The Intrinsic Value of Man | Summer in the Systematics: Anthropology (Part 5)

Transcript

JRS 84
THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF MAN
7/12/2026
SELECTED SCRIPTURES
JESSE RANDOLPH

Last week in Part Four of Summer in the Systematics, we covered the topic of The Design for Man where we zeroed in on the fact last Sunday night that God designed mankind according to two sexes, male and female just as it says in Genesis 1:27, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Now tonight as we get into Part Five of this study of Biblical Anthropology, we are going to be covering The Intrinsic Value of Man. That’s our topic for tonight. This is going to be study tonight like it was last week which sort of straddles that line between the Bible and theology on one side, and culture and apologetics on the other. That is because this topic of the intrinsic value of man or the intrinsic worth of man or the intrinsic dignity of man, has several different contact points and really several different conflicts with the teachings and the trends of what’s out there in the world. Our topic tonight is The Intrinsic Value of Man.

Now, out in the world, out in the culture at large, in the realm of philosophy, in the realm of ethics, in the realm of secular cultural anthropology, it’s not taken as a given that man meaning mankind, meaning men and women, have intrinsic value. Rather, for some man has merely what’s called instrumental value. Meaning, how a human being is treated can only be evaluated as being either good or bad based on the usefulness of how they were treated to the greater societal good. According to that instrumental view of man, if a person’s treatment, or how a person was treated, no matter how egregious or unthinkable it may be, even in extreme cases like rape or murder, as long as it serves some greater goal, some greater purpose, some greater societal objective, it can still be classified the treatment of that person can still be classified as good. Because whenever the greater goal is served, anything that accomplishes that greater goal even if it otherwise might be deemed morally wicked or evil can still be in a utilitarian type of way called good. So, the goal in that system of instrumental value, is not to do what’s right, not to do what’s good, but rather to do what’s efficient. That is the view that teaches that man is instrumentally valued. That view which holds that any behavior potentially committed toward or directed toward humans can be good, can be acceptable so long as it meets some greater societal end.

Well, that view, the instrumental view of man, is not the view which lines up with the Biblical witness. Rather, Scripture teaches that man is intrinsically valuable. We see that truth played out over and over in Bible passages like these. We’ll see it many times tonight again. Genesis 1:27, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Or consider the words of David in Psalm 139:13-14. This testifies to the intrinsic value of man. “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Or look at the words God gave Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5. This speaks to the intrinsic value of man. “Before I formed you (this is God speaking to the prophet) in the innermost parts I knew you, and before you came out from the womb I set you apart.”

What each of those texts testify to is that God assigns intrinsic value to each and every human being, male and female, who He has ever made. So, no matter what their economic position is, or their social situation or their condition, no matter their skin color, their geographic place of origin, their language, no matter where they grew up, every single human being has intrinsic value. Intrinsic value which is rooted in the fact that they have been made in the image of God. As we’re going to see tonight, as we consider this topic of the intrinsic value of man, the fact that we have been made in God’s image, and that accordingly, we possess intrinsic value. Has all sorts of profound implications in all phases of life, even before life at conception leading into life here on earth and then all the way to death.

In fact, those are going to be our three points for this evening on your worksheet. The Intrinsic Value of Man at Conception. Second, The Intrinsic Value of Man in Life. Third will be The Intrinsic Value of Man in Death.

We’ll start with The Intrinsic Value of Man at Conception. As we address this matter of man’s intrinsic value, going back to the very time at which he was conceived, this requires us to delve into the topic, the sensitive topic but the needed topic of abortion. Because those who advocate for abortion rights whether they say it this way or not, they are launching a full-scale assault on man’s intrinsic value at the point of conception. But the Biblical world view and the Biblical record is clear. God placed our immaterial spirits in these material bodies, in these bodies of flesh, these physical bodies. In creating us in His image, He assigned profound value and dignity to the whole person, body and soul. God could have chosen to make us like angels. He could have created us if He had so chosen, to become pure spirit beings without bodies, disembodied spirit types. He could have created an exclusively spiritual realm for us to dwell in as non-embodied beings. But He didn’t. Rather God created us to live in these material bodies, these bodies made of flesh and bone and hair and skin and teeth. He created us to live in this material universe, a universe that’s made up of real rocks and streams and grass and dirt. He is also making a place for us, He will prepare a place for us, He is preparing a place for us, a material, physical kingdom in which we’ll one day dwell with Christ as our ruler when He comes again to rule and reign upon the earth.

