Imago Dei Series: Defending the Dignity of Every Human Life

I'd invite you to take your Bible and go with me to First Timothy chapter five.

First Timothy chapter five.

I would like for you to come with me to Rome.

Not Rome 2026, but Rome during Paul's day.

And walk with me down some of the streets on an ordinary morning in the city.

And there you'll see a father, a Roman citizen, perhaps a man of standing in the community, walking down the streets with a child in his arms.

And maybe it was a daughter and already had enough daughters.

Maybe it was a son born with some physical defect.

Maybe it was a child he couldn't afford or simply didn't want.

In Rome, it didn't really matter what the reason was.

He'd walk either to the edge of the city, to the refuge heap, or perhaps to the base of the Columna Lactaria, the column of milk, the place where by Roman custom unwanted infants could legally be left.

He would set the child down, he would turn around, and he would walk away.

It wasn't even shameful.

In Roman society at that time, it was legal and it was common.

It's even philosophically defended by some of the great minds of the day.

Aristotle recommended the exposure of defective children, as he called them.

Seneca spoke of it with this calm detachment, no more than a man discussing the management of his household.

Roman law gave the Paterfamilius, the father of the household, absolute authority over whether the newborn child lived or died.

It was called the Pateria Potestis, the power of the father.

And that power extended even over the threshold of life itself.

Infants were left exposed on dunghills, on hillsides, at the gates of temples.

Some died within hours from cold or hunger or exposure.

Some were gathered up, some out of compassion, but others not out of compassion.

Some were gathered up for profit.

Traders would collect them, some were raised as slaves, others were raised for hard labor, and some, particularly the girls, were raised for prostitution.

The Empire had a category for these children.

They were the unwanted, the inconvenient, the surplus.

And because the Roman world had no theology of the image of God, it had no category for putting inherent worth on any human being.

Their worth was determined entirely by utility, by the decision of one who had the power over them, whether anyone wanted them.

By way of contrast, let's go to a different part of Rome, to a church.

One like the one Paul talks about to Timothy in Ephesus.

And let's look at chapter 5 and what Paul says there.

He's writing to Timothy about instructions about how a church should care for widows.

And he describes what widows the church should be supporting.

And he mentions that they should be women whose entire lives have been shaped by faithful service.

In verse 9, no widow is to be enrolled on the list for support unless she's at least 60 years old, has been the wife of one husband, is well known for good works, that is, if she has brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the saints' feet, helped the afflicted, and devoted herself to every good work.

I want you to notice that phrase, brought up children.

It means to nurture, to raise, to care for children.

But there's something it doesn't specify here.

It doesn't say her children.

Do you notice that?

It simply says that she brought up children.

Now, certainly it speaks about a mother who would be nurturing, who would be caring, who would be responsible with her family.

But could it not also speak, and commentaries and theologians have talked about this, of a woman who's taken the unwanted ones and brought those unwanted ones into their own household.

In fact, Charles Ellicott, in his commentary on 1 Timothy, says that this phrase may include the little orphan ones entrusted to her care.

Now set that up against the world that they're in at the time.

A world where the children are regularly discarded, where there's literally a place in Rome where those children can be left, where girls are collected and sold, where boys are turned into slaves.

And what if Paul here is commending those women who have done what would be unthinkable in Roman standards?

Who have gone to the refuge heaps or to the foot of the column and picked up a discarded child, who have taken into their own homes the children the empire is labeled as worthless, who've looked at what Rome called refuge and saw the image of God.

Why did they do that?

Well, that question is a question that's raised in the middle of the sort of study that we've been having these past several weeks and months.

What makes human life valuable?

It's an important question.

We're in our series called Imago Day, The Image of God.

And we've been working through this, what it means for God to stamp his image on created individuals.

What a staggering truth it is, and what a staggering responsibility it calls us all to.

And today we come to one of the most urgent, the most contested, and most, I think, pastorally tender applications to the image of God, one that touches us from womb to deathbed, from the nursery to the nursing home.

