Humanity: are we just an accident, merely the product of blind chance? What we dream for ourselves and expect in others suggests humanity is far more than that. And God tells us we are right to think that way.
Humanity: Who am I?
Genesis 1:24–31
24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
This transcript has been automatically generated
1:24 of Genesis. And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on earth.
And God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit, and you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the 6th day.
It was 1971 that Jacques Monod, the professor of cellular biochemistry, director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, published this book, Chance and necessity. He argues in it that natural selection and chance alone accounts for the origin of humanity. Chance alone is at the source of every innovation of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind. Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity out of which he emerged only by chance.
His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below, it is for him to choose.
Now, read that book, Chance and Necessity, you’ll realise just how much of the late 20th and early 21st century celebrity atheists leaned on the pioneers in this thought, like Jacques Monod. So, Richard Dawkins, in his River Out of Eden, famously puts it like this: the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is, and we dance to its music. And that movement gave rise to the burgeoning of a kind of nihilistic writing and music and art and philosophy towards the close of the 20th century.
Remember, very shortly after I arrived as rector here, I went into the Deutsche Bank’s, one of their offices just over the road there. Those were the days before the crunch of 2007-8 where the banks kind of liked to show their wealth in their forecourts. They all had these very kind of expensive artworks and all the rest of it, and there in the Deutsche Bank headquarters was Tony Cragg’s Secretions, and it was basically 2 huge dice die. The piece is about the structure of the universe. The dice symbolise all the random choices that have been made in our evolution.
The title refers to old forms secreting to make the new order. Now you may feel that also referred to Deutsche’s way of doing business, a roll of the dice, but I don’t think that was the point. Music as well. There was a band in the early 2000s called The Underworld. Perhaps you followed them or listened to them today.
And I remember hearing an interview with Carl Hyde and Rick Smith, and they were asked how they formed their lyrics for their songs. And Smith and Hyde said, well, we come from Romford, and on the train journey in and out on Romford, when we are coming in and out of London, we just randomly collect Things that are written on the billboards, there are lyrics, it’s all random.
Philosophy, John Grey, Straw Dogs. He was a professor in one of our leading universities here in London. Human life has no more meaning than the life of slime mould.
And then, of course, that gave rise to ethics. Steven Pinker, one of the leading atheistic ethicists, in the world, an American. The point should by now be familiar: whether a being is or not a member of our species is in itself no more relevant to the wrongness of killing it than whether it is or is not a member of our race. And he goes on to argue that whether it’s abortion or putting to death the elderly and infirm, really it’s a matter of how sentient they are Those who protest against abortion but dine regularly on the bodies of chickens, pigs, and calves show only a biassed concern for the lives of members of our own species.
Now, those may be extremes, but this thinking at the close of the 20th and opening of the 21st century was dominant. Today, I think there’s something of a rethink going on, and the popular celebrity atheist movement has all but imploded. And a new generation are beginning to ask the question, surely there must be more to human life than that. And for that reason, we are looking in these next 11 weeks or so at the opening chapters of Genesis with the question, who am I?
Today, I want us to see you are special, we are equal, He, she is different, special. Well, our contention is that in Genesis 1, we are dealing with the Word of God, that this is an authoritative word from God making sense of His world. I have listened to the opening couple of podcasts from Jordan Peterson on Genesis 1 and 2, and halfway through the second piece, he says this, this text is one of the human imagination’s best attempts to address and answer the question of how to be triumphant in our mode of being. Now, our contention is altogether different to that.
This is not simply a subjective view from inside the human imagination. It’s God’s authoritative voice from outside.
And that’s certainly the way Jesus saw it. He says, speaking of Genesis 1 and 2, did not the Creator say?
In other words, this is not a view from inside, speculation. It’s God’s voice from outside, revelation. And his word makes sense of our world. And straight away from the text, we can see that the author is wanting to tell us that we’re very special. And there are a whole range of different ways in which you can see that simply from the text.
And I like to point that out too.
Us that this point is being made. First, there is the position. It’s the 6th day of the 6 days of creation. It’s the pinnacle, if you like.