So, as human beings, men and women image bearers, we are spiritual beings. Once we die our souls go on to live forever in one of two places either heaven or hell depending on what we did with Jesus Christ. But we’re at the same time, very much physical beings. When I put my hand in front of my face, that’s a real hand. You put your hand in front of your face, that’s a real hand, right? It’s not an illusion. This is a real hand that we’re seeing with real eyes.

So as human beings, as divine image bearers, the point is we are both body and soul. Or if you’re a trichotomist, we’re body, soul and spirit. That’s the direct testimony of Scripture. I’ll just highlight a few Scriptures here that do show us that we are both body and soul. Note the parallelism here that showcases that we are these unified beings made up of both body and soul with the body being really the vehicle through which our invisible souls are made visible. Psalm 44:25, “For our soul has sunk down into the dust; our body cleaves to the earth.” Psalm 63:1, “O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; my soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You.”

What passages like these teach us and they highlight for us again is that we are unified beings made up of both body and soul. We are whole people. The testimony of Scripture is of course paramount, but we know this from experience also do we not? Let’s say that you are enjoying a meal one evening and someone calls you and they interrupt your enjoyment of that meal. Are you going to say to them, “Sorry I have to call you back. My mouth is eating right now.” No. Let’s say that someone wants to make plans for you on a Wednesday morning to go jogging or just to go out for a stroll or what have you. But you say to them, you know you’ve already made plans to go running that day. Are you going to say “Sorry, I can’t join you Wednesday. My legs will be running at that time.” No, you’re going to say, “I’m going running at that time.” I’m busy, that includes every part of me being busy at that time. I bring that up to make the point that according to the Biblical witness and the Biblical worldview, when it comes to human beings as God’s image bearers, there is no division between body and soul. We are unitary beings made up of both spirit and matter. We possess both spiritual and material components.

Now, I mentioned abortion earlier. I’m getting us there. I’m going to do a little historical analysis. We’ve got the liberty to do so on a Sunday night. We’re going to work through how we’ve gotten to where we’ve gotten with respect to the abortion issue and there’s a long and sorted history, a philosophical history that gets us there. So, what we just laid out here about what the Bible teaches about us being unitary beings made up of both soul and body, that’s really a revolutionary idea when it was first introduced into the pagan world that surrounded both the writers of the Old and New Testaments.

See in the pagan world that surrounded those Biblical authors, philosophical systems like Platonism and Gnosticism, those ruled the day. Those really dominated the day. Those systems of philosophy, Platonism or Gnosticism, they really denied and disparaged the material world, the physical world. They looked at the physical world as this realm of death and destruction and decay and the source of evil. What these ancient people groups had been conditioned to think, whether it would be the ancient Greeks or the ancient Romans, was to think of the physical body, because remember physical is evil, as being distinct from the person. So, the physical body was viewed as being entirely distinct from the self. According to this ancient way of thinking, the inner man, the inner person, is who we really are. The body is just fiction, it’s a tomb of some sort which the real person dwells, the real person lives. The body is just this unruly piece of matter that all mankind is trying to get out of and trying to escape, and we eventually just want to get rid of this physical body so that we can get off to the spiritual realm that we initially came from.

Well, it’s into that context, this very anti-material, anti-physical context, that Christ came. It was into this context that Christ came and Christianity was birthed. Christianity of course brought these ideas which were nothing short of revolutionary, because now what was being taught according to the teachings of Christ, was that the physical world in which we live was created by the Most High God. And because God is intrinsically good, and everything He makes is intrinsically good including the physical world in which He made, then there must be some element of the physical creation that is not inherently wicked. In fact, the direct testimony of Scripture is that what God made on the six days or during the six days of creation is what? Good. God saw as He made all the different elements of the planets and the universe and everything else, God declared it to be good.