I'd like for us to talk about the dignity of human life.

And let's begin by going back to Genesis chapter 1 and have a look at what it says there.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And the first point that I want to make this evening is that the image of God establishes absolute non-negotiable dignity for every human person.

Let's look at Genesis chapter 1 and verses 26 and 27.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

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.

We begin with the deliberation, this divine conversation of the Godhead, act talking and deliberating before acting in the creation of humanity.

And then it says, so God created man in his own image.

And then again it's said a third time.

Now, when scripture repeats itself like this, particularly repeats it so emphatically and so close to one another, we need to underline that.

Because scripture is repeating this so that we might lean forward and pay attention to what's being said.

This is God's holy insistence, making absolutely certain that we don't miss this vital point.

Every human being, without qualification, without exception, and without some developmental asterisk next to them, is made in the image of God and is therefore a person of dignity.

So let's talk about the significance of this for a moment, and then we'll substantiate it with a couple passages.

The primary point that I want to bring out this evening is that the image of God is not primarily about what we can do.

It's not utilitarian.

Theologians have debated about the essential essence of the image of God.

And they've talked about rationality, they've talked about righteousness, they've talked about relationships, and they've talked about our representative rule as aspects of the image of God.

And those discussions are rich and full, and I think every one of those has something to say about us.

But at its most fundamental level here, the image of God is what we would say ontological.

It's about who you are, not what you do.

It's about your being, not your function.

It is the mark that God has placed on humanity at the very moment of creation.

A mark that doesn't come and go based upon circumstances.

It doesn't fluctuate with the seasons of life.

It doesn't strengthen when we are at our most productive.

It doesn't weaken when we're at our most dependent.

God has placed it there.

And it belongs to every human person because every human person bears the image of God on them.

Now the Roman world operated in a completely different frame.

Worth in the Roman world was based upon your function and your usefulness.

If you could work, if you could produce, if you could contribute, if you could compete, then you had worth.

If you couldn't, if you were too young or too old, or too sick, or too weak, or too defective, then your worth was in question.

And a father could stand over a newborn and make that determination.

The state could stand over the elderly and the infirm and make that determination.

Utility was the measure, and power was the arbitrator.

But look at the text.

God doesn't say let us make man in our image once he's reached a sufficient level of development.

It doesn't say let us make man in our image, providing he can contribute meaningfully to society.

It doesn't say, let's make man in our image at least the capable ones, the functioning ones, the wanted ones.

He simply says, we're making humanity in our image.

The image is there the moment God acts.

It's presence because God has put it there, not because we've earned it or developed it or been granted it because of some human conferring it on us because of the power they hold over us.

It's not a status that we acquire, it's not a milestone that we reach, it's not a recognition extended to us by culture or voted on by the powerful or even ratified by the legislature.

It's not contingent upon our viability, our wantedness, or our capacities.

It's there because God has made us in his image.

Now, there's a lot of ramifications for that.

I'd like to look at two passages of scripture that talk about how the significance of this is borne out in common society and within the context of the church.

So turn with me to chapter 9 of Genesis and verse 6.

Here we are on the other side of the flood, and God is calling Noah and his family to begin to replenish the earth.

And he makes a statement here in verse 6.

Whoever sheds human blood by humans, his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.

Now notice carefully what God is saying here, that he's grounding protection of vulnerable human life in the image of God.

He's not saying that human life should be protected because they're the right age or they're the right strength or they're able to socially contribute or that they have some capacities of thinking, or whether they're wanted or valued by the people around them.

It doesn't say we should protect human life because the courts have recognized them, or that the culture is assigned worth to them.

He's saying that vulnerable humans should be protected because they were made in the image of God, were post-fall, post-flood, in the in the society given at that time.

The protection of human life flows directly and exclusively from the fact that God has made us to bear his image.

Now notice the placement of this.

This is Genesis chapter 9.

