The Value of the Imago Dei (Imago Dei #1)

Today marks the twenty-first anniversary of September 11th. Twenty-one years ago, four planes crashed — into the Twin Towers, into the Pentagon, and into a field in Pennsylvania — and the eyes of the entire world were glued to their televisions in shock. How in the world could something like this happen?

But let me ask you a question. What actually made 9/11 so incredibly shocking and memorable?

Many of you are thinking: the fact that planes flew into two towers. I remember it vividly. I was on staff at a brand new little church outside Denver, and we were having a staff meeting — which meant it was just me and the pastor — when his wife came in and said a plane had hit the Twin Towers. We went down and turned on the news, and we were watching when the second plane hit, and we were still watching when the towers fell. So if that is your answer, I am with you. It was devastating.

And yet, before that moment, I had heard of plane crashes. That was not the first one ever.

Maybe it was that the towers fell. Nobody expected that. Both towers came down within an hour and forty-two minutes of impact. I was stunned watching it. And yet I had seen footage of buildings collapsing before — controlled demolitions, but still, I had seen it.

Maybe it was which buildings were hit. These were iconic American structures. The Twin Towers. The Pentagon. And many believe the plane that went down in Pennsylvania was headed for the White House. This was not random or accidental. It was an anti-American message, loud and clear.

But we all know buildings can be repaired. The Pentagon was repaired. Something new stands where the Twin Towers were, along with a memorial. It is awful to hear about devastation costing billions of dollars in property damage — but property can be rebuilt.

By now you can tell I have a point. Here it is. I think what made that day so shocking is that on September 11, 2001, 2,996 people died.

You might push back. There have been tragedies with far greater loss of life. I recently listened to a book about World War II, partly a biography of Churchill, covering everything that happened in London before America entered the war. In England alone, roughly 44,000 people were killed as Germany bombed them month after month.

So 44,000 compared to 3,000 — on the scale of devastation, yes, the bombings were horrific. But so often those bombings were anticipated. Air raid sirens sounded. Church bells rang. Everyone knew to get to a safe space, and everyone knew, night after night, that this might be their last.

The difference on 9/11 is that these were moms and dads simply going to work. These were salespeople boarding a plane to close a deal. These were people heading to a vacation, or a funeral, or a wedding, or to sit at the bedside of someone they loved. These were people going about their ordinary lives — and instead their plane went down, or their workplace was invaded. How many of us saw the images of people in the burning buildings who jumped?

It is the loss of life, in such an unexpected and horrific way, that made it so shocking.

We Already Know Humans Have Value

Here is something to notice. Any time there is a disaster — a man-made one like 9/11 or a school shooting, or a natural one like a tsunami or a hurricane — the first thing we want to know is how many died. Because property can be rebuilt. Those lives cannot be brought back.

To me that reveals that we intrinsically know humans have value. I do not care what your religion is, what age you are, what culture you come from, or how much money you make. All of us carry a deep understanding, whether we acknowledge it or not, that humanity has value.

And you do not need a disaster to feel it. If you have ever held a newborn in your arms — if you have ever stood at a hospital bedside while a friend fought for their life — if you have ever been at the funeral of someone you loved — you know how valuable humans are.

The trouble is, I do not think we grasp how valuable. And that is what I want to begin working on as we start this series.

Imago Dei is a Latin phrase meaning the image of God. Today I want to show you from the Scriptures how the image of God makes all the difference — not only in who we are relative to the rest of creation, but in showing just how valuable we truly are.

The Text: Genesis 1:26–27

Genesis 1 opens with what many Christians call the creation account — a poetic narrative of how God went about creating. Some of you listening believe in a big bang and evolution. I am not here to quibble with you about whether God used evolution or worked exactly as Genesis describes. What I want you to see is what the biblical account says: that after God created stars and rivers and rose bushes and platypuses, he went on to create his crowning achievement — humans.

“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.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

The Gospel Does Not Start in Genesis 3

Several weeks ago I was scrolling through social media and someone I follow shared a video clip. The thumbnail showed a preacher, and the caption read: the gospel in one minute.

