Royalty Means Dignity
Genesis 1:27
Dr. Seuss and Human Dignity
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.” You may remember this line from the classic Dr. Seuss book, which later became a movie, Horton Hears a Who. Theodore Geisel, also known as “Dr. Seuss,” wrote this children’s book in 1953 after he took a tour of Japan. The tour was an eye-opening and heart-softening experience for Geisel.
During World War II, Geisel used his creative gifts in the service of his country. He supported the fight against the Axis powers by creating cartoons that were used in newspapers to rally Americans to the Allied cause. But his work went beyond patriotism. His cartoons presented Japanese people as less than human, stoking anti-Japanese sentiment in the US, at a time when Japanese Americans were forced to evacuate their homes and live in camps.
Geisel’s cartoons fueled the fires of racial resentment in our country in the 1940’s. So when he visited Japan in 1953 and met survivors of the atomic bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, something changed inside him. He began to see the Japanese people as people.
When he returned to America, he apologized in the best way he knew how, by writing the children’s book Horton Hears a Who. Geisel may not have been a Christian, but when he saw the suffering of the Japanese people, he came face to face with the Christian idea that every single human life has value. He couldn’t undraw his racist cartoons, but he did preach the message of human dignity far and wide: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Royalty Means Dignity
In Genesis 1, on the sixth day of creation, God created man, not according to its kind, but in his own image. I’ve said that this means that man was created to rule the earth on God’s behalf and created to relate to him. The text says that man was made to exercise dominion over the animals and to multiply and fill the earth with God’s rulers. It also says in verse 28 that man is supposed to “subdue the earth.” All this together is often called the creation, or cultural mandate, which we’ll look at in more detail next week.
To summarize, God created men and women to display his righteous rule over the world, to fill up and cultivate the very good world that God made. The King of the universe created us to extend his kingdom as his royal sons and daughters.
Being made in the “image of God” is therefore something we are, not just something we have. This truth carries with it several massive implications. Today I want to move from what the “image of God” is, to what the “image of God” means for us today. I want to draw out several implications from this beautiful truth.
The main point I’m going to make today is that, because we’re royalty, we have dignity, or “royalty means dignity.” A king or queen is robed with dignity simply because they’re royalty. They don’t earn it or work for it; they just have it. And so do we as image-bearers of God. Because we’re royalty, we have dignity.
Our Identity Starts with God
I want to give you three ways we can apply this truth to our lives. First, this means that our identity starts with God. Being made in the image of God grounds and establishes who I am.
The language God uses to describe us helps us understand who we are. “Image” means we’re not ultimate, that we reflect something else. We’re not gods but are the “image of God.”
Though we may not be gods, we’re not nothing. We’re not made in the image of nature, our own image, or our parents. We’re made in the “image of God.” Only one thing in this vast universe is in God’s image: you and me.
This means that we’re meant to find ourselves in the context of relationship with Someone else. First and foremost, this relational identity starts with God. God tells me who I am. He names me. My existence is grounded in relationship to him.
Our culture says that we need to look within ourselves to find our true self, that we need to break away from any external authority that would hinder us from becoming who we are.
If you want to dig deeper into this topic, I recommend you dig into Carl Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. He argues that Rousseau and others psychologized our identity, that Freud sexualized our identity, and when we put all this together and add in Karl Marx, we end up with an identity that is politicized.[1]
The fundamental failure of these worldviews, and why they lead to despair and not liberation, is that their reference point is self, not God. If we don’t start our definition of ourselves with God, then we’ll end up in a world where we think and act and feel like animals, or worse, machines, with no stabilizing point of reference to orient our lives and give meaning and beauty and purpose to our lives, and no reason to treat other people with kindness. Identity formation has to start with God, or it’ll end with madness and emptiness and chaos.
Theologian Christopher Watkin says, “If I am thinking biblically, I recognize that my identity and worth are defined at the deepest level by being in the image of God, and that this means I am always already in relationship with One who is other than me. I realize that in order to ‘find’ myself, I do not need to look inside myself, to my own thoughts and feelings, but I need to look outside myself, to the God whose image I am.”[2]
This is a glorious and freeing truth! It means that I’m not defined by who I voted for, the color of my skin, the amount of money I make, how many books I’ve read, how awesome I am at sports, how many kids I have, where I went to school, how jacked up my childhood was, what state or country I’m from, by the evil I’ve done or by the evil that’s been done to me.
My identity starts with this: God made me and therefore I have a royal dignity that can’t be lost or conferred. It’s mine by default. God has put his image indelibly on me and so I don’t have to “find” myself. I know who I am. Yes, I’m a sinner. But I’m also an image-bearer of God. I’ve been crowned with glory and honor and given a mission to oversee God’s kingdom on the earth, and nothing or no one can ever take that away. The doctrine of original sin tells us we’re not as good as we think we are. The doctrine of the imago dei tells us we’re not as bad as we think we are. We aren’t trash or accidents of nature or stardust. We bear the image of God.