Genesis 9 · chapter mention

This is not God speaking to the nation of Israel within the covenant structures of the people.

He is speaking to all humanity here, that every one of us that flow out of the post-fall, post-flood human race are here to maintain the dignity of human life and the protection of the vulnerable and end the just justice against those who would deface the image of God by committing murder.

What is the principle that's here?

The principle is to take an innocent human life is to strike at the image of God itself.

It is an assault against God Himself.

It's not simply a crime against an individual in the taking of their life.

It's an act of violence against God, in whose image all of us have been made.

That's why it's so serious.

That's why it's so significant.

Now turn with me to James chapter three.

And in James chapter three, where he's telling us to control our speech, in verse nine, he confronts this contradiction of a tongue that blesses God and then turns and curses the people around them.

And he says in verse nine, with it, that is our tongue, we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God's likeness.

Now notice what James is saying here.

He isn't saying that cursing some other person is simply unkind or socially unacceptable or emotionally hurtful.

What he is saying is that this is cosmically contradictory.

That we cannot stand before God and worship him in one breath and then strip the dignity of a person with our speech in another breath.

We can't do that without the contradiction screaming in echoes through the heavens.

We cannot sing the praises of the Creator on Sunday and then dismiss the worth of one of God's image bearers on Monday.

The two positions cannot be held simultaneously without one of them giving away.

You either are not worshiping God or you're not worshiping God in the care of his image and the others.

Now, this same logic applies in every other way that humans can strip the dignity of other people.

In our day, we find ourselves filled with language that is stripping away the dignity of humanity.

We talk about clumps of cells, we talk about non-persons, we talk about vegetative state, we talk about no quality of life.

We talk about not really a person yet.

We ask the questions, what kind of life would that really be anyway?

Those words reveal a worldview.

Those words reveal a worldview that speaks in any way they think they can about a human being other than the realization that we are made in the image of God.

And without knowing it, we've adopted the worldview of that Roman father who's walked into the streets of Rome with an unwanted child and laid it down at the column of milk and turned around and walked away.

Yes, we dress it up with scientific speech, but the worldview is no different than what they were doing in Rome in Paul's day.

That father decided, just like human beings are deciding today, that a person's worth is only because of the circumstances or the condition that they're in, or whether or not they're convenient to us.

But the scriptures tell us that the image is absolute, that God made all of us in his image, post-flood, lasting even to the New Testament period.

And this brings us to our second point that I'd like for us to look at today is that the image belongs to every stage of human life.

We're going to step into a moment that can be painful for some and difficult for all of us.

But it has to be talked about.

Because we live in a culture that wants to talk about human dignity as though it's developmental.

That a person's worth is something that they grow into or can grow out of.

And some human beings, because of their age or their stage of development, or because of their dependence or their cognitive capacities, don't fully qualify for the dignity and protection that we give to others.

It's not a new argument.

It's the same argument Rome was making.

But underneath it all, the logic is as ancient as Rome.

But scripture won't let us stand alongside of our culture today.

In Psalm 139, in verse 13 to 16, David says this, and I want you to capture not only the poetry, but the theology of it, because it's magnificent in both ways.

Listen to what he says.

For it was you who created my inward parts.

You knit me together in my mother's womb.

I will praise you because I've been remarkably and wondrously made.

Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well.

My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw me when I was formless.

All my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.

Look at what God is doing here in the womb.

He's acting like a craftsman.

He's knitting, he's forming, he's seeing, he's even writing the history of this person before they were even born.

The creator who has shaped all of the stars and set the boundaries of the seas is personally present and active in the formation of every human life.

God's eyes are on that child before those eyes can even see.

And his book holds the child's days even before there can be a confirmed heartbeat.

Before there's a name, before there's a face, before the world has decided whether or not the child is worthy of dignity or not, God has already looked, he's already known, he's already written.

This unborn child is not potential life waiting to become something real.

This is life already, an image-bearing creator-attended life.

