Human Dignity
The Rev. Louis B. Tiscione, Pastor, Weatherford Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Every year, Christian churches set aside the month of January to emphasize a revealed fact concerning the dignity of every human being. God’s revealed truth is that He creates an immortal soul in every human being. None of us is eternal. Yet, God breathed life into Adam and he became a living being. Our souls live on after our bodies die. The Apostle Paul emphasized this fact by exhorting the church in Corinth not to simply look at people in the flesh. Believers declare to the world that there is eternal life in Jesus.
On the other hand, the world says that the value as human beings is based upon current or potential contributions to society. There are ethicists who teach that human life has no more intrinsic value than plants and animals! I hope that this shocks you. Human life has been given a unique dignity and value by the Creator. Genesis 1:26a says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” Those who favor the evil act of abortion are called pro-choice when in fact their name should be called pro-death.
The fact is, there is a God whose existence is undeniable. He has made His divine attributes known by all that He has made (Romans 1:19-20). The Bible says that there is no other reasonable explanation for the world around us.
God’s being is the foundation for understanding the sanctity of human life. No other creature has been given such a distinction. Because of this, man is a moral agent. Mankind has been set apart by God. We are made in God’s image. One of my favorite Psalms declares, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him” (Psalm 8:3-4)?
The sense of the words of Scripture that declare men and women are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26) are likened to objects viewed in a mirror. We are reflections of God. Heretics have offered distortions of this over the years. Joseph Smith wrote that “God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man…” Kenneth Copeland wrote that God is a being who stands approximately six feet tall, weighs some two hundred pounds, and looks exactly like a man (Documented in “The Kingdom of the Cults” by Walter Martin).
Grounding ourselves in the truth is the best defense against such false teaching. So then, what is the truth? Bearing God’s image cannot mean that mankind physically looks like God, as those referenced above teach. God made us male and female! Both men and women bear God’s image. All reasonable people affirm that men and women are uniquely different.
Bearing God’s image means to have some of His attributes, characteristics that define His being. Now I used the word “some” to qualify the attributes of God that we bear. We are not God! No man is eternal. No man is self-existent. No man can make the claim that he had no beginning. Yet, all men are able to reason, think, and have limited knowledge. All men have a sense of right and wrong.
In bearing these characteristics, we are faced with limitations. For example, we don’t know everything even though we think we might. We don’t always do what is right even though we have the moral law written on our hearts. The Bible says that every intention of the thoughts men’s hearts are only evil continually (Genesis 6:5).
Yet man’s sinfulness does not eliminate man’s dignity. God made man in His image, male and female He made them as recorded in Genesis chapter one. Two chapters later, the Bible records the Fall. As a result, all those attributes were marred. Men and women still have the God-given attributes but have inherited a sin nature. Adam is referred to as the head of the human race (Romans 5:12ff). Along with the dignity of being human comes the responsibility for our actions.
Having said all this, the fact that we are sinners does not remove the dignity which God conveyed by making man in His image. It also does not reduce our responsibility to stand for the sanctity of human life from conception to the grave.
God sanctified all human life. No man can change what God ordained. You have dignity and value from conception because the sovereign God made you in His image! May you stand for and do what you can to protect all human life.
