What does it mean to be human? When we follow our every desire into all sorts of sins we say, “Well, I’m only human!” Today, we are going to explore what the Bible says about true humanity and it is more glorious than you could ever imagine.
Glorious Image Bearers—Psalm 8
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Praise to the Lord
My favorite professor in seminary turned my understanding of the following passage upside down. We are going to read how God clothed Adam and Eve in animal skins as he expelled them from the Garden of Eden. My understanding (and it was correct but not complete) was that this was a picture of Christ’s sacrifice of body and blood to cover over our sins. This is good but in the original context, God clothing Adam and Eve in animal skins was his way of shaming them of dehumanizing them and showing them that their sin has made them more like the animals than like God. So hear God’s word and find yourself in this story:
Made Like the Animals—Genesis 3:17-21
And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
How have you acted as a sub-human this week? How have you followed your “instincts” into every sin and evil desire like a mere animal? You were created for dignity, for royalty, for selfless love. You were created for glory. But how is that glory restored? It is through Christ, the true human. He is our dignity, our glory.
Depth of Mercy
The True Human— Matthew 11:2-6
Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Hallelujah, What a Savior!
A New Humanity—Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Col 3:8-12 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
I Stand Amazed
So in the freedom and dignity of Christ, resting in the glory that he has purchased for you by his death and resurrection, you made sit, ready to hear him speak over you His steadfast loving kindness.
Lord for Your Glory
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