Listen to what Jeremiah says in chapter 1 and verse 5.

I chose you before I formed you in the womb.

I set you apart before you were born.

There, the personhood of Jeremiah precedes even his conception.

The identity of Jeremiah was not constructed after his delivery.

It was established in the eternal counsels of God before there was any life in the womb itself.

Listen to Luke chapter 1.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

In Luke 1, 41 to 44, there's this extraordinary moment where Mary, who's carrying the infant Jesus, perhaps only days or weeks after the conception, travels to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is six months pregnant with John.

And these two women greet each other, and the spirit-filled recognition of the unborn Christ is made by the unborn John.

The two children in the womb.

The Holy Spirit moves, and one child leaps for joy at the presence of the other.

And Luke does not call them products of conception.

He calls them babies, brefos, infants, children.

It's the exact same word that he uses to describe baby Jesus in the next chapter in the manger, already a person.

You see, the language of scripture doesn't draw a line between a child in the womb and a child in the manger.

It's the same word, the same description.

And so here we are, we see scripture tells us that we can't stand with the philosophies of Rome or the ideologies of our day that dismiss the dignity of human life.

But it also extends to the elderly and to the dying.

Our culture is increasingly placing pressure on families and on the elderly.

And it's no less pressing than the same pressure that we put on the unborn.

Death with dignity is being used.

Quality of life is cast about.

And it's suggested that because of suffering, or because of some disability, or because of some cognitive decline, or some terminal illness, or simply the lack of will to thrive, that some lives are not worth protecting.

When an elderly person with advancing dementia is spoken of in a way that subtly questions whether that person is really still there, or whether the burden of caring for a severely disabled family member reframes the question of their worth.

This is no more than Roman philosophy marketed for our modern day.

The biblical vision is life has dignity all the way to the last breath.

Life is upheld by compassionate care and a faithful presence.

Life is protected from this utilitarian calculus that measures worth in terms of its productivity.

It's about being faithful to show dignity all the way to the very end.

That elderly saint who's in a memory care unit, who can't even remember her children's names, still bears the image of God.

That man in the hospital bed who can't speak, can't move, can't respond, still bears the image of God.

The diagnosis doesn't erase the image of God.

The prognosis doesn't erase the image of God.

The image is there because God put it there.

Listen to what Job says in Job 14, 5.

Since a person's days are determined, and the number of his months depends on you, God, and since you have set the limits, he cannot pass.

Our generation and the Roman generation has confused responsibility of human life with ownership of human life.

And the scriptures here are telling us that the ownership belongs to God.

God alone is the author of life.

He numbers our days, which means he has the authority to grant it and to end it.

The authority of life belongs to him alone.

And I want to say this with great care, because a lot of us have been in those places that are very, very difficult, under conditions that none of us should face without love and counsel and the grace of God.

I want to say there's a distinction, a moral and a theologically significant distinction, mind you, between allowing the natural processes of dying to unfold without technological interference and the intentional taking of life.

I've had to be there with my own brother.

And after, because of his diabetes, he had had a significant um cardiac arrest, and that there was nothing left of his brain other than the ability to continue to breathe.

Should we continue to maintain that life by keeping him on a support system, or should we withdraw it?

That is a hard, hard, hard place to be.

But there is a difference between allowing the natural process of dying to unfold without technological interference and the active taking of life.

There's a difference between withdrawing treatments that only prolong or prolong the life in the withholding of death, not the preserving of life and the active ending of life itself.

We're not called to fight death with every technological advance that we can, but we're also called to never intentionally take life, also.

And so compassion means that we alleviate suffering, we provide comfort, we remain present, we refuse to abandon, we honor the image and the person who is diminished, and we trust that God alone determines what time he's written in his book to bring that person home.

The world says useful, but God says valuable.

The world talks about productive, but God says human life is precious.

The world says quality of life, but God says sanctity of life.

The world says the image, our worth, our dignity can be suspended.

God says image was never ours to suspend in the first place.

