By ruling creation in righteousness, we would have displayed God’s loving character throughout the world. By serving God in the obedience that He created us to perform, we would have reciprocated God’s amazing love to us. Before sin, God’s law was not a miserly imposition. It was a blueprint to show us how best to love God and to love our neighbor. 

Why do I exist? Who am I supposed to be? Questions of identity touch the heart of our human condition. They also broach some of the most challenging issues of the modern period. We need to know what it means to be human.

You might well be wondering how identity relates to good works and why good works matter. In truth, good works are more important to understanding ourselves than you might imagine. Westminster Confession of Faith 4.2 summarizes key facets concerning humanity:

After God had made all other creatures, he created man, male and female, with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after his own image; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it: and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change. Beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; which while they kept, they were happy in their communion with God, and had dominion over the creatures.

The confession invokes the key themes of righteousness, holiness, and knowledge of the law as well as the power to fulfill it. All these catchpoints connect in some way to the issue of good works. Remarkably, the confession closely ties them to another fundamental truth: God’s image.

This article explores why good works matter. Our main idea is that who you are—who God designed you to be—reveals what sort of life will lead to true flourishing. God made you to bear His image, which entails that you have the purpose of reflecting His holiness.

Fit for Purpose

For most things, we can understand why they exist by looking at their blueprints. Buildings are designed to provide shelter and protection. Cars are crafted for transportation. Watches are made for keeping time. The design plans for each of these things make their purpose clear. What about humanity?

God designed humanity to bear His image. The triune God Himself explained His purpose in creating us:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

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

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:26–28)

God described humanity’s blueprint. His expressed intent for us sheds light on our design. He tells us our identity and why we exist.

Stunningly, God made us to bear His image. This precious role of carrying the divine likeness comes with responsibility. The Apostle Paul elaborates that we were “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24).

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