Reimagining Our Image of God

An Essential Truth

God’s deepest reality is self-giving love—a blazing center of being that once seen, rewrites what we believe, how we live, and who we become.

When you imagine God, what comes to mind?

The answer will depend on whether you identify with a particular faith tradition. If you’re a Christian, for instance, you might envision:

• A heavenly father capable of great love but also devastating wrath.
• A stern judge tallying every good and bad deed.
• A spiritual father who is there to teach us how to be good, moral people.
• A transactional benefactor-punisher; rewarding compliance, punishing missteps.
• A sovereign god who governs history but holds us responsible for our choices.
• An angry Father who killed his own son so he wouldn’t have to kill us.
• A demanding figure who is never satisfied with our current level of effort.
• A god of win or lose; believe the right things and win heaven or suffer forever.

If you’re an atheist or on the fence about whether God exists, you may imagine:

• An impersonal force humming behind the universe.
• A projection of human longing for meaning, security or community.
• A cosmic killjoy who insists on rule keeping.
• A sentimental grandfather who sometimes grants favors.
• An absent cosmic clockmaker who wound up the universe and stepped away.

Whatever image comes to mind, it is more than a private hunch and there will always be some degree of separation between our image of God and God’s true state of being. Nevertheless, the assumptions that frame our picture of God, real or imagined, profoundly shape the way we live. The more distorted the image, the wider the gap, and the more prone we are to guilt, fear, anger, indifference, selfish ambition, and even complicity in injustice—among Christians and non-believers alike.

Think of your image God like the operating system on a smart phone: mostly invisible but constantly shaping everything that happens on the screen of your life. It shapes the convictions we cling to, the policies we endorse, the way we treat people around us—and even how we judge ourselves in the mirror.

C.S. Lewis wrote; There are three images in my mind which I must continually forsake and replace with better ones: the false image of God, the false image of my neighbours, and the false image of myself.

Complicating matters, no one imagines God with an unfiltered mental lens. We peer through layers of family lore, church traditions, cultural scripts, and raw personal experience. Left unchecked, those filters tempt us to craft images of God that are very much like images of ourselves. Divine projections that drive us to appease or seek favour from a god that can help or harm us, soothe our insecurities with pride in our religious titles and memberships, or even excuse our offenses. Scripture warns that distorted images and caricatures of God are like homemade idols.

No amount of religious activity or struggle —church services attended, earnest prayers recited, scriptures memorized, hours volunteered—can compensate until our false impressions are replaced by a true, transformative, and life-giving image of God.

Thankfully, Jesus shows us more than enough of God’s character to narrow the gap to a trustworthy view—if we are willing to look and have our vision corrected. Throughout his ministry, Jesus challenged the Pharisees—and anyone else captive to a distorted view of God—to recalibrate their image of God according to his example. A standing invitation to this day.

Why does Recalibration Matter?

Because the depth and durability of our faith depends on how closely our picture of God matches God’s true character. Though I would not direct one to the writings of A.W. Tozer on most matters, he does offer a suitable quote for this discussion:

God is a person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may…When the eyes of the soul looking out meet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on earth.

Jesus taught that trees are known by their fruit (Matthew 7:15-20 and Luke 6:43-45). If our view of God consistently produces fear, guilt, arrogance, or injustice, it is time for some pruning. A vision of God rooted in fear or transaction inevitably shrinks our faith and warps our spiritual imagination. Conversely, a Christ-shaped vision—where love is not just one attribute among many but the non-negotiable core of God’s being— frees our conscience from fear, fuels courageous compassion, and reframes power as self-giving service instead of control. So let us turn our attention to love as the deepest, defining feature of God’s nature and character.

The Essence of God’s ‘godness’

New Testament Scripture specifically states, God is light; in him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). Numerous scriptures use images of fire to describe God. Imagine if we extend the metaphor and trace every beam of God’s character—justice, wisdom, mercy, power, creativity, and more— to their source, what would we find?

I am convinced that if we followed the radiant beams of God’s character to their origin, we would stand before a blazing furnace of love—a searing brilliance that forms the very essence of God’s being, forging every facet of the divine identity with incandescent coherence. Strip away love and the reality of God, as revealed in Jesus, collapses, the way a triangle stops being a triangle the instant one side is erased.

The cross makes this unmistakable. In Jesus, God shows that true goodness, justice, and power are not displays of raw force but acts of self-giving love that absorbs evil and still extends mercy. Every divine action—shaping galaxies, confronting injustice, healing wounds—flows from that permanent center of love. Lose love and you lose God; keep it, and every other attribute finds its perfect shape.

We know this is true because Jesus’s crucifixion isn’t a detour from divine greatness; it’s the moment that confirms the definition of greatness. At the cross, God shows that real goodness, justice, and power are not feats of raw force but acts of self-giving love—what theologians call kenosis.

Derived from a Greek word meaning self-emptying, kenosis describes Jesus Christ’s voluntary act of humbling himself by taking human form and becoming obedient to God his Father, to the point of death on the cross. It signifies Jesus’ radical, self-giving act of love.

Kenotic love is love turned outward to the point of apparent weakness. Yet in that apparent weakness God’s power reaches full strength. Jesus’s humility and servant-heartedness aren’t soft exceptions to an otherwise hard-nosed deity; they are the blazing proof of who God has always been. God’s sovereignty and authority, reimagined through the cross, is not unlimited coercive power but the invincible strength of self-giving love that absorbs evil and extends mercy to all.

What does this Mean Now?

The same invincible strength surges through anyone who chooses the self-giving path of kenotic love. Hear again God’s whisper to Paul: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). Self-giving love might look fragile—might even invite fresh wounds—but when our image of God is rightly anchored in the self-giving logic of kenosis, love proves irresistibly powerful in the end.

Kenosis did not begin on Easter Friday; it courses through God’s eternal being. His love runs so deep that when it pours into creation, it never grabs for control but instead persuades by witness and compassion—and, when necessary, absorbs wounds rather than inflicts them.

That means God’s supremacy never leans on threat. It draws, it woos, it mends. Where human power often muscles its way to the front, divine power stands in the vulnerable places, trusting that the beauty of self-giving love is persuasion enough. Love accepts unconditionally yet never overrides freedom—even when that freedom nails Him to a cross.

When we allow the cross to reveal a startlingly image of God as a self-giving Servant-King—powerful not by domination but by relentless love—our self-understanding changes overnight. We grasp that worth is a gift, not a wage; weakness becomes a doorway for grace, not a source of shame; ambition reorients from How can I climb higher? to How can I lift others? Even setbacks lose their sting because love has already secured the final word.

Practical shifts follow:

• Confidence without performance: Loved first, we drop the impulse to earn approval.
• Honest about limits: Failure is compost for growth, not proof of worthlessness.
• Service over spotlight: Influence is measured by whom we raise up, not by who applauds us.
• Protective generosity: We give freely yet set healthy boundaries—real love serves and safeguards.
• Resilient hope: Hard seasons are no longer divine punishment but occasions for resurrection-shaped growth.
• Curious faith: Questions and doubts are welcome; a self-giving God never shuns honest seekers.
• Bridge-building relationships: Quick to forgive, eager to reconcile, convinced that interdependence is a design feature, not a flaw.

Taken together, these shifts forge people who are rooted, open-handed, and resilient mirroring the God who wins by giving Himself away. In short, if God’s core is self-emptying, self-giving love, our core identity becomes beloved servants, freed from anxious striving and empowered to pour that same love into the world.