Now remember when God made the first person, Adam, God made him from physical matter. He made him from dust. Genesis 2:7, “Then Yahweh God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and so, the man became a living being.” Well, it was this very walking, talking, living, breathing formation out of the dust which God not only declared to be good, man to be good, but in Genesis 1:31, He declares what He’s made to be very good. As we’ve already seen in Genesis 1:27, this dust born person was also made in God’s image. So, though to the secular ancient mind, the body was considered to be separate from the person to the ancient Hebrew mind by the days of Moses here, there was no longer any separation of body and person. Rather according to the Scriptures, God made whole persons, unitary persons, made up of body and soul in His image.

Well, this same emphasis on the unity of the person came through the incarnation of Jesus Christ when the eternal Son of God entered this world in flesh. You want to talk about revolutionary? You want to talk about a revolutionary thought in the ancient world, in this Gnostic, Platonic way of thinking, matter was evil. The whole material world was evil. Bodies are evil. So, the idea of the divine, of deity, taking on physical form, putting on human flesh, and entering into this evil material world, there was simply no mental category for that. No philosophical category for that. The thought was so far-fetched and antithetical to the way the ancient mind worked. And yet this is precisely what happened in the incarnation when the transcendent, eternal God of all broke into history as a baby born in Bethlehem. John 1:14 says “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

So wild and fantastic acclaim was this, that the apostles really stressed this in their teaching that Christ really did come to earth in physical form, bodily form and that’s why you see passages like this. Colossians 2:9, “For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells bodily.” I Peter 2:24, Christ, “Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree.” Hebrews 10:10, “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Then the apostle John in his first letter, I John, laid out the critical truth acknowledging that Jesus came in the flesh as a crucial test of orthodoxy. I John 4:2, “By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” Now Jesus not only came in the flesh, came to this earth in a material body, a body of flesh, He died in a real physical body. He wasn’t spiritually crucified. Calvary wasn’t symbolic, merely symbolic. No, He was physically crucified, with real nails having been driven into His real hands, and a real crown of thorns placed upon His real skull. A real spear having been driven into His real side. And then having died physically, Jesus came back to life physically in a true bodily resurrection. A truth which He had to assure His own disciples of. As we see here, in Luke 24:39 where he says, “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” We also see that He demonstrated that He had really been resurrected in the flesh and He was right there in person in the flesh when He ate a piece of broiled fish right there in front of his disciples. At the very heart of our faith then, as followers of Christ, as Believers, are these truths that Jesus came to this earth actually and bodily. He died bodily, and He rose bodily. I Corinthians 1:23, “We preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness.” Jesus, the perfect example of humanity, He demonstrated that unity of this spiritual and the physical components of man, presenting in His case, perfectly the truth, the Biblical truth, that man is made up as a unified whole of both body and soul.

Now you’ll note that for this point, point one on your worksheet, The Intrinsic Value of Man at Conception. I did use the word abortion. So how in the world have I gone from the incarnation and how are we now going to leap into the topic of abortion? Here is the connection. The abortion issue ultimately is a worldview issue. It’s a heart issue to be sure. After all abortion exists in this world because the world is evil and abortion exists in this world because man is evil. The truth of Jeremiah 17:9 that “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick” certainly has something to do with the fact that abortion has become so prevalent in the U.S. and around the world over the past many decades. There’s a heart issue to be sure.

But there are also worldviews in play. As we’ve already seen here, according to the Biblical worldview there is no divorce, no dichotomy between one’s body and one’s personhood. They are one and the same. We’re a unitary being. Body and personhood fall under the broader Biblical reality that we have all been made, body and soul in God’s image.

But there’s a different worldview at play out there, one with ancient roots which sees it as the exact opposite. According to this worldview, which we’ve just looked at, a worldview rooted in Gnosticism and Platonism, there is a dichotomy between the body and the soul, the body and even the person. And this is exactly and precisely where the evils of abortion come into play today. These aren’t new issues by the way. These sadly are issues that have been at play for many, many centuries, millennium now. In fact, in the Greco-Roman culture in which Christianity was born, abortion and infanticide were widely practiced. Ancient thinkers of the ancient world, men like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, they actually recommended infanticide as a legitimate social state policy. Archaeologists have discovered sewers which were clogged with the tiny bones of newborn babies which had been dumped down the drain. In Ancient Rome it wasn’t uncommon for infants to be killed as a form of birth control. And this wasn’t considered a crime back then because newborns weren’t considered as being fully human. Yes, they were conceded as being living creatures. They were alive the way that a pet might be alive, but they weren’t viewed as having personhood or having earned personhood.

