The Attributes of God We Are To Pursue

by Jen Wilkins, in her book: In His Image

Discipleship The Purpose Of Discipleship

Our inclination [when we seek to identify God's will for our lives] is to ask, "What should I do?"But God's will concerns itself primarily with who we are, and only secondarily with what we do. By changing the question and asking, "Who should I be?" we see that God's will is not concealed from us in His Word, but plainly revealed. 

The Bible plainly answers the question "Who should I be?" with "Be like Jesus Christ, who perfectly images God in human form." God's will for our lives is that we conform to the image of Christ, whose incarnation shows us humanity perfectly conformed to the image of God. 

But since the Bible's answer to "Who should I be?" is "Be like the very image of God," we must ask, "Who is God?" and a further question, "How should the knowledge that God is ___________ change the way I live?"  

God Incommunicable Attributes vs. God Communicable Attributes

When we strive to become like Him in any of these traits [the incommunicable ones], we set ourselves up as His rival. Human beings created to bear the image of God aspire to become like God. We [tend] to reach for those attributes that are only true of God, those suited only to a limitless being...

Like our father Adam and our mother Eve, we long for that which is only intended for God, rejecting our God-given limits and craving the limitlessness we foolishly believe we are capable of wielding and entitled to possess. To crave an incommunicable attribute is to listen to the serpent's lure, "You shall be like God." It is the natural inclination of the sinful heart, but as those who have been given a new heart with new desires, we must learn to crave different attributes, those appropriate to a limited being, those that describe that abundant life Jesus came to give to us. When we talk about being "conformed to the image of Christ," [the communicable attributes] is the list we are describing.