Week 1: The Dignity of Humanity

Psalm 8:3–5 (CSB)

When I observe your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you set in place, what is a human being that you remember him, a son of man that you look after him? You made him little less than God, and crowned him with glory and honor.

The Question

What is humanity that God cares for them?

The Nature of Psalms: One thing I love about the Psalms is that they express a wide range of human emotions. Yes, there’s a lot of praising and thanking God, but there is also a lot of questioning, searching, crying out, lamenting. And here, a very real, honest question: in light of all the magnificent features of God’s creation, what is a human being that God should remember him?

Do We Resonate? Do we resonate with this sentiment? Do we ever wonder, for one reason or another, whether God really cares for us? Maybe it’s like the Psalmist, who is looking at the heavens, the moon and the stars, and sees how humanity pales in comparison. Or maybe you look at other people and you wonder, how can God care for me next to all these other people. “They’re so much more this or that, and I’m nothing like that.”

How do we know God Cares for Us?

Creation

Creation: The story of creation makes it plain that God cares for humanity above all else. Humanity is the pinnacle of his creation, and humanity is even described as being made in the image of God.

Two Descriptions of the Value of Humanity in Creation:

The image of God in humanity

Genesis 1:26–27 (CSB)

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.” So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.

The breath of God in humanity

Genesis 2:7 (CSB)

Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

Genesis 2:22–23 (CSB)

Then the Lord God made the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. And the man said: “This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called “woman,” for she was taken from man.

2. Christ

a. Dignifies Humanity: The fact that the eternal Son of God came to earth as a true and full human ultimately dignifies the worth of humans to God. God himself did not despise our condition. He took it on in full. And he did it for our sake.

b. Saves Humanity: Jesus is a perfect example of the fullness of the divine image in humanity and enables the corrupted image of God in us to be restored.

Colossians 1:5 CSB

because of the hope reserved for you in heaven. You have already heard about this hope in the word of truth, the gospel

2 Corinthians 3:18 CSB

We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.

3. Consummation

a. In the End: We don’t have all the details about when Jesus will come back or what exactly will happen, but we do know that everyone will be resurrected and that we will see Christ, and those who are saved will be like him.

1 John 3:2 CSB

Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is.

What Exactly is the Image of God?

The Language

צלם

This word occurs 32x in the OT (15 Hebrew; 17 Aramaic); only 5x does it refer the “image” of God/man as in Genesis 1, and these all occur in Genesis 1-9. The other 27 occurences of this word are all in relation to “idols” or “images” of other nations’ gods. The most telling use of this word in is Daniel 2-3 when the statue that Nebuchadnezzar builds of himself is called a tselem.

Thus, we can understand that this word has connotations of physical resemblance (cf. Gen 5:3), and we can assume that the strict prohibition against such images for the God of Israel in the OT stems from this understanding of people themselves bearing the divine image.

Genesis 5:3 CSB

Adam was 130 years old when he fathered a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.

דמות

This word occurs 25x in the OT (3x in our specific context) and the most indicative usage of this word is in the prophetic visions of Ezekiel and Daniel who attempt to describe what they are seeing as the “likeness” of something else.

This means, again, that there is some physical resemblance, but God cannot be depicted or described physically. So the best we can do is to say that we are “like” him.

The Theology

Some Proposals

Theologically the image of God is often identified as that which sets humanity apart from the rest of the living creatures in God’s creation. Namely, the image of God gives us the ability to understand (to rationalize, comprehend, express), have a will, and have freedom to act upon that will.

Sometimes you’ll hear that the image of God is our spiritual nature. And to an extent, that may be true.

The Important Takeaways

To bear the divine image means to represent the nature of God - who he is. Thus, in a broad sense, the Christian life is about being restored unto that image perfectly. This, of course, cannot be accomplished without the person and work of Jesus.

Now, while none of us bear the perfect image of God in us, none of us do not have it. Any human created by God (and that means all of us), are created in God’s image. This means that God has a special interest in us. He cares for us. He seeks to accomplish his purposes through us.

“He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His … He wants servants who can finally become sons” (CS Lewis, Screwtape Letters)

Looking Ahead

The focus of this semester’s Sunday night teaching will be both the image of God and idolatry, since we have seen that the two are somehow related, and we are going to unpack this more as the semester goes on.

Hopefully, tonight was a good introduction to what the image actually is, so that going forward we can talk about how it has been damaged, what continues to damage it, and how it might be repaired.

But, for now, the takeaway from this message is this: God cares deeply about you, and you are worth more to him than can be expressed with words.

A constant theme throughout this series is this: God in Search of Man. This is a reminder that God is not just hiding somewhere waiting for us to find him, but rather, God is actively searching for us. He is pursuing us despite the obstacles we put in his way. It is our job to respond to him.