Well, this same line of thinking that attempts to bifurcate the body from the person, carries forward to today. As those who continue to argue for a woman’s right to kill her baby through abortion, what they’ll do is they’ll concede that the child in the mother’s womb is a life. They no long call the child a clump of cells like they used to 40 or 50 years ago, thanks to things like advances in ultrasound technology. They’ll call that child a life, they’ll call that child alive, but they’ll still say that child can be killed without moral consequences because the child is not yet a person. The argument goes that we are under no obligation to protect that life or to preserve that life until that life attains personhood. By the way this thought process that exists out there today is confirmed by their own writings of those who are in this camp of advocating for the right to terminate a pregnancy, to end a life, to kill a child.

For instance, here’s Joseph Fletcher. He by the way, was once an Episcopal priest. He writes “What is critical is personal status, not merely human status.” So according to Fletcher, a child who is being formed in the mother’s womb has not attained that status of personhood. There is still a sub-personal organism. They fail to qualify for the right to life. Hans Kung, he was a liberal Catholic theologian. He wrote “a fertilized ovum (egg) evidently is human life but is not a person.” Peter Singer, and ethicist from Princeton, writes “the life of a human organism begins at conception.” That sounds promising at first. But then he writes this, “The life of a person, a being with some level of self-awareness, does not begin so early.” For Singer, then simply being human has no moral significance. It’s personhood that matters. It’s personhood which qualifies one to enjoy a right to life.

So, let’s play along. Let’s play along with their way of thinking here. If personhood is the issue and we want to concede that, we don’t by the way, when does personhood begin? That’s a fair question to ask right? Well, no one has a real clear, definite answer. The so-called experts are all over the place. Miranda Sawyer, she’s a British broadcaster writes “once an embryo has developed enough ability to feel pain, or begin a personality, then ending that life is wrong.” So that would be her line, when a child can feel pain or have a personality.

Bioethicist John Harris says, “Nine months of development leaves the human embryo far short of the emergence of anything that can be called a person.” He continues “Nonpersons or potential persons cannot be wronged in this way (he’s talking about abortion) because death does not deprive them of anything they can value.” And then he says, “if they cannot wish to live, they cannot have that wish frustrated by being killed.” So, the value of life and the worth of life according to John Harris is totally dependent upon whether an otherwise living breathing person is sufficiently cognitively developed to have an explicit, conscious desire to live. That’s the line in the sand that he would draw.

The co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, James Watson publicly advocated waiting three days after a baby’s been born to decide whether it should be allowed to live. His rationale for that three-day waiting period was that certain genetic defects are not detectable until three days have passed, post birth. Watson had a colleague, a discovery of the double helix. His name was Francis Crick, and he wrote “no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and if it fails those tests, it forfeits the right to life.”
Peter Singer, who I mentioned a minute ago, is a Princeton ethicist. He has gone so far as to say that “a three-year-old is a gray case.” That is just as awful as it sounds. Singer is saying that it is within the realm of possibility, ethical propriety he’d say, to put a child to death not only in utero, not only at birth, not only a few days after birth, but potentially up to a few years after birth. That is because, according to Singer, that child may have a lack of cognitive functioning that establishes that he or she is not a person.

Well, ideas have consequences. They always do. In South Carolina in a case titled Floyd v. Anders, a legal case out of the South Carolina supreme court, a little boy survived 21 days after an abortion but then a federal judge decided that because his mother had already decided to abort him, it was a botched abortion and he basically lived for 3 weeks after, the child had no right to live. So, the child born, the child lived for 21 days but according to the law, he wasn’t a person, he wasn’t protected, he wasn’t valued and so ultimately, was discarded. And I’m sure many of you have heard the story of Kermit Gosnell and his abortion clinic in his house of horrors in Philadelphia. When police entered his clinic, they discovered this horrifying scene of dead babies, many of whom had been born alive and then intentionally killed by snipping their spinal cord with scissors.

