Sin and disobedience to God affected the human likeness to God. While not obliterating all likeness to God, sin has distorted or marred that likeness.
Against the backdrop of the bad news caused by human sin, the Bible’s message is one of good news in that God has a plan for humans to regain likeness to Him. Why such a plan? The primary answer lies in God’s nature as a God of love. What depth of meaning is compressed into the simple statement of 1 John 4:8 and 16, “God is love.”
His love is far more than mere sentiment of the heart. It is action and not just emotion. It is not grasping but giving. As perfect love, it seeks objects upon which to bestow itself.
By creating us in His own image and likeness, God made us capable of recognizing and receiving His love and of loving Him back in return. We might simply say the perfect love that motivated God’s creation of human beings is the same love that motivated Him to provide a way for sinners to regain His image and likeness, as well as to live unto His glory.
Regeneration
The beginning point in that plan is regeneration or a new birth launched through repentance of sin and faith in Christ Jesus and carried out by the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit in those who open themselves to the Savior. We term that beginning point Christian conversion. At that point, God’s saving grace covers our sins with the perfect righteousness of Christ.
However, as glorious as it is, conversion is but the beginning point in God’s redemptive plan for sinners.
The ongoing part of God’s plan calls for progressive or gradual growth and development in spiritual matters — increasing commitment to God’s ways, continual transformation by the renewing of our minds, gradual embodiment of revealed truth, persistence in the practice of prayer and, all the while, experiencing a growing conformity to the likeness of Christ, who, though becoming fully human in His incarnation, did not inherit a fallen nature. Rather, He was in His earthly life in every way “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15).
The completion phase of God’s restoration plan for fallen humanity awaits Christ’s return, at which time we shall be transformed into His likeness and restored to perfect and unhindered fellowship with God in order that we might bring Him glory through endless ages.
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