Human Dignity

This sermon was preached for Capital Pres Fairfax on January 28, 2024  as a part of our series “Genesis: The True and Better Story.” A recording of this sermon will be available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

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What does it mean to be human? What is fundamental to who and what we are? It’s a question we started our service with this morning in our call to worship Psalm 8:4 “What is man?”, and it’s a question we humans have been asking for millennia. If you were to look for an answer to that question, what would you find? 

If you went to Wikipedia, you’d find this answer: “Humans or modern humans (Homo sapiens) are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the only surviving species of the genus Homo” So that’s a biological answer: we are defined by our physical traits which distinguish us from other primates. Most notably our brains which give us advanced cognitive abilities—hence the title Homo sapiens (Latin for “thinking man”). Maybe that answer’s not satisfying for you so you instead bring your question to philosophers. There you’ll find a whole host of answers. If you go back to Aristotle, he’ll tell you that man is primarily a political animal; we’re defined by the social structures we’ve created. Other people say we are defined by what we can make, by the capacity to manipulate our environment for our own advantage. Still others say that humans at their core are story-telling creatures; we’re defined not merely by knowledge we gain but by the narratives we create to explain our knowledge.  

So which one is it? What’s our defining trait? Is it our biology? Is it our sentience? Is it our relationships in society? Is it our ability to tell stories? Maybe you have the instinct to say, “Well, it’s all of these things; they’re all true.” We can affirm that: generally speaking, these are all true of humanity…but that’s not it. That can’t be it! Because you just feel it in your heart—there has to be something more to who I am, I know there is. Don’t you feel this? 

We are storytelling people; think about the most common type of story we like to tell. My wife and I have been watching the Percy Jackson series on Disney+, it’s pretty good, and it’s a great example of our favorite kind of story. In the beginning, Percy is just an ordinary sixth grader—just a kid with curly hair and bad dreams and a tough home life. But Percy discovers that he is far more than just an ordinary kid; in fact, he has amazing power and honor because of who his father is. I won’t say anymore to spoil the show, but you get the idea: think Luke in Star Wars, Frodo in Lord of the Rings, Rapunzel in Tangled. Our stories tell us something about our hearts. We have a deep, profound sense of innate extraordinary meaning…and we can’t explain it! If we search within ourselves or out in nature we find plenty of distinguishing markers but we can’t find anything that answers the longing question of our hearts “What am I? What is man? What does it mean to be human?”  

We’re in a sermon series this Winter titled “The True and Better Story.” We believe that God has answered our question through the story told in the Bible, and that story starts in first two chapters of Genesis. Today we’re asking the question “What is man?” The answer we’re given is “You are an image-bearer, and that means you have innate dignity.” We’ll follow this through three points: dignity given, dignity rejected, and dignity restored. 

Dignity Given 

Let’s start with dignity given—that’s what we see right here in Genesis 1-2. God creates the whole world and his culminating act of creation is humanity.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And 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 on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen 1:26–28)

Let’s remember the context of Genesis: Moses is writing Genesis to the nation of Israel he just led out of Egypt; Genesis is reorienting God’s people with a true and better story than the ones they had been taught in Egypt. That’s helpful to remember because while some of this language might be confusing to us, it wasn’t to them. They would have known that Genesis 1 mirrors the story of a temple construction. 

A temple is a place where God dwells and there’s a specific pattern for how to properly build one. They usually follow some sort of seven-day or seven-year cycle. The first step in building a temple is to create the structure—the foundation, the roof, the walls, the curtains—then after that you fill it. Genesis follows this exactly. In days 1-3 we see God creating the structure of his temple. He divides time into day and night, he divides the waters into the skies and the sea, and he divides the seas into land and oceans. In days 4-6 we see God filling it. He places the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens, he fills the skies with birds and the seas with fish, then he fills the land with animals. But there’s still one final addition that needs to be made before it’s a proper temple: God needs to place his image in it. 

Here again our modern context doesn’t help us understand what’s going on. When we hear the word image, we think JPEG—just a picture of something. But when we’re talking about temples, an image is something far more than just a picture. An image of a god is the physical representation of that god’s presence. Think about how an ambassador is the representative of his country. In Genesis 1, God is telling us that you and I are God’s representatives; we are his ambassadors to creation. The implications of this are massive, which is why we’re spending so many weeks unpacking what it means to bear God’s image. 

Today, we’re just focusing on how that imbues us with incredible dignity. That would’ve been a foreign concept to Moses’ original audience. According to Egyptian religion, the Israelites had no dignity. The only people who had dignity were the Egyptians, and only the ones who were wealthy and influential. And only one human was an image of god in Egypt: Pharaoh. He alone was the human representation of their sun god Amon-Re, and because of that, every other human was his property, no different than his livestock. 

