Message preached on Sanctity of Life Sunday; January 18, 2015 from Genesis 1:26-27; 2:7, 18-23
Theme: The Bible’s story of Creation affirms to us the immeasurable value of all human life.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
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Every third Sunday of the year, we join with other churches around our nation in commemorating “Sanctity of Life Sunday”. It’s a day on which we affirm together what God’s word says about the precious value of all human life; and take a stand for its defense and protection at every stage of being.
I believe—and I think history itself clearly shows—that human life, in actual practice, is always either valued or cheapened, either protected or threatened, in accordance with how the origin of humanity is understood to have occurred. The value placed on human life is a logical by-product of the belief we have of how human life began. And the Bible declares to us a story about the beginning of human life that absolutely demands that it always be held as sacred.
Here’s something else I believe. I believe that the most consequential words in the world are the first ten words we find in the English Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” If anyone believes those words, and submits to them in humility and reverence, it will impact their viewpoint on literally everything else in the world—including their view of the value of human life.
There has never been a more crucial time in history for us, as followers of Jesus, to declare the Bible’s story of the beginning of things to the people of our world, and to insist that human life be valued accordingly. So; let’s equip ourselves today to stand for life. Let’s not let our familiarity with the Creation story dull our sense of its revolutionary impact on our times. Let’s go back to the Bible’s story of beginnings—back to Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis—and be reminded again of how it absolutely affirms to us the immeasurable value of all human life.
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One way that the Bible’s story of beginnings affirms this to us is . . .
1. IN THE RESOLVE OF GOD TO CREATE HUMANKIND.
In the first chapter of Genesis, we’re told of how God created the inhabitable world in six days. Each day unfolded a new stage in God’s preparation of it for life; and we frequently read throughout the process that God looked upon all His creation and said that it was good.
But on the sixth and last day—as, we might say, the crowning act of His creative work—God made a remarkable resolve. We’re told;
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, 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. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28).
I was talking about this story with someone the other day; and they said that it was as if, in God’s work of Creation, He saved the very best for last. I believe that that’s a true way of putting it. In fact, it seems as if the Bible affirms the same thing; because it wasn’t until after He made humankind that we’re told, “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (v. 31). Before humankind, creation was declared to be good; but it was only after humankind was created and placed in it that it was declared to be very good.
And if we knew nothing more than this—if we knew only that God, in His creative work, made a special resolve to create humankind—it would be all that we need to know in order to appreciate the immeasurable value of human life. Anything that the almighty God would decide to make with such intentionality and care and delight is to be held as very dear to Himself—and should therefore be very sacred to us.
Humankind is not its own—free to do to with itself whatever it pleases. Humanity is God’s property; and each individual member of it belongs to Him. As the psalmist wrote in Psalm 95;
Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
And the sheep of His hand. (Psalm 95:6-7a).
Or as it says in Psalm 100;
Know that the Lord, He is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture (Psalm 100:3).
God has made humankind so that each of us as individual members might seek after Him as our Creator and Provider. As the apostle Paul once said to the ancient people of Athens in Acts 17;
“And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring’” (Acts 17:26-28).
So then; each human being is of immeasurable value and worth to God our Creator, because it is He who made us for Himself.
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Now; that’s one way that the story of beginnings affirms the value of human life to us—the resolve God made to create humankind for Himself. And another way is seen . . .
2. IN THE IMAGE OF GOD THAT HUMANKIND BEARS.
When God made humankind, He declared something to be true of people that is not true of anything else He made. Humankind is unique among all of God’s creative works, because human beings are made in His own image.
God—speaking in the plural; and perhaps thus indicating an agreement among the Persons of the Trinity—said; “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness . . .” Of no other aspect of His creation does He say such a thing as this. Of no other creature is it said that it is made in God’s image. Not even the angels of heaven are said to have been made in God’s image. Only humankind is said to bear His image—and this makes human life unique and precious above all else that God has made.
What does that mean?—that we are made in God’s image? There have been lots of theories put forth. One theory suggests that we are “made in God’s image” in that we share capacities with Him that other created things on earth do not share. We share with Him a capacity for abstract thought, or a moral consciousness, or an appreciation of beauty and logical order, or most of all the ability to enter into a spiritual relationship with Himself. In that respect, we are like our Creator. When I think of this, I can’t help but think of the very fascinating thing it says just a short way ahead in the Bible—in Genesis 5:1-3;
This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created. And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth (Genesis 5:1-3).
The same thing that is said of God in relation to Adam was said of Adam in relation to his son Seth. Just as a child shares the likeness of his or her father, we share the likeness of our Creator.
Some have suggested that God’s image in us means that our human bodies are designed after the capabilities that God possesses. Though He is spirit, He nevertheless “sees”, and “hears”, and “feels”, and “speaks”, and “reasons”, and “loves” to a high degree; and therefore, He has designed us to reflect—in a body—what He Himself does. One form of this view (a truly staggering thought!) takes into account the fact that the triune God—knowing the end from the beginning—determined that the plan for our redemption would involve the incarnation of the Son of God in a human body and a human spirit. This view suggests that man is designed to be an appropriate reflection of what the Son of God would eventually become in the course of time, and what He Himself would forever be as a result of His incarnation—that is, in terms of the full dignity of His glorified physical body, His intelligence, His will, His emotion, and His spirit. To put it another way, Jesus Christ’s future incarnation served as the model for what Adam would be in his creation, rather than Adam being the model for what the Son of God would be in His incarnation.
