The Aim of the Christian Life

Bearing the Image in Spirit-Filled Humanity

The Declaration

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”

— Genesis 1:27

A declaration that establishes our origin, our dignity, and the north star of redemption itself.

The Imago Dei

The Christian life does not aim at disembodied spirituality, moral self-improvement, or therapeutic comfort. It aims at something far more comprehensive and beautiful: conformity to Christ, the restoration of the imago Dei (Latin: “image of God”) in our actual, embodied, Spirit-filled humanity. To be Christian is to be remade into the likeness of the Son—not merely forgiven but transformed, not merely saved from something but saved for Someone and into something. This article traces the scriptural architecture of that aim through creation, fall, redemption, and the Spirit’s ongoing work, correcting distortions that collapse the gospel into moralism or sentimentality, and offering concrete practices for those who long to bear Christ’s image in a watching world.

Creation: Vocation before Vice

Before there was any fracture, any rebellion, any need for rescue, there was a commission. The narrative of Genesis 1 moves with liturgical precision toward its climax: the creation of humanity in the divine image and likeness. This is no afterthought, no filler between the formation of sea creatures and the Sabbath rest. It is the point. God creates image-bearers—creatures who reflect, represent, and relate to their Maker in ways nothing else in creation does. The language is deliberately regal: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Kings in the ancient Near East (the world of Abraham and Moses) set up statues—images—of themselves in conquered territories to represent their rule. God does something infinitely more audacious: He makes living statues, breathing representatives, walking icons of His own glory.

This is vocation before it is ever violation. Adam is placed in Eden not as a tourist but as a gardener-priest, tasked to work and keep the sanctuary-garden, to exercise dominion—not domination—over creation, and to fill the earth with more image-bearers (Genesis 1:28; 2:15). The image is relational: man and woman together mirror the triune life. It is functional: they govern creation under God’s authority. It is moral: they are created upright, capable of righteousness, oriented toward their Maker. Psalm 8 marvels at this paradox—creatures “a little lower than the heavenly beings,” crowned with glory and honor, given dominion over the works of God’s hands (Psalm 8:5–6). The psalmist does not see humanity as a cosmic accident or a fluke of evolution. He sees creatures stamped with divine purpose, called to reflect God’s character in the theater of creation.

To forget this foundational calling is to misread everything that follows. The Christian life is not the manufacturing of an image we never had; it is the restoration of an image we lost. We are not climbing from nothing toward divinity; we are being renewed from fracture toward wholeness. Before the fall, Adam bore God’s image truly, though not yet fully—the tree of life stood before him uneaten, the earth lay unsubdued beyond Eden’s borders, and the dominion he was called to exercise remained an uncompleted commission (Genesis 1:28; 2:15-17). His destiny was always greater than his origin. The life of obedience, communion, and fruitfulness that God intended was never meant to be static. It was an upward call, a trajectory toward ever-increasing glory, an invitation into deeper knowledge of God and fuller expression of His likeness. When we speak of the aim of the Christian life, we are speaking of a return to that original vocation—but now through the Second Adam, by the power of the Spirit, in the light of resurrection.

Fall: The Fracture of the Likeness

The serpent’s question in Genesis 3 is designed to unsettle the image-bearer’s confidence in the Image-Giver: “Did God actually say…?” (Genesis 3:1). What follows is not the loss of the image in an absolute sense—Genesis 9:6 and James 3:9 still speak of humans as made in God’s likeness after the fall—but its catastrophic distortion. The mirror cracks. The icon is defaced. Adam and Eve reach for autonomy, for the right to define good and evil apart from God, and in grasping they lose what they were meant to become. The result is not mere guilt but a fundamental de-formation. The creatures who were meant to image God now image the serpent: they hide, they blame, they resent their Maker (Genesis 3:8–13). The relational, functional, and moral dimensions of the image all buckle under the weight of rebellion.

Sin is more than transgression; it is treason against the calling. Where Adam was meant to extend Eden’s borders through obedient work, he now toils in futility, sweat mingling with thorns (Genesis 3:17–19). Where Eve was meant to fill the earth with image-bearers in partnership with Adam, she now faces pain in childbearing and distortion in relationship (Genesis 3:16). The fracture radiates outward: Cain murders Abel, Lamech boasts of violence, and within eleven chapters the earth is filled with wickedness so pervasive that God grieves making humanity at all (Genesis 6:5–6). This is what theological precision calls “total depravity” (every part of us affected by sin)—not that every person is as wicked as they could be, but that every dimension of the image is marred. Mind, will, affection, body—all are bent inward, curved in on themselves, incapable of the God-ward orientation for which they were made.