But let me speak before we get into our last point.

Perhaps you're here this evening and you made a decision years ago, in a moment of fear, in a moment of isolation, when no one offered you another way.

When the only voices you heard were the ones that told you you have an option and you need to do it quickly.

And you've carried the weight of that decision ever since.

You've borne it in silence, you've borne it in shame, you've borne it in private grief.

And maybe you've sat at the bedside of someone you loved and made a decision that you're still second-guessing.

You made that decision in grief, in exhaustion, in impossible circumstances, without clarity or counsel that you needed, but no one was there to give you.

The gospel is precisely and unapologetically for everyone who doesn't get it right.

Christ came for the broken as well as the breaking, for ones who have made devastating choices and have been living in the light of those ever since.

God's grace seen in the cross is more than sufficient to forgive and to carry you through whatever you're carrying today.

There's grace, real grace, at the cross.

Let me move, last of all, to what God calls the church to do.

Christianity has always been at its best when it's refused to let doctrinal truth remain theoretical, when it's moved the truth from the head to the heart and into the hands.

Because theology that stays in the pews is nothing no better than an exhibit at a museum, to be honest with you.

The Reformation was not merely a recovery of doctrinal propositions, it was a recovery of a living faith that transformed how people thought about work, how they thought about family, how they thought about the poor, and how they thought about the neighbor right in front of them.

Listen to Proverbs 31, verses 8 and 9, because the image of God demands a response from us.

Proverbs 31:8

Speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed.

Speak up, judge righteously, and defend the cause of the oppressed and the needy.

What does God call us to do?

He calls us to act on those who cannot, to open our mouths for those who cannot open their mouths.

And who has no voice?

Well, the unborn child has no voice.

The elderly patient with advanced dementia has no voice.

The man on the ventilator has no voice.

And the woman sitting in the middle of a crisis pregnancy, who's being told by everyone around her to just get rid of it, may have a legal voice, but in a cultural sense, she's even being removed of whatever voice might be there that God calls her to.

And the people of God, understanding what the image of God means for all of us, are called to be the voice for those people.

To speak with clarity, to speak with warmth and pastoral love, to speak in a way of rescue and not condemnation.

We don't do this because it's a political party that joins with us.

We do it because it's what God calls us to do.

Because what we do is grounded in the image of God and the commands of God's wisdom to carry on, regardless of what power party is in power, or whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable in our society and culture today.

So let me take you back to Rome for just a second.

That father, that poor child, that column, that empire.

It's a picture of a world in which the image of God has been stamped on every single one of those people, and they've decided not to look at it.

They've mistaken authority over life for ownership of life.

But in that same city, in those small, scattered, marginal communities of people transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, there were women who had heard something different about human dignity.

There were women who had been told not by the culture of their day, but by God Himself, a God who became flesh and who himself became a vulnerable child, depended on those who cared for him, that every human bears the image that cannot be discarded and cannot be thrown away and cannot be overridden by the judgment of the powerful.

And those women went where Rome would not go.

Those women picked up what Rome had set down.

Those women had brought home what Rome had written off.

And Paul says, honor those women.

Honor them.

Because they've lived out the theology of the Imago Day.

They have done what they truly believe, that every single person, though unwanted by family or society, is a person made in the image of God.

But those widows weren't acting simply alone.

What they were doing was acting within a community that had embedded within it, even in a weekly way, an understanding of the image of God in every human person.

These individual acts of compassion that these women were to be honored for and to be cared for because of came out of a community that was shaped Sunday after Sunday after Sunday to see the world differently than the society around them.

In A.D.

155, barely a century after Paul writes to Timothy, Justin Martyr writes in his first apology, addressed to the Roman Emperor.

And there he describes what Christians do.

And he talks about the reading of Scripture, he talks about the sermon, he talks about the prayers, he even talks about the Lord's Supper, but he doesn't stop there.

Listen to what he describes next: the offering.