See how different a story Genesis is? According to the God of the Bible, dignity isn’t something you earn based on your wealth or merit—it’s something you’re given. And God tells us it’s not just Pharaoh who’s made in God’s image, it’s all of us—every human being without distinction or qualifier. Friends, hear this: by your very existence, the mere fact that you are a human, means that you are an image-bearer of God and have dignity, you have intrinsic value and worth. That status as image-bearer comes with some responsibility, too—God has a role for humanity to fill in creation—but notice, that role is given after our creation. It comes out of who we are, it doesn’t determine who we are. Look again to the order of events in our passage: God creates us in his image and then tells us what to. 

So we’re not merely another animal who has the chance to become an image-bearer of God; we are image-bearers. That’s crucial to understand when we talk about dignity, because so often we do the opposite and it leads to really dark places. When we forsake our status as image-bearers and make dignity something we have to earn, we end up rejecting dignity in other people. 

Dignity Rejected

Let’s think about how that happens. Let’s come back to those different answers we found to the question “What does it mean to be human?” If we’re just looking at biology we find no justification for universal dignity. Animals don’t show solidarity just for being members of the same species. Lions don’t simply respect other lions because they’re both lions. Nature, if it teaches us anything, teaches us competition, violence, power. At best we might say it’s advantageous for our survival to care for our own family and friends, but you will find no reason to love your enemy in biology. 

What about our cognitive faculties? Can we ground dignity in consciousness? Many do, but that’s not a stable foundation either. If dignity is rooted in ability to reason, right off the bat that disqualifies a lot of people we know have dignity: infants, the elderly with dementia or Alzheimers, people in comas, even you every night when you’re asleep. Seriously! If we want to ground dignity in consciousness, we have to admit that’s a moving target.

So is “reason.” Think about this: at what point does a child become reasonable? Three months? Eighteen months? Is a three-year-old reasonable enough? If the human brain isn’t fully developed until you’re in your mid-20s, what’s the benchmark? What about people with intellectual disabilities or mental illness? Rooting dignity in reason might invalidate our friends and family with autism, cerebral palsy, Schizophrenia, bipolar, and even addiction. If you want to base human dignity on biology or on cognitive function, you don’t end up with a true and better story than the Bible. 

What about Aristotle’s approach or the other philosophers? What about our social systems and our inventions and our culture? Here too we come up short. Aristotle had no belief in universal human dignity—in fact, he argued the exact opposite. Aristotle was a Greek, and in his worldview the only people who had dignity were Greeks. What about Persians or Scythians? In his eyes, those aren’t people; those are barbarians! That’s exactly how the Persians felt about the Greeks, and how the Romans felt about the Germans, and every other ancient civilization felt about outsiders. 

And lest we think this is just ancient history, this is the history of Western colonialism: “there’s us modern Christian Europeans, and then there’s savages.” This same kind of racist ideology justified the enslavement of Africans and Native Americans, and the treatment of human beings like property. Americans argued on scientific grounds (note: bad science, totally debunked science, but still scientific grounds) that people of African descent were less capable of critical thinking than Europeans and therefore ought to be placed in segregated schools. My parents were alive when those arguments were being made. So this isn’t just a “back then” problem, this is a live issue. We are all at risk of denying other people’s dignity. 

And here’s the danger in that, even beyond all the obvious and immediate harm that causes. When we deny other people’s dignity, we forsake our own dignity. Rather than bearing the image of the God of love and blessing as we were created to do, we extend curse and shame. We reject our own status as image-bearers when we deny our neighbor’s dignity. And the tragedy of our story is that we’re all guilty of this. You might not be as blatant about it as the examples just given, but we’ve all devalued other people before. Kids when you tease someone for not being as smart or as funny as you, that’s a way of denying their dignity. When a parent berates a little league ref for making a bad call in their 11-year-old’s ball game, that’s a way of dehumanizing someone. And when you sneer and mock that other parent for doing so, you’re proving you’ve got the same twisted heart. 

Who is it for you? Who do you hate? Who do you dehumanize with your words or in your heart? Whoever it is for you, the Bible tells us why we all constantly do this—it’s called sin. Our first parents Adam and Eve made a conscious decision to reject their status as image-bearers; rather than being made in the image of God, they wanted to be gods themselves. So they disobeyed God and the immediate result of that first sin was to deny dignity. They felt shame about their nakedness, they hid from God, and they blamed each other for sin. Since that moment you and I and all of humanity have been hard-wired to deny dignity in others. The good news is, the Bible doesn’t just tell us the problem—it gives us the solution: the person and work of Jesus Christ who restores our dignity. 