Romans 5:12 traces the genealogy of death: “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” Paul is diagnosing a solidarity in ruin. Adam’s disobedience was not a private affair; it was a representative act with cosmic consequences. Every son and daughter of Adam inherits not merely guilt but a corrupt nature, a broken orientation, a fractured capacity to image God. This is why moralism—the attempt to polish the image through behavior modification—is a fool’s errand. You cannot repair a shattered mirror by rearranging the shards. You cannot restore the image by trying harder, being nicer, or adopting the posture of religious performance. The fracture is too deep, the distortion too comprehensive. What is needed is not reformation but re-creation, not improvement but resurrection, not a better version of the first Adam but a New Adam altogether.

Redemption: Christ the New Adam

Into the wreckage steps the Second Man, the Last Adam, “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Jesus is not merely a good example of image-bearing; He is the Image itself in unblemished, undistorted, fully realized form. Where the first Adam grasped at equality with God and lost his human vocation, Christ “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6–7). This is the great reversal. The one who had every right to glory humbles Himself unto death—even death on a cross—so that image-bearers might be lifted from death unto glory. Paul’s logic in Romans 5:12–21 is airtight: as one man’s disobedience brought condemnation and death to all, so one man’s obedience brings righteousness and life to all who are united to Him. Jesus recapitulates (retells and reverses) Adam’s story and inverts its trajectory.

He faces temptation in the wilderness where Adam faced it in the garden, and He does not flinch (Matthew 4:1–11). He is called to exercise dominion, and He does—over wind and wave, over demon and disease, over death itself (Mark 4:39; Luke 8:26–39; John 11:43–44). He images the Father perfectly, able to say without arrogance or delusion, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). His life is the prototype of restored humanity: prayer-soaked, obedience-marked, other-centered, God-glorifying. His death is the cost of that restoration: He bears the curse, absorbs the wrath, and dies the death that fractured image-bearers deserve so that they might be raised to the life He alone deserves. His resurrection is the vindication and the firstfruits: here, at last, is what unbroken humanity looks like—embodied, glorified, immortal, radiating the glory of God without shadow or stain (1 Corinthians 15:20–23, 42–49).

This is why the New Testament speaks so insistently of conformity to Christ’s image. Romans 8:29 declares that God predestined (determined beforehand) those whom He foreknew “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” The language is deliberate. Salvation is not merely legal acquittal, though it is certainly that. It is transformation into the likeness of the Beloved. It is being re-imaged. Second Corinthians 3:18 describes the process: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” The passive voice matters. We do not manufacture this transformation; we behold and are transformed. We gaze at Christ, and by gazing we are changed. This is no mystical escapism; it is embodied, Spirit-wrought renewal rooted in union with the Risen One.

First Peter 2:21 reminds us that “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” The word “example” here is not the language of mere imitation—Jesus is not a moral guru whose teachings we download and apply. He is the pattern, the archetype, the firstborn among many brothers (Romans 8:29). To follow His steps is to be united to Him by faith, to share in His death and resurrection, to have His life become the animating principle of ours. Galatians 2:20 captures the paradox: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” This is participation mysticism in its most biblical form—not absorption into the divine but union with the God-man such that His life becomes our life, His righteousness becomes our righteousness, His Spirit becomes our power.

The Spirit: Agent and Means

Redemption secured in Christ must become redemption applied by the Spirit. The Father elects, the Son redeems, and the Spirit regenerates, indwells, and progressively transforms. It is the Spirit who takes what belongs to Christ and makes it ours (John 16:14). It is the Spirit who writes the law on our hearts, enabling the obedience that the law demanded but could never produce (Ezekiel 36:26–27; Romans 8:3–4). It is the Spirit who bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and heirs with Christ (Romans 8:16–17). Without the Spirit’s agency, the aim of Christlikeness would be nothing more than a cruel demand shouted at corpses. With the Spirit’s agency, it becomes glorious possibility extended to those who were dead and are now alive.

The Spirit’s work is not a bypassing of our humanity but a renovating of it. He does not replace our wills; He frees them. He does not obliterate our personalities; He sanctifies them. Second Corinthians 3:18 explicitly attributes the transformation into Christ’s image to “the Lord who is the Spirit.” Romans 8 unfolds the Spirit’s multifaceted ministry: He gives life (Romans 8:11), leads the children of God (Romans 8:14), intercedes for the saints (Romans 8:26–27), and guarantees future glorification (Romans 8:23). The Spirit is not an impersonal force or a vague influence; He is the divine Person who dwells in believers, making them temples of the living God (1 Corinthians 6:19). To aim at Christlikeness apart from the Spirit is to attempt sculpture without hands. It cannot be done.