That got my curiosity. As a pastor who believes the whole life, death, and resurrection story of Jesus changes everything, I wanted to know how he said it in sixty seconds. Maybe I could learn something — some phrasing I could bring into my own preaching or into a conversation.

So I hit play. The clip was obviously pulled from a longer sermon, and it opened with this pastor saying, We must communicate the gospel. Here we go. And then: We must communicate that people are sinful.

Out of that eighty-second video, the first forty seconds were entirely about the sinfulness of humans.

This bothered me — and not because I disagreed with him. If you were with us in August when we started our series in Colossians, you heard me walk through my own journey of understanding the importance of the gospel, and to set that up I took you back to Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve sin and that sin nature gets passed down through every generation since. So I did not disagree with his content. Everything he said was true. Honestly, he is a far better preacher than I am — it was poetic and powerful.

But he spent the first fifty percent pointing at the congregation and saying, essentially, you are a sinner. And starting a gospel presentation that way treats the Bible as though it begins at Genesis 3, completely skipping Genesis 1 and 2.

Years ago my wife and I went on a double date with another couple. We had dinner and then went back to their place to play a game they were excited about. Since they had played it many times, instead of pulling out the instructions, they just explained it to us. We listened, asked questions, figured it out, and started playing.

I am proud to say that as we worked through the game, I cracked it. I realized I had a perfect strategy and I was going to win. And this was not going to be beginner’s luck — a few years back I was playing a game with my brother’s family and suddenly my brother looked over and said, you won, and I had no idea. That was beginner’s luck. This was different. I had a winning strategy and I was going to win on my very first attempt.

I was feeling brilliant. And then the wife of the other couple said, I win.

No. You can’t. I looked at her board and it made no sense. So I asked a question, and they started showing me everything, and I asked another question — and suddenly the couple realized: oh, we forgot to tell you that part.

They had started their instructions in the middle. They were so excited to share their favorite new game that they skipped a fundamental piece.

That is essentially what that pastor did by launching his gospel presentation at Genesis 3. You leave off the fact that the story actually starts with God — with an amazing, perfect, holy, creative God who exists outside of time and who, out of his goodness, creates human beings.

You have to understand Genesis 1 to appreciate how devastating Genesis 3 is. If all you hear is “humans are sinful,” you have no idea why that is tragic. The natural response is, so what, I don’t need to listen to this. But when you go back and realize that God did this — that changes everything, and now you understand why Genesis 3 is so bad.

“Let Us Make Man in Our Image”

So let us look at this carefully. First, verse 26: “Then God said, let us…”

Who is he talking to? Is he addressing the angels? The animals he has already made? He cannot be talking to humans — they do not exist yet; they are about to be created a sentence later.

He is talking to himself. But not the way you and I talk to ourselves — not the frustrated self-scolding, not the reminder to do something when you get home. There is one God revealed in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three of them together are creating the rivers, creating the stars, creating porcupines — and then saying, here is a brilliant idea: let us create someone to oversee all of this, and let us make them in our image.

So it begins with God. He is the one who creates.

Now notice the phrase “in our image, after our likeness.” The Hebrew word translated image throughout the Old Testament is also used for a statue. Any time an idol or a statue is made, it is said to be made in the image of something — meaning it resembles it. The statue is not the person. It resembles the person.

Likewise, when God created humans, we are not gods. But we resemble God.

Look at all of creation. Psalm 19 says the heavens declare the glory of God — and they do. And yet even the heavens cannot give us the same glimpse of God that looking at a fellow human being does.

What is it about humans? We have will. Intellect. Personality. Deep emotions. The ability to form profound bonds. That is the image of God. That is what separates us from the rest of creation.

Now hold on, you might say. I know some really intelligent animals. I have seen the videos. I agree — animals are remarkable. Some have real personality; I have a little dog with plenty of it. Some have a strong will. And yet I have yet to see an animal build a skyscraper. They have not designed smartphones. I do not know of any dogs that have written a book. There is no cat conference circuit where they gather to hear each other speak and then work out how to terrorize their humans.

Animals are wonderful. I love them. They are not at the human level. The difference is the imago Dei.