Not only is it the 6th day, but verse 27, you can see indented there on page 2, so God created man in his own image, lies at the very centre of the 6th day. So, verses 24 and 25, the animals are created. Verse 29 and 30, vegetation, the animals are fed. Verse 26, God deliberates with himself and gives dominion to humanity. And then verse 28, God speaks to humanity and delegates dominion.
And then right at the centre of the piece is 27. So, it is the 6th day, there is a culmination, a pinnacle, but humanity’s creation is at the very centre of the 6th day. And then at the end of the piece, God says, behold, it was very good. He doesn’t say that of anything else. He says, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good.
Behold, it was very good.
So we share the day with the animals. You are an animal. But we are set apart from the animals. You are special. Did you notice there in verse 24, God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures?
In verse 26, God said, let us make.
So we share 65% of our DNA profile with the fruit fly. I find that rather offensive. And we share 98 to 99% of our DNA profile with the chimpanzee. But pop down to the primates enclosure at the London Zoo and very quickly you will notice that there are some differences. I mean, you may not think that when you watch your teenage son eating his breakfast, but there really are.
And it’s not just the position in the chapter, it’s also that in all of his creation in the first chapter, this is the only time when God actually deliberates with himself. So verse 26, God said, let us make.
And then the word create is used only 5 times in chapter 1. It’s there in verse 1, God created. It’s there in verse 21 of the sea monsters because the ancients believed the sea monsters were kind of evil, terrifying beasts. God created them. He’s in charge.
Don’t worry. But now, in verse 27, so God created. Male and female he created. He created.
So, the pinnacle, we’re at the centre. God declares it very good. God deliberates with himself. God creates. But more than anything else, what distinguishes us from the other species in the animal kingdom is what God says in verses 26 and 27.
So, then the Lord God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Precisely what it means to be in the image of God, we’re not actually told.
Is it that we have responsibility to rule and to govern, verses 26 and 28? That certainly distinguishes us.
Is it that we have consciousness and that we are on a wholly different level in terms of sentience and thought, planning and ordering? That certainly distinguishes us.
The scientists even today haven’t begun to explain how the innate matter of which we are made, which itself cannot think or imagine, has produced in us something that can think or imagine.
Is it that we can communicate and that God can communicate with us? Let us, he says, God communicates, if you like, within himself, even if it’s simply the divine royal we, But also then God says to humanity, and it’s understood that we understand him. So is it that we can communicate with the divine and understand him?
Certainly it does appear deep within our subconscious that we know that we have some sort of God-given delegated responsibility for this planet, and that this flows from our exalted position.
And certainly, the language of image is a language that the people of the day would have understood to imply delegated power to rule. In every age, rulers have had their image represented to demonstrate the reach of their influence and realm. Think of the pound coin, the post office stamp, the company logo, the branding, the Nike swoosh, the Audi circles, the Aeon symbol, the golden arches. Or the seal, or the imprimatur, the stamp.
Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon had every single brick stamped with his image. That’s something. Saddam Hussein sought to do much the same sort of thing. Visit the Soviet Union or any of the former Soviet cities, great images of Lenin and Stalin and so forth. And God’s intention is that in every corner of this globe, this planet, is to have his vice-regents in all their male and female uniqueness and splendour declaring his glorious rule over everything.
And it was very good.
Now whichever of these or all of these, we are the pinnacle, God sees what he has made, it is very good, we are the centre, We’re the result of God’s considered deliberation. God creates us in his image. We’re responsible. We rule. We’re conscious.
We can understand. We can communicate.
You are special.
There was an advertisement— do bloopers still exist? I don’t know if they still happen. Bloopers, do they still exist? There was an advertisement in the late ’90s, your heart beats 100,000 times a day. Your eyes take in more information than the largest telescope known to man.
Your lungs breathe more than 2 million litres of air every 24 hours. Your hearing is sensitive to hundreds of thousands of different sounds. Your brain is more complex than the most powerful computer. You’re amazing. We want you to stay that way.
Was it Hamlet? What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, in faculties, in form and moving! How express and admirable in action! How like an angel in apprehension!
How like a god the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.