This is where much contemporary Christianity stumbles into Pelagianism (from Pelagius, the fourth-century monk who taught that human willpower alone could achieve righteousness)—dressed in evangelical clothing. The language of “disciplines,” “formation,” and “spiritual practices” can subtly drift toward self-help if we forget that every spiritual discipline is finally an act of dependence, an opening of hands to receive what only the Spirit can give. Philippians 2:12–13 holds the tension perfectly: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” The imperative (the command) presupposes the indicative (the gospel reality). We work because God is working. We pursue because we are pursued. We run the race because the Spirit has given us legs that were once paralyzed and a vision of a finish line we could not otherwise see. The Spirit does not make our effort unnecessary; He makes it possible.

Ethics as Formation: Put-off, Put-on, and Practice

The New Testament does not separate theology from ethics, justification from sanctification (the process of being made holy), or doctrine from duty. The indicatives of grace always give rise to the imperatives of obedience. Ephesians 4:22–24 captures the structure: “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and… be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and… put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” The language is vivid—like changing clothes. But the garments are not external; they are identities. The old self is the fractured image, the life patterned after Adam’s disobedience. The new self is the restored image, the life patterned after Christ’s obedience.

What follows in Ephesians 4:25–32 is not a random list of virtues but a description of what image-bearing looks like in everyday life. Speak truth because you are members of one body. Put away anger and bitterness because you have been forgiven. Work with your hands so you can give to those in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only what builds up. This is formation, not mere information. It is the slow, often painful, always Spirit-dependent work of having your desires reordered, your reflexes retrained, your vision refocused. Colossians 3:5–17 uses the same put-off/put-on structure, grounding it explicitly in union with Christ: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Because that is true—because you are already seated with Christ in the heavenly places—you can now “put to death therefore what is earthly in you” (Colossians 3:5).

Notice the logic. The imperatives rest on the indicatives. You are not killing sin in order to earn a position in Christ; you are killing sin because you already have that position. You are not putting on compassion, kindness, and patience in order to become a new creation; you are putting them on because you are already a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is where the polemic must cut sharp. Moralism says, “Do this and you will be accepted.” The gospel says, “You are accepted; therefore do this.” Moralism makes obedience the condition of love. The gospel makes obedience the fruit of love. Moralism exhausts and enslaves. The gospel empowers and frees.

But neither must we swing to the opposite ditch, where grace becomes an excuse for passivity or antinomianism (Greek: anti = “against,” nomos = “law”—the error that grace makes obedience optional) masquerades as faith. Romans 6 demolishes that error: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1–2). Grace does not minimize holiness; it produces it. The aim of the Christian life is not merely to be declared righteous but to become righteous in actual lived experience—not perfectly, not in this age, but really and increasingly. This is sanctification: the Spirit-wrought process by which those who have been justified are progressively conformed to the image of the Son. It involves conscious effort—Romans 12:1–2 calls for the renewing of the mind, the discernment of God’s will, the presentation of bodies as living sacrifices. It involves communal context—we bear one another’s burdens, confess sins to one another, exhort one another daily (Galatians 6:2; James 5:16; Hebrews 3:13). It involves the ordinary means of grace—Word, sacrament, prayer, worship.

David’s life illustrates this painful, messy, glorious trajectory. He is called a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14), yet he commits adultery and murder (2 Samuel 11). He is confronted by the prophet Nathan, and instead of rationalizing or fleeing, he breaks: “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:13). Psalm 51 becomes his prayer—“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). David knows he cannot renovate himself. He needs divine creation, a work of grace as radical as the first “Let there be light.” The Christian life is full of Davids—image-bearers who stumble, who fracture again and again under the weight of indwelling sin, but who return to the God who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8). The aim is not sinless perfection in this life; it is repentant progression toward the One who is sinless.

Peter’s story carries the same trajectory. He swears he will never deny Jesus, then does so three times before the rooster crows (Matthew 26:33–35, 69–75). The old Peter—impulsive, self-confident, unreliable—stands exposed. Yet Jesus does not discard him. He restores him with a threefold question by the Sea of Galilee: “Do you love me?” (John 21:15–17). The same Peter who failed becomes the preacher at Pentecost, the leader of the early church, the apostle who will eventually die for the name he once denied. This is the gospel’s power: not to erase failure but to redeem it, not to ignore fracture but to heal it, not to pretend we are already glorified but to promise that we will be. First John 3:2 holds the tension beautifully: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” The aim is certain. The process is ongoing. The end is guaranteed by the One who began the work and will complete it (Philippians 1:6).

