The Human Person: The Image of God Created and Restored

Today’s reading begins Section IV: The Human Person – The Image of God Created and Restored.Read here.

Today, the world is absorbed with the question, “What does it mean to be human?” This makes the Christian doctrine of the human person critically important. How we answer this question has profound implications for our witness in the world and our life in the church. It goes to the very heart of the great upheavals in the world with regard to issues such as identity, human sexuality, and the implications of advancing technologies. A sound doctrine of the human person is also vital for dealing with the growing phenomenon of leaders that claim supra-human powers and God-like authority within the church.

The image of God is the essence of being human.

Scripture teaches that human beings are uniquely created in God’s image. This uniqueness includes stewardship roles and responsibilities in the world. The gift of image-bearing provides all human beings with inherent dignity, equality, and worth, regardless of gender, ethnicity, race, caste, age, physical and mental capacities, and socioeconomic and cultural contexts. The triune God created human beings to be relational, including personal relationships with God and the formation of communities. (Gen 1:26-28; 2:15)

Human beings are an integrated physical and spiritual unity, possessing a spiritual dimension that complements the physical. We therefore reject any privileging of body or spirit over and against the other.

We acknowledge that sin affects the degree to which human beings can fully reflect the image of God. Sin corrupts our inherent human nature and capacities, our relationships with others, and our human vocation in the world. Sin adversely influences people to treat other humans as objects, not as persons of intrinsic worth. At times even Christians have sinfully misinterpreted the image of God out of self-interest, to marginalise and dehumanise others.