Dignity Restored

The true and better story of the Bible points us to a man who perfectly fulfills God’s intent for his image-bearers. The gospels are full of stories where Jesus does this. In John 4, Jesus sat down by the well to talk to a Samaritan woman. She was amazed at this, because Samaritans and Jews hated each other. There was an unbelievable racial divide, and Jesus crossed it. 

In Matthew 8, Jesus reached out and touched a leper to heal him. In a society that associated sickness with shame, Jesus told this man that his dignity was greater than his body. We could go on and on, but here’s the point: Jesus, in his life on earth, treated all with dignity, including and especially those you might not have expected. In his eyes, they were valuable. 

If you think something is valuable, you’ll pay a lot for it, right?  What are the things in your life you’d pay the ultimate price for? There are very few things any of us would be willing to die for—maybe our families, maybe our country. But in the case of you and me, Jesus said we were worth everything. Jesus Christ gave his life to redeem sinners like us. With joy in his heart he faced the cross, and as he hung there dying he thought of his beloved people and proclaimed “Worth it. Paid in full.” 

How does that solve our problem? Is this just an inspiring story, is that supposed to motivate us to be nicer to people? No! Jesus’ own life and death actually frees us from the bondage of sin, and if we look to him for forgiveness, he gives us new life in his resurrection. More than that, he re-wires our hearts to truly bear God’s image and to honor the innate dignity in others. 

What does that look like? Let’s get really practical. Remember: Moses is writing Genesis to the people he just led out of Egypt—that includes Egyptians who put their faith in God. What does God command Israel to do with these Egyptians? Not to enslave them, but to love and protect them as foreigners in their midst—as refugees. Genesis 1 teaches them that Israelites who were former slaves AND Egyptians who were former enslavers are made in the image of God. That is a powerful, countercultural display of affirming innate human dignity. 

What might this look like in our own day? Here’s a few quick closing points of application. 

First, don’t fall victim to the dehumanizing polarization that surrounds us. We’re constantly told we have to take a side on political and social issues, and if you’re on the wrong side, you’ve forfeited your own dignity. You get to be shamed and harassed and ratio’d and cancelled. That’s not how we roll as Christians: we affirm the innate dignity of all people. The presidential candidate you are voting for is made in the image of God, and your sibling who is voting for the other side is also made in the image of God. The unborn child is made in the image of God, and the woman who’s had an abortion is also made in the image of God. 

In a world where so many people—even so many churches—are digging trenches, we want to be people who are building bridges. We want this to be a church family that brings all our differences to the table, that seeks the best in those we disagree with, and aims to love them as Christ has loved us. Imagine what an amazing witness we could be by offering grace to those we disagree with. 

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have our own views. It’s good to believe in your political candidate. We are right to affirm unborn children as human beings—not partial or potential, but real living image-bearers. We are right to speak out against the evil of abortion—but Christ calls us to hold those views in a way that honors him and honors the dignity of those we disagree with. There’s grace enough in Christ for them and for whoever we call “the other side.” We should be quick to listen and slow to judge, eager to give the benefit of the doubt and thoughtful in how we give a response. Don’t fall into the trap of dehumanizing polarization. 

Second, fall in love with those who have been dehumanized. They’re all around us—people whom society has pushed to the margins, the “unclean,” the unwelcome, the unloved. Those are lies, and all it takes to prove it is getting to know someone. Who does this include? People with physical or intellectual disabilities. Don’t close your eyes to them when you see them. Get to know them, meet their families. Serve with Young Life Capernaum; you will quickly learn how beautifully they bear the image of God. We could include the very young, the elderly—people at an age where some would rather put them away in a separate room. We could include homeless people in our community. I could go on, but I’ll let you fill in the gaps. 

The good news is, our church gives you opportunities to grow in love for all these groups of people. If you’d like to hear more, please check out our website for our missions partners or come chat with me after the service, I’d love to get you plugged in. Fall in love with those on the margins. 

Third and finally, worship the God whose image you bear. The first step toward denying dignity in others is forgetting the God who created us. The first step toward redemption is turning back to this same God who loved us so radically he sent his son to die for us. We start and end with worship. 

For all these philosophers and scientists that we began with, the question “What is man” is a matter of inquiry, it’s an open question for them to discover. When we come to Psalm 8 as we did this morning, “What is man” isn’t an open question—it’s an expression of wonder for our Heavenly Father.

what is man that you are mindful of him, 

and the son of man that you care for him? 

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings 

and crowned him with glory and honor. 

O Lord, our Lord, 

how majestic is your name in all the earth!  (Ps 8:4-5,8)