Pastoral Application

The pastor or elder who understands this aim will shepherd differently. He will not preach moralism—try harder, do better, measure up—because he knows that crushing load produces only despair or hypocrisy. Neither will he preach sentimentalism—Jesus loves you just as you are, no change needed—because he knows that grace without transformation is not grace at all but enablement. He will preach union with Christ. He will remind believers that they are no longer in Adam but in Christ, no longer defined by their worst day but by His best day, no longer slaves to sin but slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:17–18). He will call them to holiness not as a burden but as a birthright, not as a duty divorced from delight but as the very shape of freedom.

Concretely, this means creating rhythms and contexts where the Spirit’s ordinary means are honored. Corporate worship is not a performance to be consumed but a feast to be received. Preaching is not motivational speaking but the exposition of Scripture where Christ is seen, sin is named, and grace is announced. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are not bare symbols but visible words that remind believers of their union with Christ in His death and resurrection. Small groups and accountability structures are not optional but essential—sanctification rarely happens in isolation. Confession of sin should be regular, specific, and met with gospel assurance. Spiritual disciplines—prayer, fasting, meditation on Scripture, solitude, service—should be taught not as merit badges but as postures of dependence, ways of opening our hands to receive what only the Spirit can give.

The believer struggling with habitual sin needs neither condemnation nor coddling. She needs to be reminded that she is not fighting for victory but from victory, that Christ has already defeated the power of sin, that the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in her (Romans 8:11). She needs the specificity of Scripture’s put-off/put-on commands. If anger is her besetting sin, she needs Ephesians 4:26–27 not as a club but as a map: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” She needs to trace the roots of her anger—unmet expectations, wounded pride, a failure to trust God’s sovereignty—and bring them into the light of the gospel. She needs brothers and sisters who will ask hard questions and pray hard prayers. She needs patience, because transformation is measured in years and decades, not days and weeks.

The church leader overwhelmed by his own inadequacy needs the same gospel. He is not the image; he is an image-bearer being renewed. His calling is not to be Christ to his people but to point them to Christ, to shepherd them toward the Chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4). His sufficiency is not in his gifts, his education, or his experience but in the Spirit who anoints and empowers (2 Corinthians 3:5–6). He will fail—in patience, in wisdom, in love—but his failures do not disqualify him so long as he runs to the cross, confesses honestly, and gets back up by grace. The aim of his leadership is to “present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28), and he pursues that aim “toiling earnestly with all the energy that he powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29). His labor is real, but the power is not his own.

The mother exhausted by the dailiness of discipling small children needs to know that faithfulness in little things—teaching a toddler to share, correcting a lie, modeling forgiveness with her husband—is image-bearing work. She is not wasting her gifts. She is forming image-bearers in the most fundamental context there is: the home. Her work is seen by God even when it is invisible to everyone else. The single believer wrestling with loneliness or sexual temptation needs the church to resist the idolatry of marriage and family and to affirm that wholeness and holiness are found in Christ, not in romantic fulfillment. His singleness is not a problem to be fixed but a calling to be stewarded, a context in which he can image God’s self-sufficiency and the sufficiency of Christ’s love. The elderly saint losing physical strength needs to hear that the inner self is being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16), that diminishment of body is not diminishment of dignity, that the image borne in weakness and dependence still reflects the glory of a God who became weak for us.

Every believer, regardless of stage or station, needs the steady diet of Scripture, the accountability of community, the encouragement of corporate worship, and the hope of consummation (the final perfection when Christ returns). We are not yet what we will be. The fractures remain, though they are being healed. The distortions persist, though they are being corrected. Indwelling sin wars against the Spirit, and the war is real (Galatians 5:17). But the outcome is not in doubt. The One who began a good work will complete it. The Spirit who hovered over the chaos at creation is hovering over the chaos in our hearts, bringing order, beauty, and life. The aim is clear: to be conformed to the image of the Son. The means are provided: union with Christ by faith, transformation by the Spirit, formation through Scripture and community. The end is certain: glorification, when at last we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

The Aim, the Hope

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”

— Genesis 1:27

What was spoken at creation will be fulfilled in consummation. We who were made to bear God’s image, who fractured that image through sin, who are being renewed in that image through union with Christ, will one day bear it perfectly, without stain or shadow, in resurrection bodies, in a new creation, forever gazing on the One whose image we were always meant to reflect. This is the aim. This is the hope. This is the life toward which every prayer, every act of obedience, every stumbling step of faith is bending. Press on toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​