What is collected is deposited with the president, who supports the orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word, takes care of all who are in need.

Think about that.

Listen first of all to the list: orphans, widows, sick, prisoners, strangers, anybody in need.

This was not a members-only program.

This was the understanding of the image of God wrapped up in the weekly worship of the Christian community.

Every Sunday, as regular as the reading of Scripture and the sermon, and the prayers and the breaking of bread was an offering to be given for the benevolent care of anybody in need.

It was the care of the vulnerable.

And it wasn't an add-on to the worship, it was a part of the worship.

To gather on Sunday was to participate in the rescue of the needy.

And Justin Martyr is writing to the head of the very empire that had legalized the abandonment of children and the disposal of the weak.

And what Justin Martyr is saying here is saying, this is how we treat the people that you discard.

And the offering plate became a theological statement, as they gave in order to care for the needy.

And so what Rome called a refuge heap, the church called a mission field.

And what Rome called worthless, the church embraced as a neighbor.

This is what it looks like when the community takes the image of God seriously.

Not just in individual acts of compassion scattered across the congregation, but in a collective people that shape their weekly worship in a way that's visibly caring to all.

So what can we do in our day?

Well, there's several things I want to mention as we close.

First of all, we can support our local crisis pregnancy center.

Borough Pregnancy Counseling Center is doing exactly what these Roman widows were doing in 1 Timothy chapter 5.

1 Timothy 5 · chapter mention

Standing in the gap, offering another way, walking with women in the hardest moments of their life, and saying to them, You're not alone.

There's a pathway forward.

This child is worth saving, and we can help you.

Burrow needs our support.

They need our hands.

They need our prayer.

Secondly, we consider seriously whether or not we can participate in foster care or adoption or something like Long Island Youth Mentoring, where we come alongside people and we help them.

Yes, it's hard.

Yes, it's costly, but it's also a very tangible way to care for people who have inherent dignity because God made them in their image.

Third, we can visit a nursing home.

We can sit with a person who doesn't even remember their own name.

We can sit alongside them, and simply by being present in their presence, we can tell them that they have dignity and worth.

Something else that we can do, we can watch our language.

Remember, James?

Blessing God, cursing someone else made in the image of God.

We need to reject every dehumanizing vocabulary that our culture calls us to emulate.

And it creeps into the church without noticing.

We absorb it from the media, we consume it through our conversations, we're surrounded by it so much we begin to speak it without even considering what we're doing.

We put people into categories, and by putting people into categories, we lessen our grip on the fact that they're made in the image of God.

And so push back on it.

Push back on it in your own mind, push back on it in your conversations, push back on it even within the context of your own family.

Remember to show care for all people by the way we talk about one another.

And last of all, we can refuse to be silent.

In our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our families, in those conversations that we have on social media or around the dinner table or in the break room, to open our mouth for those that have no voice.

Not to speak with contempt against those who disagree with us, but to speak about the positive, compassionate care that we have for all people.

And by showing that, we will make a clear difference.

So from the womb to the final breath, every person at every stage and every condition bears the image of God.

And this is a reality that should have weight and consequence for every one of us in every place that we move and have our life.

God has made us in his image.

The image is there.

And one of the things that we said at the beginning of this series was that we're made by God, marked by God, and to manifest his glory.

And one of the ways that we can manifest his glory is by caring for those who bear his image.

Let's pray.

Father, we pray that we might be renewed in our mind by the influences of your word.

That the things that you declare and reveal to us will have such an in influencing effect upon us that we begin to live distinctly in this world and to show ourselves as those who belong to a different kingdom.

That we would live as those who in this life are sojourning through it as members of the kingdom of God, and that we might speak and act in a way that displays which kingdom we're in.

We pray, Father, that it would be done with love, but with clarity and with courage, and even at a cost.

And Father, we pray that in all of it you would be magnified as we show love to one another within the context of the body of Christ, and we show care and compassion and help to those even outside it.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.