There’s a level of depravity in these cases which highlights what the Bible teaches about the depths of evil and wickedness which exists in the human heart. But there’s also very clearly here a worldview in play. One which is rooted in this unbiblical view of personhood and humanity, one which is rooted in a very sub-Biblical Anthropology, an anthropology which does not take into account what the Bible teaches about the true value of man. Again, all that I’ve shared here is not to be sensational. It’s just to highlight the fact that what is out there in the world, what is out there is being acceptable scientific or ethical practice, it flies directly in the face of what God has revealed and what God’s Word teaches. The Christian concept of the value of human, the Biblical concept of the value of human life has nothing to do with being of a certain age or being at a certain stage of development and certainly not as being at a certain phase of cognitive development. Rather, the Christian view, the Biblical view of human life hinges on who we are fundamentally, as those who have been created in the image of God.

According to the Biblical worldview, the value of human life is intrinsic to human life itself. It is rooted in the fact that God made us. Job 10:8, “Your hands fashioned and made me altogether.” The fact that we’ve been made in God’s image Genesis 1:27, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Our identity is rooted in the fact that in making us, God appointed each and every day of our life. Psalm 139:16, “Your eyes have seen my unshaped substance; and in Your book all of them were written the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was not one of them.” Again, the Christian worldview, the Biblical worldview, rejects this entire notion of dividing the body from the person. Rather, the Biblical worldview acknowledges that God sees our worth, our value, our dignity, as human beings both body and soul from the very moment of conception and onward.

The Biblical worldview leans into statements like these. Exodus 20:13, “You shall not murder.” A statement, a command which highlights not only the value of human life, but which provides the basis for calling abortion murder and for calling it sin. This position of calling abortion murder, calling it sin, is also affirmed by the overwhelming witness of early church history which affirms and confirms that the ending of human life in the womb is murder.

The Didache, written in the first century AD writes “Do not murder a child by abortion, nor kill it at birth.” This is less than 100 years after the resurrection. The Epistle of Barnabas in the second century, says “you shall not slay a child by abortion.” Justin Martyr writing a little earlier says “we have been taught that it is wicked to expose even newly born children for we then would be murderers.” Athenagoras says “we saw that women who use drugs to bring on an abortion commit murder. For we regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care.” Tertullian of Carthage writing in the third century says “it does not matter whether you take away a life that is born or destroy one that is coming to the birth. In both cases, destruction is murder. Basil of Caesarea, fourth century says, “A woman who deliberately destroys a fetus is answerable for murder.” Finally, John Chrysostom says “Why do you abuse the gift of God and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder?”

There’s really not an easy way to transition from that one to our second heading but that was our first point here, our first heading as we consider THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF MAN and the intrinsic value of man all the way back to the point of conception.

Here’s our second point, our second topic tonight, which is THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF MAN IN LIFE. This is our second blank on your worksheet. Now, with this one we’re going to move into and entirely different topic, where we’re going to see from Scripture that assigning lesser value or worth or importance to others exclusively because of their cultural or ethnic or national background entirely lacks Biblical support and instead, cuts against the witness of Scripture.

Now, what I will not do in this part of tonight’s message is issue a plea to heal the world and to make it a better place. I’m not going to issue some sort of political rallying cry to end housing discrimination or employment discrimination for certain disadvantage groups. This will not be some sort of DEI-infused effort to balance the scales of justice for this group or for that group. Rather, what this portion of tonight’s message will do I hope, is remind us of the fact that those made in the image of God, wherever they’ve lived, wherever they live today, whatever the language they speak, whatever the color of their skin, whether they’re Brazilian or Dutch or Japanese or Sri Lankan or whatever, they have been assigned intrinsic value by God and accordingly are to be treated as such.

As we get into this part of the study, let’s start here with some basic Biblical data. Let’s start with the fact that all people on earth are descended physically from Adam and Eve. You want to talk about race, there’s our race. We are all descended from Adam and Eve. The first three chapters of Genesis and on through the remaining chapters of Genesis give us this truthful historical narrative about the origin of the single race on planet earth, that of the human race. And those early chapters of the Bible, they establish that we are all descended from two people, Adam and Eve. Look at that. Here it is again. Genesis 1:27, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” And then we learn from Genesis 3:20 that “the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.” Then we go over to the New Testament the Apostle Paul explicitly affirms that all people on earth have been descended from Adam. Acts 17:26, “He made from one man every nation of mankind to inhabit all the face of the earth.”

