Understanding Human Dignity Through God's Image

We can cut right to the chase and say that fundamentally the answer to this question, "Who am I?" the answer is theological. And if we don't give a theological answer, we're going to at best flounder. That at worst we're going to do injury to our fellow man. We certainly don't want to do that. But we need to think of this, this fundamental crucial question as we should think of all questions, really, theologically and have a theological answer. [00:02:08]

And we come to this, "On the sixth day of creation," and what a story this has been, the unfolding of day after day, of God bringing order and structure and filling this formless void that was back there at verse 1. We come to the sixth day, and we read this, "God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, 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 upon the earth.'" [00:10:13]

You put these two together, and you find that the account of the origin of humanity is entirely unlike the origin of every other thing that God made. Nothing else is made in God's image. These great beasts that we see out there and even the fascinating small beasts. I saw an armadillo this morning, I think they're fascinating. They're not made in the image of God, we are. [00:11:42]

Our dignity is not something we earn or achieve because we're athletic or because we can achieve some great economic status, and therefore we're worth more. Or somebody who doesn't achieve or doesn't earn or doesn't have, you know, the looks or the athleticism or the connections, and so their status is less, and somehow we achieve a greater status. [00:14:36]

Our worth, our identity, and therefore our dignity is given to us. We did not earn it. God gave it to us. It is given, it is derived from Him and being made in His image. And there's a wonderful connection biblically between dignity and glory. And Dr. Sproul mentions this in Hunger for Significance, he talks about how we use this expression that someone who you don't like how you're being treated by someone and you might say, "That person just takes me lightly," right, or "They treat me lightly," right? [00:15:30]

And the dignity that is present in the image of God is a testimony, a pointer, an evidence to the glory of the Creator. Just as everything that God made is a testament to His being and His glory, but there's something special about being human and human beings. So make no mistake about it, this question, "Who am I?" you cannot answer it apart from God in the Bible, and the answer is simply this, "Who are you? You're made in the image of God." [00:16:41]

And being made in the image of God, you have dignity. And then we need to turn this around, don't we? And we need to say, every single person that we interact with is made in the image of God, every single human being we engage with, they deserve one thing from us – respect – because they have dignity, because they are made in the image of God. [00:17:16]

It is fascinating how you can judge a culture by how it treats the weak and the marginalized of its culture, and the defenseless. And so we have the two spectrums, don't we? We have the unborn, and we have the aged. And we have these heinous, heinous acts of abortion and of euthanasia. And we must, as Christians, contend for the right to life, not just for the productive, not just for those with status, every single life has a right to life. [00:21:01]

And so as we come into this, let's remember what it means to treat fellow image bearers with dignity – it means to have respect for people. And not just people, can I say this again, not just people who look like us. It's easy for us to do that, it's hard for us to do that with people who don't look like us, but we must respect. [00:24:14]

Luther said many things in there. It's full of all kinds of practical advice. It talks about building hospitals, it talks about how to care for people, he even talks about fumigating your…he says fumigate your house, fumigate your yard, fumigate the street. Now I'm not sure what fumigating looked like in the 1520s, but whatever it looked like, Luther was an advocate of it. [00:26:54]

And so we apply all our efforts to contend for the dignity of our fellow image bearers. We show love and respect. We tell them, "You are made in the image of God, the God who created all things, the almighty God, the merciful God, the sovereign God, the holy God made you in His image." We tell them that we are fallen and that we are sinful and that we live in a sin-cursed world. [00:30:10]

Through faith alone in Christ alone, we bear the image of Christ, and we are transformed not dust to dust, but glory to glory. And that's our mission, to proclaim the gospel of good news to our fellow image bearers made of dust so that they can be transformed from glory to glory. [00:31:18]