meaningless and unimportant, but God’s will is that we are transformed in his image, bringing glory to his name, and when we are seeking to be more like Him, it’s not so much what we do and where we go as much as who we are when we’re doing it that.