That is key. The fact that all human beings are descended from Adam points to the physical unity of the human race. We are united in our physical genealogy through Adam. We are also, the Bible teaches, the New Testament teaches, united in our sin through Adam. Romans 5:12, Jjust as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” So, we’re physically descended from Adam and our sin condition, we’re descended from Adam. And further, we have unity in this world through our common hope of salvation through Jesus Christ. Romans 5:19, “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were appointed sinners, even so through the obedience of the One, (that refers to His death on the cross) the many will be appointed righteous.” Now, since all human beings are descended from Adam and Eve, no matter where they live today, no matter what language they speak, no matter what their skin color is, no matter who we’re rooting for in the World Cup now, since all human beings are made in the image of God, Scripture rules out any notion of there being any sense of superiority or inferiority in God’s sight between one people group and another.

Instead, what the Scriptures teach is that we should treat all human beings with dignity and respect. I Peter 2:17, “Honor all people.” Titus 3:2, “Slander no one, be peaceable, considerate, demonstrating all gentleness to all men.” Scripture teaches, that for those who would call themselves followers of Jesus Christ, there’s been this breaking down of certain walls. There’s been an elimination of certain divisions which may at one point have existed between certain people groups. For instance, in the New Testament we know that there was racial strife between the Jews and the Samaritans of Jesus’ day. John 4:9 and really a parenthetical here, says “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” That was the status of the day during their earthly ministry of our Lord. But then we also know from John 4 that Jesus went on to talk openly and freely with this woman from Samaria at the well.

Then at the end of His earthly ministry, our Lord told His disciples before His ascension that they were to “make disciples of all nations” Matthew 28:19. Paul in his letter to the Galatians said in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” But that statement, there is neither Jew nor Greek, testifies to this breaking down of certain ethnic walls between those who are Jewish, the original inheritors of the promise, and then the Gentiles who were grafted in. Also, reading on in Ephesians, in Ephesians 3 Paul is speaking of this magnificent mystery which was only partially hinted at in the Old Testament. That mystery being that Gentiles are fellow heirs. Here’s Ephesians 3:6, He says, “the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” This would have been a shocking statement to first-century Jew to think that non-Jews are included among God’s people on equal footing. But as Paul preached the Gospel to the Gentiles, people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, they were eventually brought into the church. Ephesians 2:14 says that Christ “made both groups one.” Meaning Jews and Gentiles alike. He’s broken down that dividing wall, that partition that once existed between them.

Here’s another thought on this topic of the intrinsic value of man in life as we think of the honor, the respect that is to be shown to those who might look different than us, might have different languages than us, but are nevertheless made in the image of God. There are quite a few folks today particularly from the segment of Christendom who have more like online platforms and don’t have actual pulpits or don’t have people in churches who are hearing this, it’s just going out into the air. It’s going out into the ether of social media especially. But there are many who are arguing quite vocally, calling themselves Christians, calling themselves pastors, that we ought not to, in fact some go so far as to say it’s sin to partake in interracial marriage between two believers. Now those who have gone so far as to take that position might be surprised to learn that there are examples of inter-cultural marriages, mixed marriages even described in the Bible. Not only are they described in the Bible, but they are presented positively in the Bible.

Joseph while in Egypt took an Egyptian wife. Genesis 41:50, “Now before the year of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, bore to him.” Joseph was of Israel, a descendant of Abraham and his wife Asenath was an Egyptian from North Africa. Yet their children became the forefathers of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, two of the largest of the 12 tribes of Israel. We see that in Genesis 41:51-52, “And Joseph named the firstborn Manasseh, ‘For,’ he said, ‘God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.’” And he named the second Ephraim, ‘For,’ he said, ‘God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.’”