When you think about who you are, you must start with who God made you to be. We’re all beautifully different. But we’re also fundamentally the same. Our identity must start with God or we’ll never find our identity.
All Lives Matter
If this is true, then it naturally leads to a second implication. If every human has an identity established by God, then every human is equally valuable with no qualification. If all people are royalty, then all people matter. There’s no such thing as a meaningless life. All lives matter because all lives are made in the image of God.
A person’s dignity isn’t dependent on their performance or possessions. This means that our value isn’t determined by some outside criteria, or whether or not we have certain desirable qualities.
A person’s life isn’t made valuable if they’re rich, powerful, royal, beautiful, young, creative, generous, loving, rational, spiritual, poor, efficient, polite, or from a particular nation. When we grade the value of another person using worldly and subjective measurements, we’re denying one of the most basic truths of the Christian faith. The image of God means that every person is valuable. Period. Full stop.
This biblical truth is the basis for the universal equality of all people. It’s the foundation for human rights. The writers of the Declaration of Independence were teaching biblical anthropology when they wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The trouble is that, while we nod in agreement and our hearts fill with patriotic pride in our country’s framing documents, we don’t apply this truth evenly or consistently. Even the founding fathers didn’t, as many of them were slave owners and believed that only men who owned land should be able to vote.
This truth is easy to agree with but much hard to practice. For example, why do we sneer at the panhandler on the street corner and quickly assume the worst about them? Why do we see disabled children in public and quietly thank God that our children aren’t like them? Why do we think that gay or transgendered people are less human and more evil than we are? Why do we think that people coming from the Middle East are probably terrorists? Why do we ignore the plight of the poor while we consume more and more stuff we don’t need? Why do we secretly wish immigrants and refugees would stop coming into this country? Why do many people move their aging parents into nursing homes and basically ignore them? Why do we see people from other religions as enemies rather than potential friends? Why do we despise those who’re above us at work and boast over those below us? Why do we find any excuse possible to not pay people a fair wage? Why do we assume that people in the prison system are not worthy of a second chance? Why do we assume that an unborn child is expendable? Why do some consider killing a child in the womb if they have Down Syndrome or some other genetic or physical malady? Why do we tear up when we hear about the sad state of the foster care system or the plight of orphans around the world but never ask God how we can help? Why do we assume that people who aren’t in our favorite political party aren’t as smart or wise or Christian as us? Why do we think that people who disagree with our politics are our enemies rather than our neighbors?
In our hearts we assume that people who’re different than us are less human than us. We assume that to be a valuable human being, people must look like us. The problem with this is that God made people in his image, not ours. We’re not the standard of dignity and value, God is.
Yes, there are real political and moral and doctrinal differences between people. The point I’m making is simple. The people in all the categories I just listed are just as valuable as you are and should be treated as such.
If every person bears God’s image, then every person is royalty and inherently dignified. All lives matter because all lives are made in the image of God. “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” A person is a person, without qualification.
Male and Female He Created Them
The third and final implication of our royal dignity is that both men and women are equal in the sight of God (v. 27). This verse makes it clear that God made one humanity in two genders.
God didn’t make two humanities who’re independently in the image of God. He made one united humanity with two genders that are together in God’s image. Men and women have an equally royal status and thus an equal dignity.
This also means that our sexuality isn’t an accident of nature, but a gift from God. Our sexuality is part of our identity. This means that we don’t need to be ashamed of our sexuality. You may think that you’re too sexual when you may actually not be sexual enough. What I mean is that God gave us bodies designed to experience sexual pleasure. When we start to move out of the shame of our sexual sin, there’s so much more about our sexuality that awaits us. Sex is not bad. Sex is a good and glorious gift from God for marriage. Our sexuality isn’t only for procreation, though that is a fundamental and foundational purpose of it. It’s also a way in which we bear the image of God.
The plague of pornography has twisted our view of sexuality. Using Ray Ortlund’s book The Death of Porn as a guide, let me speak directly to the men for a moment. Men, when you look at porn, you’re assaulting the image of God in women. You’re abusing and degrading what God has crowned with glory and honor. You’re standing with Satan against God.
Here’s how Ortlund says it, “Porn is Satan recruiting us to degrade a woman into the opposite of who she is – from royalty to slavery. Satan hates women. It was a woman, remember, who brought Jesus into the world, dooming Satan’s evil kingdom forever…Porn is Satan – yes, Satan – assaulting women, denying their glory, dragging them down, because they remind him every day of the true King he hates and fears.”[3]
A woman’s sexuality is a sacred gift from God. Jesus values the sacredness of a woman’s sexuality so much that he says that we can violate them in our hearts without ever using our hands. He says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:27-28). He’s saying that, even if you’re not literally touching, you’re still really taking. The look is morally equivalent to the act.
