What is a human being?

What the Bible says

The Bible looks at human beings from two directions at once. From one side we are fragile creatures of dust. From the other we are exalted, bearing a likeness to God. We see ourselves rightly only when we hold both together.

First, our beginning. Genesis does not hide that the human body comes from the earth.

Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

Gen 2:7

We are formed from dust, and alive by God's breath. Having a body is nothing to be ashamed of. Yet Genesis 1 speaks of our high standing.

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Gen 1:27

Looking at the moon and stars, the psalmist marvels that God cares for so small a creature.

what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor.

Ps 8:4-5

Our dignity comes from bearing God's image. After the flood, God forbids the shedding of human blood and gives the reason: "for in His own image God has made mankind" (Gen 9:6). James rebukes cursing people for the same reason. With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and "with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness" (James 3:9). Because this dignity comes from neither strength, usefulness nor rank, it is the same for everyone. Paul says that in Christ it takes shape in the life of the church.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Gal 3:28

But the Bible does not say we are fine as we are. We carry the image, and sin has distorted it.

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Rom 3:23

That diagnosis is not the last word. God came to find distorted humanity.

But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Rom 5:8

And the image is renewed. The New Testament says that the true image is Christ himself.

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Col 1:15

Those who believe in him have put on "the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator" (Col 3:10), and are "being transformed into His image with intensifying glory" (2 Cor 3:18).

The church's witness

Commenting on Genesis 1, Matthew Henry reminds us that man was made on the same day as the beasts, from the same earth, and he warns:

God forbid that by indulging the body, and the desires of it, we should make ourselves like the beasts that perish!

Matthew Henry

In the same place he writes, "It is the soul of man that especially bears God's image" Matthew Henry, and prays that the Lord would renew what sin has defaced. On Psalm 8 he says:

What is man, so mean a creature, that he should be thus honoured! so sinful a creature, that he should be thus favoured!

Matthew Henry

On the second great commandment, Pseudo-Chrysostom explains why loving neighbour is like loving God: "man is God’s image, wherein God is loved, as a King is honoured in his statue" Pseudo-Chrysostom. To love a person is bound up with honouring the one who made him.

One matter is disputed within the church: what exactly the image of God is. Some look for it in human capacities such as reason, moral judgment and freedom. Others hold that the image is the relationship itself, being set before God and neighbour, or the calling to rule the earth on his behalf. Many decline to narrow it to one of these and say that the whole person bears the image. Christians also explain differently how soul and body relate. Yet they all point to the same place: we are honoured before God, fallen before God, and restored in Christ.

In the original languages

"Image" in Genesis 1:26 is the Hebrew tselem (צֶלֶם). The word usually means a visible likeness, such as a statue. In the ancient Near East kings set up images of themselves across their realms to mark their rule, and many Old Testament scholars read Genesis against that background: humans represent God in the world he made, one of the readings noted above. An idol is stone borrowing a god's name, but God's image is a living, breathing person. The New Testament word is eikōn (εἰκών), used of Christ in Colossians 1:15, and the church has confessed Christ as the original of the image we bear.

The other word is nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ), behind "living being" in Genesis 2:7. It does not mean only a soul apart from the body. It often means the whole living, breathing creature. The Bible pictures not a soul trapped in a shell but one person of body and spirit, which is why Christian hope is bodily resurrection.

Common objections

"We are only animals, or only matter." This objection has real force. Our bodies share much with other creatures, and our thoughts and feelings are deeply tied to the state of the brain. Faith need not deny this. Genesis says we come from dust, and Matthew Henry says we live on the same earth as the beasts. How humans came to be, how Genesis 1 should be read, and what to make of evolution are questions on which Christians differ. Young-earth creationists hold that God made the first humans directly and recently; old-earth creationists accept the earth's long history but a special creation of humans; evolutionary creationists that God formed the human body through evolution and called humanity into relationship with himself. All three confess that we exist by God's will and bear his image, and this essay does not choose among them.

But the dignity the Bible speaks of does not depend on biological lineage. On any of the readings above, the image concerns not what we are made of but where we stand before God. If everything is matter, a question remains: what supports the equal worth of every person, including the weak and apparently useless, as something that may not be violated? Some think social agreement explains it well enough. Christians understand that worth as received, not conferred by us. This is a matter of weighing which account fits experience better, not of proof.

"Christianity runs us down by calling us sinners." This holds a misunderstanding and an honest discomfort; some religion really has taught only shame. But when the Bible calls us sinners, it does not say we are worthless. It says we have fallen from a high calling, and you can only fall from a height. And as Romans 5:8 says, God loved us while we were still sinners.

"If everyone bears God's image, why did the church discriminate and keep slaves?" This is a painful and fair question. The church broke its own teaching, and at times even used Scripture to defend discrimination. Yet the same texts, Genesis 1:27 and Galatians 3:28, were also used to condemn it. A teaching betrayed by those who held it is not thereby false.

Going further

Knowing what a human being is changes how I treat myself and my neighbour. Remembering that I am dust shrinks pride, and remembering that I bear God's image shrinks despair. The person beside me bears that image too, so I may not treat him carelessly.

You might ask yourself: Do I measure people's worth by their usefulness? How do I look on those weaker than I am? What would it look like for the distorted image in me to be renewed?

To read on, see Why do we exist?, What is sin? and Who is Jesus?. Psalms 8 and 139 are good to read slowly.