Later we learn that Moses had married a woman of Cush. Numbers 12:1-2, “Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had taken as a wife (for he had taken a Cushite woman); and they said, ‘Has Yahweh indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?’” Now the Cushites were those who were from the African continent, modern day Ethiopia and Sudan. Meaning in this passage, Miriam and Aaron were criticizing Moses an Israelite for marrying an African woman. Note how God responded. He actually brings judgment upon Aaron and Miriam for their criticism of Moses. This is Numbers 12:4, you noticed I skipped Numbers 12:3. That’s where Moses himself calls himself the most humble man who ever lived. Numbers 12:4-10, “Suddenly Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, ‘You three come out to the tent of meeting.’ So the three of them came out. Then Yahweh came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent, and He called Aaron and Miriam. And then both came forward, and He said, ‘Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, Yahweh, shall make Myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream. Not so, with My servant Moses, he is faithful in all My household; with him I speak mouth to mouth, indeed clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of Yahweh. (He’s speaking to Aaron and Miriam here, He says) Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant, against Moses?’ So, the anger of Yahweh burned against them, and He went away. But the cloud withdrew from over the tent, and behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow. And Aaron turned toward Miriam, and behold, she was leprous.” God, Yahweh was not pleased with the words they had shared to Moses in that moment when they confronted him about marrying a Cushite woman.

How about the fact that there are non-Jewish ancestors in Jesus’ lineage including Rahab a Canaanite woman from Jericho, Ruth a Moabite woman? Do those examples the fact that we have non-Jews in the line of Jesus, do they point to us and example that we should maintain separation from other people groups or only associate with those people groups that look like us, or sound like us, or eat the same foods as us, or fly the same flag as us? Hardly. The opposite.

Now, some of you astute Bible scholars here tonight might be thinking well what about those Old Testament laws which prohibited the Israelites from intermarrying with the peoples of the foreign land. Doesn’t that at least subtly support the idea of separating from those people, those individuals who aren’t like us. Aren’t we based on the authority of those Old Laws, to have nothing to do with people who are not like us? Well, it is true that the Law of Moses did have certain prohibitions written into it, that prohibited the Israelites from intermarrying with people of other nations. Like Deuteronomy 7:3, “Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons.” Or later after returning from exile in Ezra 10:11, “So now, make confession to Yahweh, the God of your fathers, and do His will; and separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.” Now the context of these passages is clear. The purpose of these laws was to prevent the Jewish people from marrying other people of, and here’s the important part, of other religions, who had other religious affections, who were going to take the affections of the Israelites toward Yahweh in the direction of their false gods. That’s stated so clearly in Deuteronomy 7:4. This is the reason for the prohibition in the first place. “For they will turn your sons away from following Me, and they will serve other gods; then the anger of Yahweh will be kindled against you, and He will quickly destroy you.”

In fact, this principle shouldn’t really blow our hair back all that much because the same principle, a similar principle carries over into the New Testament, where Christians are told that we are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. II Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” Or there’s the teaching about widows. The widow says I Corinthians 7:39, the Christian widow is free to be married to whom she wishes, (but look at the qualification) “only in the Lord.” There are clear Old and New Testament prohibitions on intermixing with other religions. But those have nothing to do with intermixing with those who merely come from of a different cultural or national or ethnic background. In fact, I’d say that the passage I read during Scripture reading this evening from Revelation 5, or the picture we get in Revelation 7:9-10 here is actually telling us something quite different. It says, “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’”

Now there’s one more line of argument which some have gone down. To support separation of different people groups. And not just separation, but suppression of certain people groups and here in the US, enslavement of one specific people group and that is the argument from the book of Genesis about the curse of Ham and really the curse on Canaan, Ham’s son. What is the curse of Ham how did that lead to a certain people believing, even in the name of Christ that that was a basis for enslaving other image-bearers? Let’s revisit a bit of the history from the curse of Ham, from Genesis specifically. Sometime after the Flood, during Noah’s time, we know that account where Noah got drunk, he fell asleep and while he’s lying naked in his tent one of his sons Ham saw his father, saw Noah, in this drunken condition. Then Ham apparently ridiculed his father Noah, in the presence of his two brothers, Shem and Japheth. So, these brothers, they did the right thing. They treated their father respectfully and they covered Noah’s nakedness. It all comes out here in Genesis 9:21-23, “And he drank of the wine (this is speaking of Noah) and became drunk and uncovered himself inside his tent. Then Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took the garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned backward, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.” When Noah awoke from his wine as it says in the next verse, verse 24, He cursed not Ham but Ham’s son Canaan, and it’s found here in Genesis 9:25, “So he (Noah) said, ‘Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brothers.’”