One clarification: the translation I am using says “let us make man,” and that does not mean males only. Verse 27 makes it unmistakable: “male and female he created them.” All humans, men and women, bear the image of God. All of them are set apart from the rest of creation, placed here to care for creation, oversee it, and resemble God.

The Value of the Artist’s Signature

But I do not just want you to see that the image of God separates us from creation. I want you to see how valuable it makes us.

Back in 2017, a Saudi businessman who later became his country’s minister of culture made the largest art purchase in history. He paid $450.3 million for a single painting.

Now, there are paintings considered far more valuable — the Mona Lisa, for instance — but the museums holding those will never sell them. This was one of the few of that caliber ever to come on the market.

Here is my point. If I had the artistic skill to replicate that painting perfectly, I guarantee that man would not have paid me $450 million for it. He probably would not have paid me $4.50. Why? Because the original was painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

What gives that painting its worth is the artist.

Likewise, God’s artwork — his masterpiece — is human beings. And his signature upon them is his image. When he breathed air into Adam’s lungs, he also breathed his soul alive. That is God’s signature. It is like a brand pressed down onto them saying: this one is mine. I created this.

Of everything else in creation, God said it was good. When it came to mankind, he said it was very good. This was the crowning achievement.

So the value of a human being is not based on how attractive they are, or how much money they make, or how much they agree with your politics, or how old they are. Their value comes from the image of God. It comes from the artist.

Our Invisible Sticker Books

You would probably agree with all of that while holding a newborn in your arms, or while head over heels in love with someone.

But what about your uncle who keeps spouting conspiracy theories? What about that cranky neighbor who is a jerk no matter how kind you are? What about the person who keeps posting political takes that are the exact opposite of yours? What about your selfish ex?

Those people? Somehow they are not quite so valuable.

It is as if we all walk around with an invisible sticker book. We carry our own roll of stickers, and when we like someone, we peel off a valuable sticker. We even have ranks. You are more valuable because you actually said yes to marrying me. You are more valuable because you are my child. You are good — but not quite as good.

Then we encounter someone who grates on us, someone we do not like, do not get, cannot understand — and we reach for different stickers. Avoid. Ignore. Be polite but keep ghosting them. Sometimes we pull out the trash sticker altogether.

The problem is that you and I do not determine the value of a human soul. That is set by the artist, the creator, by the image of God.

So that uncle? Valuable to God. That cranky neighbor? Valuable to God. Your ex? Valuable to God. The person who gossips at work, the kid at school who tells off-color jokes, the person who is just plain rude? Valuable to God.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that because everyone is valuable to God, we should all have one big group hug and pretend everything is fine. Genesis 3 makes it clear that this valuable image within humans has been broken. God branded humans, and then sin came in and tried to scratch out the brand. It is out of that brokenness that humans go on to do horrible, deplorable things. It is out of that broken image that people lie, cheat, steal, kill, abuse, take — and fly planes into towers.

But even when broken image bearers commit deplorable acts, it does not mean they cease to have value. The value of a human is not determined by you and me. It is set by God.

What we have to figure out is how to acknowledge the value of others.

This Week’s Challenge

Throughout this series I want to put a challenge in front of you each week. I do not want to hand you theological truths and leave it there. Our goal here is not to become smart and understand the Bible; it is to live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved. And to do that, you have to see people the way Jesus sees them.

So here is the challenge for this week. Who has God already placed in your life — or who might he place there soon — that our society overlooks, but to whom God wants you to show love, so they know they have value?

It might be your elderly neighbor, and this winter you need to be the one clearing the driveway. It might be the coworker who grates on everyone, and you will have to find ways to let God use you to show them their worth. Maybe it is the outcast who sits alone at lunch or in the library.

Who is it that gets overlooked, that God is pointing to and saying, that’s the person I want you to love?

Why Kids

For me, one of the groups I have felt called to over the years is kids.

You might say, well, obviously kids have value. And I agree. But look at what our culture actually values. Kids do not make money. They make a ton of mistakes. They are still being educated. They are not really contributing to the direction of society. Kids get overlooked constantly. Children should be seen and not heard — and in some cases, not even seen.

