What do you suppose is the highest privilege that God has
given to human beings?
Before I can answer that, let me first remind you what a
human being is.
In Genesis 1:26, God says: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them
rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle
and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the
earth.”
Do I need to explain the word ‘man’ here? Through all of human history, most languages
(I haven’t checked them all.) have two words for man: one is man as
distinguished from animals, and one is man as distinguished from woman. In the last generation or so, at least in the
United States, people started complaining that the word ‘man’ was used to speak
of human beings in general. They thought
that was demeaning of women.
The Hebrew word for ‘man’ used here is the word Adam, as in
Adam and Eve. Adam’s name means ‘man’,
or if you prefer, human.
We are created in God’s image. Is this the greatest privilege that God has
given to human beings? No, it is not. We’re getting there though.
Scholars have debated all that being created in the image of
God means.
Humans are the only species that wears clothes, although we
didn’t always, the only species that writes, and reads, books, debates right
and wrong, invents things.
We talk about having souls, but we insist that our dogs have
souls.
We don’t talk about animals sinning though. They may do wrong and feel guilty about it,
but we don’t call it sin. Jesus didn’t
die on the cross to pay for the sins of our dogs. He died to pay for the sins of people, human
beings. He redeemed human beings from
the penalty of sin, which is death, and ultimately hell.
I’ve thought about hell a lot recently, why there is such a
place. And it fits into our discussion
here.
Yes, I know that it was created
for angels who’ve sinned. But that
doesn’t explain why human beings go there.
And then I figured it out, at least to my own satisfaction.
Humans go to hell, because part of being in God’s image is
that there is something indestructible about the human spirit. The Bible says that the LORD God formed man
of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and
man became a living being. Genesis 2:7
Human life is ultimately the life of God living in dust from
the ground. God said that they would die
in the day they ate of that fruit, but it obviously wasn’t death like we’re
used to thinking. When the humans sinned
against God, they died, and what really happened is that they could no longer
stand in the presence of God. When God
came to Adam after they sinned, Adam hid himself, because he was afraid.
A human being that has not been redeemed by Christ is afraid
of God and always will be. What died in
him is that part of him that could live in the presence of a holy God. So when people die in their sins, God can’t
simply destroy them. He can only remove
them from His presence to a place where He is not.
But I’m stalling here.
What is the single greatest privilege that God has given to
human beings?
We are now co-creators with God. God created Adam and Eve
directly, by Himself.
But every human being after that was in part created by
other human beings. No other human being
since Adam and Eve was created apart from the union of a man and a woman.
I say co-creators, because listen to Psalm 139:13–16 (NASB95)
13 For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will give thanks to You,
for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And
my soul knows it very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16 Your
eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.
The Bible says that God is actively at work in the forming
of an unborn child. Yes, there is DNA
here which scientists say is the code which determines the final shape of this
child.
But how are we to say what God is or isn’t doing in the
formation of that child. The Bible says
that God is at work here. God even has
that child’s life planned out for him.
We don’t know all what that means, but God sees the future that that unborn
child will have when it is born.
To word this a little differently, having children is the greatest
privilege that God gives to human beings.
We are creating eternal beings along with God as our co-creator.
I love science. But
science cannot even tell us what a human being really is. Science doesn’t see human beings as being
God’s handiwork, so science is quite content to allow people to destroy these
human beings before they are born, like first drafts that need to be done
over. Yet every child conceived is, can
I say, of infinite worth.
It is created in the image of God with an eternal soul. And we did that.
Back in the days before science told us that human beings
were accidents of nature, people often had large families. When given a choice, most people prefer much
smaller ones. When given a challenge,
most people prefer not to take it. They
don’t see how they can do it.
I think God would like us to view all this with different
eyes, to see human life as He does, the gift that only He can give.
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