It may be that we say to ourselves, you know, I don’t really feel that special.
And at least one of the reasons for that may be that we’ve neglected Genesis 1. God thinks you’re amazing.
The reality is that all of us have an innate sense of the special status of our human creation. It’s why we baulk at gross mistreatment.
It’s why we find the Holocaust so abhorrent. It’s why we want to do at least something to help the displaced. It’s why we say, I want to be the best me that I can be.
Really interesting. I heard an interview with Peter Singer early in the 2000s. He’s the guy who said that actually keeping alive a person with dementia is— there’s no moral responsibility more than that of keeping alive a horse. He actually says that in this book. And the guy in the interview went through all of this thinking with him, and then he said, hang on, Peter, your mother has dementia.
She’s had it for 5 years. She’s unable to recognise you. You’re keeping her alive in a home.
It’s different when it’s your mother, is what he said.
And I guess that may be one of the reasons why the whole celebrity movement has actually begun to implode. Nobody really believes it when push comes to shove. It’s nonsense that we’re just meaningless, random beings. God’s Word makes sense of God’s world.
It’s the voice from outside.
We’re special.
Now I was thinking of just some of the implications, you know, responsibility in this creation, dignity in the work we have been given, humility, our place in the world, worship, adoration.
Oh come, let us bow down and worship. Let us kneel before our God and Maker.
Secondly, we are equal. I want to drill down now into verse 27, and I have deliberately chosen a heading here, we are equal, that needs some qualification if we are not to get into a tremendous muddle. But we are equal. So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them.
The, in the image of God he created him, is speaking about humanity, but a male pronoun is used in the original text, no matter what your translation may have it as. But this vests each and every human being and every individual human life with a level of dignity, significance, and precious value, wherever they may be found across the face of this planet. Is it Tom Holland who so helpfully made popular the understanding that this Christian truth lies behind everything we consider precious about 21st century Western civilization.
The Romans left their infants on the hillside to die. They didn’t have Genesis 1.
The Communists and the Nazis set about mass extermination. They wouldn’t recognise Genesis 1.
The materialists have slaughtered millions upon millions of unborn babies. They fly in the face of Genesis 1.
Before the Factories Act, the Chimney Sweep Act, the Child Labour Act, small children working all hours in factories, they were being put up chimneys and down the mines.
Jordan Peterson has a very interesting— I, you know, we won’t agree with everything he says by any means, or his way of understanding this text as a piece of literature, but he has a fascinating observation as a psychiatrist that a refusal to recognise Genesis 1 at least hints at or suggests a desire to break loose from any sense of accountability or responsibility and instead to engage at some level in rank domination of others.
See, if you won’t recognise that we’re all special, he gives you freedom to behave how you like.
And from Genesis 1 comes human rights, children’s rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, legal rights, the eradication of slavery as legal trade, concern for the environment, democracy itself. It all comes out of this.
But I think the heading, we are equal, does require a little qualification because patently, in many respects, we’re not equal. You know, we’re not equal in gifting or financial ability or physical prowess or intellectual powers or mental resilience. I mean, watch just one set of the US Open. You are not equal to Carlos Alcaraz, whatever his name is, or Jannik Sinner. Watch the Women’s Rugby World Cup.
Well, I’m not equal to them either, but think of the greats of history or technology or scientific exploration and discovery. So, there is a lazy way that Christians can insist we are all equal, and such wrong thinking can place intolerable pressure on our children and young people. If I’ve grown up being told, you can achieve anything, you can be whoever you want to be, well, I’m going to end up profoundly disillusioned or disappointed or anxious or unbearably burdened.
It’s a very good, interesting illustration. Rory McIlroy, when he won the American— which Open? It was the American Open. He had been longing to. And when he won, he gave that speech.
You remember it? This goes— I won’t do the accent, but this just goes to show that you can achieve anything you want to. And I said, Rory, you haven’t seen me playing golf, mate. I mean, I started trying to play golf when I was about 16, and honestly, you know, when I try and swing a club, I could never achieve that.
