He is asking us to be the chief bearers of His likeness in the world. As spirit He remains invisible on this planet. He relies upon us to give flesh to that spirit, to bear the very image of God.
Image of God
Jack Hayford
Worship changes the worshiper into the image of the One worshiped.
John Eldridge
I daresay we’ve heard a bit about original sin, but not nearly enough about original glory, which comes before sin and is deeper to our nature. We were crowned with glory and honour. Why does a woman long to be beautiful? Why does a man hope to… be found brave? Because we remember, if only faintly, that we were once more than we are now.
Augustine
Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfill it without God. Not only is it sin, it is a perverse distortion of the image of the Creator in us. All these good things, and all our security, are rightly found only and completely in him.
Jonathan Edwards
The first and the great work of a Christian is about his heart. Do not be content with seeming to do good in ‘outward acts’ while your heart is bad, and you are a stranger to the greater internal heart duties. See that your chief study be about your heart; that there God’s image may be planted; that there His interests be advanced; that there the world and flesh are subdued; that there the love of every sin is cast out; that there the love of holiness grows.
Francois Fenelon
It does not follow, because the love of ourselves is lost in the love of God, that we are to take no care, and to exercise no watch over ourselves. No one will be so seriously and constantly watchful over himself as he who loves himself IN and FOR God alone. Having the image of God in himself, he has a motive strong, we might perhaps say, as that which controls the actions of angels, to guard and protect it.