The Image of God as the Capacity for Holiness
Dr. Peter A. Kerr
From the opening pages of Scripture, human beings are described not merely as creatures among others, but as creatures addressed. God speaks, blesses, entrusts, and calls humanity in a way no other creature receives. “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Gen 1:26). The text does not immediately define what this image consists in, yet it clearly grounds human dignity, vocation, and moral responsibility in it. The image of God is the reason human life is sacred even after the Fall (Gen 9:6), the reason humans are entrusted with care of the earth (Gen 1:28), and the reason humans are answerable to God’s commands.
Across the centuries, theologians have sought to specify what this image is. Some have located it in rationality or moral capacity. Others have emphasized relationality, dominion, or Christological fulfillment. Each of these captures something real, yet none fully explains how the image can be universally present, morally significant, dynamically transformative, and eschatologically fulfilled all at once. Scripture itself suggests a deeper grammar—one that does not reduce the image to a single faculty or function.
That grammar is holiness.
This article proposes the image of God is best understood as humanity’s God-given capacity to be holy. Holiness here does not mean moral perfection, withdrawal from the world, or achieved righteousness. In Scripture, holiness names consecration, belonging, and participatory orientation toward God. To be holy is to be claimed by God and ordered toward communion with Him. Understood as capacity rather than completion, holiness preserves the universality of the image while explaining its ethical, relational, and redemptive dimensions.
Holiness as Consecration, Not Moral Achievement
In modern usage, holiness is often reduced to moral purity or personal piety. Scripture uses the term far more broadly. In the Hebrew Bible, qādôš describes what is set apart for God—places, times, objects, and people. The Sabbath is holy because it belongs to God (Gen 2:3). The ground before the burning bush is holy because God is present there (Exod 3:5). Israel is holy not because of moral superiority, but because God has chosen and claimed them: “You shall be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy, and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine” (Lev 20:26).
Holiness, then, begins not with human performance but with divine claim. Something is holy because God takes it up into His purposes. Moral transformation flows from holiness, but holiness itself is fundamentally relational and vocational. This is why God can command, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 19:2). The imperative presupposes that holiness is participatory rather than incommunicable. God does not command Israel to become divine, but to live in alignment with the God who has already claimed them.
This biblical logic carries directly into theological anthropology. Humanity’s uniqueness is not first a matter of superior intellect or power, but of being capable of belonging to God in a covenantal way. Humans can be addressed, commanded, entrusted, and judged because they are capable of holiness. The image of God names this capacity.
Creation and the Capacity for Holiness
Genesis 1–2 never explicitly defines the image of God in philosophical terms. Instead, it shows humanity being addressed by God, blessed by God, and entrusted with responsibility within creation. Humans are placed in the garden “to cultivate it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). They receive commands that presuppose moral agency and freedom (Gen 2:16–17). These features do not describe moral achievement; they describe capacity.
What distinguishes humanity is not that humans are already holy in character, but that they are capable of being holy in relation. Humans can receive God’s presence, respond to God’s word, and participate in God’s purposes. This capacity sets humanity apart without elevating humanity into rivalry with God. Holiness does not erase creatureliness; it defines creaturely belonging.
This also clarifies the relationship between image and freedom. Holiness cannot be coerced without contradiction. To be claimed by God must involve consent, trust, and response. Genesis presents humanity as capable of obedience and disobedience precisely because humanity is capable of holiness. A creature incapable of holiness would also be incapable of meaningful refusal. Sin presupposes holiness; distortion presupposes form.
The Fall as Misalignment, Not Loss of the Image
After the fall, Scripture never says the image of God is destroyed. Humanity remains addressed by God (Gen 3:9), accountable before God (Gen 4:7), and sacred in God’s sight (Gen 9:6). What is disrupted is not the existence of the image but the orientation of the capacity it names. Humanity’s consecrated openness to God becomes misdirected toward self-rule and fear.
This continuity is difficult to explain if the image is defined as moral purity or achieved righteousness. It is readily intelligible, however, if the image is understood as capacity. A capacity can be distorted without being erased. Redemption, then, does not replace the image with something new; it heals and reorients what was already given.
Scripture and Participatory Holiness
The New Testament intensifies this participatory understanding of holiness. Believers are addressed as “saints” not because they have achieved moral perfection, but because they belong to God in Christ (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2). Holiness is a status grounded in divine action before it is an ethical accomplishment. At the same time, this belonging carries an intrinsic orientation toward transformation: “This is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thess 4:3).
Paul speaks of believers being renewed “according to the image of the One who created him” (Col 3:10). Renewal does not replace the image; it actualizes it. The image is present as capacity and fulfilled through participation. Sanctification is not the addition of a foreign ideal to human nature, but the maturation of what humanity was created capable of becoming.
Christ as the Fulfillment of the Image
Christ is called “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) not merely because He reveals God, but because He embodies in human life the full realization of holiness. In Jesus, holiness is lived as filial obedience, self-giving love, and perfect alignment with the Father’s will (John 5:19; 8:29). His holiness is not coercive, domineering, or detached from the world. It moves toward the broken, washes feet, and lays down its life (John 13:1–15; Mark 10:45).
