CREATED BY AN ETERNAL GOD

In biblical terms, the sanctity of human life is rooted and grounded in creation. Humankind is not viewed as a cosmic accident but as the product of a carefully executed creation by an eternal God. “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;…” (Psalm 113:13,14a NIV) Human dignity is derived from God. A human being is a finite, dependent, contingent creature, assigned a high value by our Creator.

The creation account in Genesis provides the framework for human dignity: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make humankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26–27 NRSV).

Creation in the image of God is what sets humans apart from all other creatures. The stamp of the image and likeness of God connects God and humankind uniquely.

-- adapted from R.C. Sproul, the Ligonier.org blog

#4257

LIVING ABOVE THE ETHICAL NORM

It is a strange characteristic among human beings, that we tend to treat our criminals and our saints alike.  One lives below the norm, the other lives above the norm, but both have sinned against the norm.  The Christians (in Roman times) lived above the ethical norm.  The fact that we are not persecuted as Christians may well be an indictment.  Is it that we have won the world, or has the world won us?  Are we no longer a threat to the tranquility of sinful humankind by living above the commonly accepted norm?  That is a question that ought to haunt us.

-- Rev. Thomas L. Butts

#4060

THE LOVE AND WRATH OF GOD

Some years ago in a small town in England a man escaped briefly from an institution for the criminally insane. During his few hours' liberty, he captured, raped, and murdered a small girl and was then apprehended by authorities. At the same time he arrived at the police station under escort, the father of the child arrived, too. The father was a mild-mannered man, but when he saw the person who had murdered his beloved child, he went berserk, and it took a number of lawmen to control him. There was no incompatibility between his love and his wrath; in fact, there was a clear connection between the two. Strangely, the intensity of his love was demonstrated in the intensity of his anger. Love for the beloved was shown in anger against that which had destroyed the beloved.

The love and wrath of God must be seen as a continuum of the divine emotion for humankind. The intensity of the love of God for people is clearly mirrored in the intensity of His antipathy to that which marred His creative masterpiece. And the greatest manifestation of the love of God, the cross of Christ, is itself the fiery focal point of the divine wrath. You cannot look at the cross and see love without wrath and wrath without love. The cross stands tall in human history as the epitome of the relationship between both.

-- Stuart Briscoe in The Fruit of the Spirit: Cultivating Christian Character

#3842