But we are equal in dignity and worth, in significance and importance. The unborn child, the embryo, the elderly and infirm, the vulnerable, the immigrant, the prisoner, the impoverished, the dispossessed. The security man in the Sainsbury’s corner shop is equal to you and me. The garbage collector on the Tuesday morning rubbish round, the sewage worker, the call centre operator is of equal value to the CEO and the board member, and we should treat them as such. Is that not a rebuke?
It is to me.
You interact with a culture where Genesis 1 has been ignored or has not influenced the ethics. I’ve been to the sweatshop in Bangladesh.
I worked at a school in the 1990s where the boys gave marks to the girls as they walked into the school hall.
All of us have seen the steady degradation and the sordid humiliation of men and women in the name of entertainment through the Hollywood, Netflix, and Prime film industry.
It’s actually an extraordinary truth that God sees each and every individual with whom we have contact as precious. I don’t think we really could have made it up.
You’re special. We, rightly understood, are equal. She, he is different. Now, we’re pretty near our close, but from verse 27 you can see equality and difference. So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
This means that the image of God is present in both male and female. It also means that male and female together image the divine. And so there’s equality and diversity in humanity and there’s equality and diversity in the divinity. Father and Son are equal, Father and Son are different.
This difference is true, of course, physiologically. It’s a matter of straight biological scientific fact that every single cell of our body has within it, from conception, either the male or the female chromosome. The woman XX, the man XY. In every cell of the body— well, I mean every cell, I know there is, I do know there is a small number of cells where this is not the case, so don’t come and have at me afterwards— but 36 trillion cells if you’re a bloke, and 28 trillion cells if you’re a woman, every single cell, bar a tiny, tiny number.
And I know that in a minute number of individuals, these sex-defining chromosomes are disordered, But this is one of the abnormalities that come as a result of the fall. And these abnormalities are spectacularly rare. Best research has it at considerably less than 0.2%. And so we need to say to our little child as they head off to school that his sex and his gender was set at conception, and her sex and her gender was set at conception. And no matter what she may be told by teachers ignorant of the science in primary school, this is a matter of scientific fact.
Male and female, he created them. And the best way we can help those who are disorientated or disordered in these areas is not to abandon the teaching of Genesis 1, but to embrace it and to deal sensitively and gently and kindly with those who experience confusion or disorder. And it’s something of a relief that in April this year, the UK Supreme Court determined that in the Equality Act 2010, the term sex, man and woman, refer to biological sex at birth.
Which of course tells us that the whole he/his, she/her, they/their, ze/zir flies in the face not only of common sense but also scientific fact. And if the politicians and business leaders, educationalists and broadcasters had even a modicum of moral courage, they would have said as much and preserved us of a huge amount of damage in the last decade.
Indeed, Genesis 1 would have given them the courage to stand up against that nonsense.
It also means that the emperor has precisely no clothes in this area. If the science is clear, the emperor has no clothes. And actually, if the emperor had no clothes, it would be self-evident to anybody who looked whether they were a man or a woman.
So, finish. Humanity. This is not a view from inside speculation. This is God’s voice from outside revelation. God’s Word makes sense of God’s world.
I would argue, and I think this text tells us, that we can only be truly human, we only can be who we were meant to be, if we recognise God and surrender to Him. And if we won’t do that, we will always, in some sense, be subhuman, rightly understood. Divinity. Well, we all look around and we realise this is not who we are, and it makes it all the more remarkable when the Lord Jesus steps onto the pages of history. He is the image Here is the image of the invisible God.
And in his kindness, he enables us to be put back together, if you like, to become truly human if we will come to him. Let me lead us in prayer.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for by him and for him and through him were all things made. In him, Jesus Christ, all things hold together. We praise you, our Father in heaven, that in this broken world where we make such mistakes and get things so horribly wrong personally and corporately, there is one, the Lord Jesus Christ. We come to him. We bow before him, our Lord and Creator.
We praise you for the Lord Jesus. The perfect image of you, the invisible God. We thank you for his perfect rule, his perfect humanity, his absolute divinity. We surrender to him and praise you for him and ask that in him and through him we might be put back together to be the people you want us to be. In Jesus’ name.
Amen.