Christ does not possess a different kind of humanity; He reveals humanity as it was meant to be. Participation in Christ, by the Spirit, is participation in holiness itself (1 Cor 6:11; 2 Cor 3:18). The image is not fulfilled by imitation alone, but by incorporation into Christ’s consecrated life. Holiness remains participatory, grace-enabled, and free.
Capacity, Not Completion
To say the image of God is the capacity for holiness is not to say humans are born morally complete. Capacity is not a latent power awaiting activation, nor a moral habit slowly acquired. It is an ontological openness intrinsic to human existence—the standing ability to belong to God, to receive divine address, and to participate freely in God’s life.
This distinction preserves universal dignity. Every human being bears the image fully, regardless of moral condition, ability, or circumstance. It also preserves genuine transformation. Growth in holiness is meaningful precisely because it fulfills a capacity already given. Ethics flows from identity; it does not create it.
Holiness, Freedom, and Love Above Glory
Because holiness is participatory, divine action must be non-coercive. God persuades, invites, and draws rather than overrides the will (Isa 1:18; Matt 23:37). Freedom is not opposed to holiness; it is the condition that makes holiness possible. Love that is forced is no love at all. God would rather plant a tree in Eden and lose paradise than remove the free will because without that will it is impossible to love and thereby reflect God’s holiness.
This vision guards against theological systems that exalt power over love. The God revealed in Scripture does not seek glory through domination, but He receives glory through self-giving love (John 12:32; Phil 2:5–11). Holiness is not control; it is communion. The image of God is not the capacity to rule others, but the capacity to belong to God.
Conclusion
The image of God is best understood not as a single faculty or function, but as humanity’s God-given capacity for holiness. Holiness, in Scripture, names consecrated participation in God’s life rather than moral achievement or withdrawal from creation. Conceived as capacity rather than completion, holiness preserves the universality and stability of the image while rendering sanctification, freedom, and transformation intelligible.
To image God is to be created capable of belonging to God, responding freely to God’s love, and participating in God’s holy life through grace. This vision keeps love above glory, participation above power, and communion above control.
What Is a Reflection?
Jesus is called the perfect image of the Father. When we think of reflection, we often imagine something fleeting—light bouncing across glass, pixels arranged on a screen, a wavering likeness rippling across water. The ancients also understood reflection more tangibly: a statue, an icon, a crafted form made in the image of another. Yet no matter the medium, a reflection possesses no glory of its own. Its beauty lies entirely in how faithfully it resembles the original. In the same way, humanity was created not to generate its own light, but to reflect the holy radiance of God—to resemble our Father in heaven.
We are often quick to ask how God is good for us, rather than to behold how God is simply good—and therefore worthy of imitation. Love is easier to receive than to reflect. We marvel at God’s promises and eagerly apply them to our lives, yet forget that to bear His image means we must become promise-keepers ourselves. We speak with reverence about the Word of God and welcome His light into our hearts, yet hesitate to let our words speak truth, healing, and courage into the lives of others. We rejoice in the Spirit’s love poured out upon us, yet too often fail to pass that same love on to those who need it more desperately than we do.
To reflect is to image. To image is to resemble. And resemblance always carries responsibility. Any flaw in the mirror distorts the light it reflects. Any error in the statue misrepresents the one it portrays. Sin is not merely rule-breaking but mis-reflection—the absorption of holy love rather than its free return. Love received but not reflected turns inward, overheats, and darkens the mirror. Love reflected, however, intensifies the light.
This is why the Christian calling is not mere belief, but participation. Not control, but communion. Not power, but holiness understood as fullness—goodness, truth, and love held together in radiant unity. We must seek a faith that actually loves, a religion that truly reflects, a discipleship that bears resemblance. We must turn away from every theology that reshapes God into an image of human power and control, and instead behold God as light and life, in whose image humanity is made.
To reflect God is not to diminish ourselves. It is to become most fully who we were created to be: living mirrors of holy love, catching the light of God and passing it on—freely, faithfully, and without distortion.
Supporting Scripture (in NASB)
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Genesis 9:6 Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.
Genesis 1:28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 2:3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
Exodus 3:5 Then He said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
Leviticus 20:26 Thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy; and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine.
Leviticus 19:2 “Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.’”
Genesis 2:15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
Genesis 2:16–17 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
Genesis 3:9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
Genesis 4:7 If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.
Romans 1:7 to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:2 To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.
1 Thessalonians 4:3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality.
Colossians 3:10 and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.
Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
John 5:19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.”
John 8:29 And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.
John 13:1–15 Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. So He came to Simon Peter. He said to Him, “Lord, do You wash my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter.” Peter said to Him, “Never shall You wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.” Jesus said to him, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.” For He knew the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, “Not all of you are clean.” So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.”
Mark 10:45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
1 Corinthians 6:11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.”
Matthew 23:37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.”
John 12:32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.
Philippians 2:5–11 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.