Jesus’ understanding of sexuality is based on Genesis 1:27, “male and female he created them.” No one was talking like this when the Bible was written. The world wasn’t slowly improving it’s view of women with each passing generation. Genesis 1:27 was a surprising claim in the ancient Near East, and now. It’s God clearly saying that women deserve the same kind of respect as men, because she’s just as much in the image of God as a man. This is a bold claim in an abusive world, in a world where men think they can just take what they want from women, as if women owe it to them, as if women are less than them.
The Bible, on the other hand, celebrates the equality of women. Genesis 1:27 is the first poetry in the Bible. Moses writes it as poetry to capture God’s joy over creating men and women. When Adam first sees Eve, he also responds with joy (2:23). The first human words in the Bible are poetry, words of joy and affirmation. He welcomes her with relief and identifies with her personally. He’s not threatened by her equality; he’s thrilled by it. She has his heart from the moment he sees her. She’s not property or a prize of war or even the mother of his children yet, and his response is joy and delight. All because, in and of herself, she’s worthy of praise and honor and dignity and embrace. She’s what he is, an image bearer of Almighty God.
This bedrock Biblical teaching is why pornography is the abuse of women and why lustful thoughts and sexual fantasies are a violation of the sacredness of a woman’s sexuality. The Bible makes it clear that women should be respected as glorious image bearers of God, not consumed and degraded as objects of our lust.
Women Should be Celebrated, not Tolerated
The Bible also makes it clear that women should be celebrated, not tolerated. Pastor Josh Manly wrote an article titled “Honor Women Like Our Lord Does” on desiringGod.org. It’s worth quoting several paragraphs. He says:
I wonder if some sisters today feel that their churches debate their proper callings more than they delight in them as one of God’s best gifts. The conversations about what women can and cannot do in the context of the church are poignant in this particular moment. Can they preach, teach, or lead a co-ed Bible study? These conversations matter because the Scriptures speak to them. Yet the church’s public discourse about women, when healthy, is marked most of all by celebrations of women as faithful saints…
Of course, we don’t just praise the Christian sisters whom we know by name. There are countless names we have not yet heard whom we will honor in the age to come. They are steadfast mothers and wives who pray down heaven while giving themselves to their family from dawn to dusk and even through the darkest nights. They are single women who joyfully content themselves in God while the world constantly tempts them to believe their faith is folly. My own experience living overseas testifies to the truth that far more young unmarried women cross oceans and borders for the sake of the gospel than men…God presented the first woman to the first man as a gift, and he continues giving women as blessings to his church today.[4]
To the women of Preston Highlands, you are loved, precious, beautiful, cherished, needed, gifted, and respected. You have wisdom and skills and energy and ideas and zeal that our church and the world needs. You’re seen and loved by us and by your Father in heaven. Keep up the good work and may God continue to raise up women in our church who reflect his glory.
The Only Normal Human to Ever Live
The doctrine of the dignity of every person is one of the most hopeful and beautiful doctrines in the Bible. But it can also leave us really discouraged. We agree that our identity should start with God, that all lives matter, and that both men and women are equally valuable to God. But in our hearts, we know we don’t even come close to living this out. We know what we’ve thought about people different than us. We know how we’ve used people to promote ourselves. We know how we’ve abused women through pornography. We know how we’re trying to build our identity on the sand of self, rather than the rock of God. We believe these ideas are true, but we behave in ways that suggest otherwise.
Thankfully, there’s hope for us image bearers, corrupted as we are by selfishness and sin. God sent his Son, who Paul calls “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), in order to make peace between us and the God we’ve offended “by the blood of the cross…in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (vv. 20, 22).
Jesus truly imaged God in every way, perfectly finding his identity in God, perfectly seeing all people as inherently valuable, and perfectly honoring women. In a sense, then, Jesus is the only normal human to ever live, the only man to ever image God without the stain of sin or self.
Jesus’ life is what fully imaging God looks like. His life is our example and our goal – we’re saved to be conformed to his image (Rom. 8:29; Col. 3:10). But his life is also an indictment, showing us how far we’ve fallen from what God intended us to be.
Jesus’ life shows us our need for his death. Though perfect, he allowed himself to be falsely accused and unjustly condemned to death. Though perfect, he went to a shameful death on the cross, an agonizing death that touched the deepest part of his humanity with searing pain. And he did this for us. He died so that our sins could be removed. He suffered so that we could be cleansed. He took our sins and gives his perfection to everyone who puts their trust in him.
[1]Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 221, 250.
[2]Christopher Watkin, Thinking Through Creation: Genesis 1 and 2 as Tools of Cultural Critique (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2017), 102.
[3]Ray Ortlund, The Death of Porn: Men of Integrity Building a World of Nobility (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 46, italics his.
[4]https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/honor-women-like-our-lord-does