As an artist, even I have a theory of my own. Whenever I create a painting or a drawing or a work of art of some kind—after everything else is done—there is one final act I perform. I sign my work. I identify it as mine by putting my name on it. I have often wondered if that’s what humankind, in a sense, is in relation to God’s great artistic work of Creation. Once it was all done, God made Adam and Eve as a way of signing it with humankind—made in His own image.
Well; to some degree, maybe all of these ideas are valid. Or perhaps the full meaning of the image of God in man will remain a mystery. But however this ‘image’ is to be understood, it nevertheless affirms the infinite and immeasurable value of human life. In Genesis 9—even after Noah and his family came out of the ark after the great flood—we’re told that the image of God in each human being was not lost to humanity. Even after the fall into sin, and after centuries of unspeakable moral degradation, and finally after the terrible judgment from God of the flood, the surviving remnants of humanity were still to hold human life as sacred. God told Noah and his family;
“Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed;
For in the image of God
He made man” (Genesis 9:6).
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Another way that the story of beginnings affirms the value of human life is . . .
3. IN THE DOMINION THAT GOD GAVE TO HUMANKIND.
God gave a responsibility to humankind that He gave to no other created thing. In fact, it is a responsibility that places humankind as chief over all other created things. After God purposed to create humanity, He said, “let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (v. 26). He told Adam and Eve; “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (v. 28). God even repeated this same dominion mandate to Noah and his family after they left the ark.
I have often wondered—does this mandate include everything? After all, the angelic beings that God has created were not said to have been made in His image. Would it even include the angels? And I would say that—in a qualified way—it does. I say “qualified” because, for the present, the angels exceed human beings in glory; and we only seem to hold practical dominion over the material things of this earth. But the Bible tells us that we are destined to be glorified like the resurrected Lord Jesus; and that means that we are destined to exceed even the angels in glory. Hebrews 1:14 tells us that they are “all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation”. 1 Corinthians 6:3 even tells us that redeemed human beings will—on the great day of glory—judge even the angels!
Truly, then, God has given humankind a position of honor over all else that He has created. In Psalm 8, King David wrote these words of praise to God;
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen—
Even the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air,
And the fish of the sea
That pass through the paths of the seas (Psalm 8:3-8).
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So; human life is sacred because, as the book of beginnings tells us, humankind is made by a special resolve of God—made in His own image, and crowned by Him with the honor of dominion over all His creation. And if we look on ahead to the second chapter, we see the sacredness of human life . . .
4. IN THE UNIQUE MANNER IN WHICH GOD MADE HUMANKIND.
I almost hesitate to describe this next point, because it is exceedingly wonderful and beautiful. But we’re told that when God made the first man Adam, He made him in a manner that was unlike the way in which He made anything else. With the other aspects of God’s creation, He merely spoke, and they came into being. But when it came to humankind, Genesis 2:7 tells us;
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being (Genesis 2:7).
In the original Hebrew, the word translated “formed” is one that carries with it the idea of craft and skill and artistry—and it speaks of the kind of time and care and skill that would have been taken by an artist in forming a beautiful piece of pottery. God, if I may put it this way, rolled up His sleeves and got His hands involved in the making of Adam. And what’s more, He became as intimate as He could in giving life to Adam—breathing His own breath of life into his nostrils. It is a picture of love and intimacy and involvement between creature and Creator that is almost too marvelous for words! Just think of how much God loves humankind!
The way that God made Eve is also unique. The Bible tells us that God brought all of the animals to Adam; but from out of them, no helper was found that was suitable to him.
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said:
“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man” (Genesis 2:21-23).
God took unique care in making the first man. But Eve wasn’t made in distinction from all the value He placed in Adam’s creation. God didn’t form her as He did Adam; that is, from a separate dust of the ground. Instead, He formed her from Adam himself—not from his feet so that he might over her; or from his head so that she might be over him; but from his side so that they both together would be called “Man”—both formed by the hand of God from the same ground, and infused with His same breath of life. “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27).
And this unique manner in which God created humankind makes every member of the human family that came from Adam and Eve to be immeasurably valuable. Each of them bears the stamp of that unique work of creation. I think here of that it says in Job 33;
The Spirit of God has made me,
And the breath of the Almighty gives me life (Job 33:4).
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Now; all these things together show us that—because of the divine origin of humankind—human life is unique, and precious, and immeasurably valuable. We must hold it to be absolutely sacred in all of its stages—from the womb, throughout all the relative strengths or frailties of the body, and all the way to the death-bed. We must see the things that are declared to us in the Book of Beginnings to be true of every living individual human being on planet earth—no matter what they do, or what they believe, or what color of skin they have, or where in the world they may live, or what language they speak. And we must declare these things boldly to the people of our culture, and defend the sacredness of human life accordingly!
And before we go, may I share with you one more thing we ought to tell the world about all this? We ought to tell the world that God holds human life to be so sacred that He made a great sacrifice to save us and make it possible for us to enjoy eternal life with Him forever. We must be sure to tell them—in addition to all else—that God has provided fallen humanity with a Savior!
I don’t think there could possibly be a greater expression of the value God places on human life than what we are told in John 1:14;
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
Can there be a greater statement of the immeasurable value of human life than this?—that the eternal Son of God left His heavenly glory, permanently took full human nature to Himself, and became one of us in order to die on a cross for our sins and save us? Can there be a greater expression of love for human life than that the Son of God came to redeem us so that we might share His glorified human state of being with Him in heavenly glory forever?
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; let’s keep these things always in mind, and stand for the immeasurable value of human life!