Received love

True humanity is not genius but love, that love which man does not possess from or in himself but which he receives from God, who is love. True humanity does not spring from the full development of human potentialities, but it arises through the reception, the perception, and the acceptance of the love of God, and it develops and is preserved by “abiding” in communion with the God who reveals Himself as Love. Hence separation from God, sin, is the loss of the true human quality, and the destruction of the quality of “being made in the Image of God”. When the heart of man no longer reflects the love of God, but himself and the world, he no longer bears the “Image of God”, which simply consists in the fact that God's love is reflected in the human heart.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 58–59