Case in point: yesterday I was watching a football game and a commercial came on for a cell phone plan. A couple stares into the camera with dead expressions and says, we got married for the phone plan, it just seemed like the right thing to do. And then, to save more money, we had more and more kids. The camera pans out and the kids are wrecking the living room while the parents look utterly miserable. Then it cuts to the wife’s sister, sitting in a spotless, silent, child-free house, saying she gets just as good a plan without any of that. You don’t need a family to get a family plan.

Kids are not valuable, apparently.

And yet, for reasons I cannot explain, basically since middle school, kids have been drawn to me. In middle school and high school part of me kind of liked it — who does not want to be liked? It is nice when someone thinks you are cool, even if that lasts about fifteen minutes. But another part of me was annoyed. I wanted to talk to my friends and go hang out, not have kids climbing all over me and punching me.

Over time I started realizing this was an opportunity.

So now you understand why our church is so committed to our children’s ministry. From the very beginning, when we had almost no resources — especially people resources — we knew we had to do this. My wife stepped up and led it for years, because kids matter.

It is why I did not coach my kids’ baseball teams only to get more time with them, though that was definitely part of it. It was another chance to influence other kids.

It is why I served for years as a mentor through a national big brother program — and when the local chapter closed, several of us former mentors got together and started a brand new mentoring program in our community. I serve on the board, and I also signed up as a mentor. Once a week for thirty minutes I head down to one of our elementary schools and hang out with a kid.

One Practical Way In

To make this concrete, I invited the executive director of that mentoring program to come share about it.

It is a one-on-one mentoring program, new to our area, that formed after the previous program in town closed down. They started making matches in February and already have sixteen mentee-mentor pairs meeting. It is currently school-based, with kids in all of our local schools, meeting thirty minutes a week. Pairs play games together. One pair sews together. Some go outside and play catch. It is all about building a friendship and a bond.

They serve kids in grades K through six. Kids can be referred by their school or signed up by a parent, and there are no eligibility requirements beyond the grade range. The kids come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some are referred because they struggle socially and have trouble making friends. Some come from single-parent homes and need a male figure in their life. And some simply need one more positive adult cheering them on.

Even as a young program, the impact is already visible. In May they surveyed the mentees, most of whom had been meeting with a mentor for three months at most — some only a couple of times. Every single kid said they felt their mentor cared about them. One hundred percent said they looked forward to their time together. All of them said their mentor made them happy.

She shared two stories. She once asked a girl who had been matched only the previous month — maybe four meetings in — whether she had learned anything or gotten anything out of it yet. The girl answered immediately: I got a new friend. This was a kid who had been struggling socially, and just having a friend made all the difference.

Over the summer she talked with a mother whose son had enrolled because he had a strained relationship with his dad; they did not like the same things, so mom hoped a mentor with similar interests would help him connect with someone. Unexpectedly, the mentoring relationship improved his relationship with his father. He grew comfortable talking about his feelings and interests with his mentor — and then started doing the same thing at home with his dad. Nobody saw that coming.

What they need most right now is mentors. Kids need someone to care about them, take an interest in them, and be a positive influence. One of their core values is respect — wanting mentors who will respect every kid, so that coming generations grow up understanding that every human being has dignity. Which is exactly what we are talking about today. Kids need to be loved and to feel important.

If you have a flexible schedule and can make thirty minutes a week work during school hours, that is one very concrete answer to this week’s challenge. And if you cannot do the weekly commitment, there are still ways to help — behind-the-scenes work, fundraisers on evenings and weekends, or financial support for a brand new nonprofit still in its early stages.

That is just one idea. What is the idea God might put on your heart? Who is the person he is placing near you? You may not know right now. Pray and ask him.

One More Piece of Evidence: Revelation 5

Before we close, I want to give you one more piece of evidence for the value of humans — and for that we go from the very first book of the Bible to the very last.

Revelation is an odd and very different book — apocalyptic writing about the end times, written by a man named John. Most believe it is the Apostle John, one of Jesus’ disciples. Because of his faith, John was exiled. Many of the apostles were being killed for their faith; John was sent to the island of Patmos, and it was there that he received this vision.

The first three chapters record his conversation with Jesus, who dictates seven letters to seven churches. Then in chapter 4 the vision shifts. Instead of Jesus saying write this down, an angel says, essentially, come up here, there are some things we want to show you. So John ends up in the throne room of God, overwhelmed by his glory, describing everything he sees.

In chapter 5 he notices a scroll held by God. And he realizes no one is worthy to open it. It is sealed, and none of the angels can open it. None of the elders can open it. No one is worthy. John begins to sense how bad this is and is on the verge of weeping — and then Jesus shows up.

When Jesus appears, the elders and angels burst into song. Revelation 5:9: “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.’”

Jesus was the only one worthy to open the scroll. And what made him worthy? For you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God.

In Genesis 1, a perfect God created perfect people. In Genesis 3, we watch them go from perfect to imperfect, righteous to unrighteous, holy to unholy — from spiritually alive with the breath of God in their lungs to spiritually dead, and eventually physically dead. Genesis 3 changed everything.

But as we saw in week one of our Colossians series, God’s response to the sin of Adam and Eve — his response to Genesis 3 — is the cross.

Jesus was slain willingly. God the Son took on human flesh and lived a fully human life, and he is the only human who ever lived without sin. So he did not need to die for his own sins. But because his image is in you, and it is broken, that breaks his heart. He wanted you back. Sin had stolen you and tried to scratch out the brand. So Jesus came to restore the image, to draw it back out, and to help you become who God originally created humans to be.

He was slain, and by his blood he ransomed people. He purchased them. He brought them back from sin so they could come back into relationship with God.

So how valuable are humans? They are worth the life of Jesus. He was willing to leave it all behind and give it all up for you.

Come to the Table

If you have been beating yourself up mentally and emotionally, you need to stop. When you abuse yourself that way, you are abusing the image of God. You matter. I am not excusing the mistakes you have made. I am not saying the things you did were okay. But you need to know you are valuable.

And at the same time — are there people you have been judging, deeming not worth your time or your attention? Have you been saying things, out loud or in your head, about people because they think differently, act differently, speak differently, even smell differently than you? God is saying they matter to him too. If we are going to live like Jesus lived and love like Jesus loved, then people who matter to God have to matter to us.

So as we move into communion, think through who matters to God — and start with the fact that you do. If you have been beating yourself up emotionally, this is your time to confess: God, I have not been seeing myself the way you see me. And if you realize you have been putting a trash sticker on people, this is your time to confess that.

If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, I hope you heard the gospel clearly today. What that pastor in the video said was accurate: you are a sinner. But you also need to realize that your story does not start with your sin. Your story starts with God. He created you. He knows you. He loves you.

Paul says in Romans 5 that while we were still weak, while we were still sinners — it even goes on to say while we were enemies of God, our sin keeping us opposed to him — Jesus died for us. You do not have to clean up your act first. Come exactly as you are, because Jesus has already done it. There is nothing you must do to earn God’s love. You do not have to impress him. You simply come in prayer and humility, confess your sin, and invite him to begin restoring the image of God within you. Because as God restores that image, he makes you more like Jesus. It is the image of Jesus that is in you — and what this broken world desperately needs is people who will go and love like Jesus loved and live like Jesus lived.

And if you have already made that step — if you have put your faith in this astonishing story of God the Son coming to earth, dying our death, and rising again — then ask yourself: who do I need to go and be Jesus to? Jesus came for me, the outcast, because of my sin. Who is the outcast I need to go to, who needs to know they are valuable?

As we take the bread, remembering the body of Jesus, and the cup, remembering the blood of Christ shed for our sins, we are saying that his story is our story. If you follow Jesus, come, take these elements, and ask God: who do you want to send me to? Who needs to know they are valuable?

If you are not a follower of Jesus and you are not ready to take that step, there is no pressure at all — I would simply ask you to respectfully abstain, because these elements are entirely about Christ, and taking them says his story is your story.

But whether this is your first Sunday here or your fortieth, if this story is the center of who you are, then come. Let us worship. Let us surrender. Let us ask him who he wants to send us to. Because this world needs to know they are valuable, and it could begin with us. Let us do this now in remembrance of him.