Now some in history, I would say to their shame, would stand before a pulpit like this and they would use this passage to attempt to justify not only discrimination against folks with a different skin tone or hue, but ultimately to justify the enslavement of an entire people that were made in the image of God, namely those of African origin. The claim was made was that having darker-colored skin as those of African origin have, that was the curse of Ham, to have dark skin was a portion of the curse of Ham and that was linked, as it says here in Genesis 9:25 to servitude, he would be a servant of servants. So, the leap was made using this Genesis 9 to link dark skin with perpetual servanthood i.e., slavery of the American variety.

Now there are a couple of responses to this line of argument, to use this passage for that end. For starters the Bible itself shows that it was not the descendants of Canaan but instead the descendants of the other children of Ham who populated northern Africa and gradually took on darker features. In Genesis 10:6 which is part of the Table of Nations. Cush is referred to that’s modern-day Ethiopia, Sudan. Egypt is referred to. That of course is Egypt. Put is referred to. That’s modern-day Libya. Those would be the darker-skinned descendants of Ham not Canaan. In fact, if we read on into Genesis 10, we learn that the descendants of Canaan didn’t migrate to Africa, but they actually migrated to Sidon, and Gaza, and Sodom, and Gomorrah. Genesis 10:15-19, “Canaan was the father of Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth and the Jebusite and the Amorite and the Girgashite and the Hivite and the Arkite and the Sinite and the Arvadite and the Zemarite and the Hamathite; and afterward the families of the Canaanite were scattered. The border of the Canaanite extended from Sidon as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza; as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.”

Now later in Biblical history, we learn that these were the tribes of Canaanites who were destroyed ultimately by the people of Israel when the people of Israel entered the Promised Land. That is stated here in Deuteronomy 7:1-2. It’s the second giving of the law, this comes a bit later. It says, “When Yahweh your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and He clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and stronger than you, and when Yahweh your God gives them over before you and you strike them down, then you shall devote them to destruction. You shall cut no covenant with them and show no favor to them.” God was saying, wipe them all out including the Canaanites, the cursed Canaanites.

But not all Canaanites, we know, were actually killed at the time of Israel’s earlier conquest, the one mentioned in Deuteronomy 7. What we see is that for those Canaanites who survived this conquest of the land, they were actually subject to servanthood during the days of King Solomon of Israel. I Kings 9:20-21, “As for all the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, who were not of the sons of Israel, namely, their sons who were left after them in the land whom the sons of Israel were unable to devote to destruction, from them Solomon raised up forced laborers to this day.”

And this is the point. The curse on the descendants of Canaan was fulfilled in the destruction of the Canaanites, by the people of Israel entered and invaded the land, the land of Caanan. Then it was fulfilled later when these Canaanites were subject to the Israelites as their servants, as people of servitude. The curse on Ham, the curse on Canaan has nothing to do with ethnic superiority, or skin color or people being of African descent. It had to do with the Canaanites being first conquered and then later subjected to servitude.

All that fit under our second heading The Intrinsic Value of Man in Life. We have been really zeroing in on the intrinsic value of man, as a bearer of the image of God, no matter his skin color, no matter what people group he’s from, no matter his nationality or his cultural heritage.

Very briefly we’ll work through our third heading here. The Intrinsic Value of Man in Death. Now to get us started here on The Intrinsic Value of Man in Death, a couple of very basic truths. First is to remember that while death was not part of God’s original design for human beings, death did in fact come into the world through the entrance of sin. Romans 5:12, “Just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Second, we remember that the timing and the manner of a person’s death ultimately belongs to God. Ecclesiastes 3:2, there is “A time to give birth and a time to die.” Hebrews 9:27, “it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.” So, death is both an enemy an unfortunate reality of living in a fallen world, but it’s also a normal part of life.

Here’s another basic truth, one we need to come back to regularly in our study of anthropology, which is that as image bearers, we have intrinsic value, before God not only at conception, not only in life but as we are going to see here, at death.

Now as we consider this subject of the intrinsic value of man in death we could go in any number of directions. We could look at ethical situations involving wartime scenarios. We could look at capital punishment, the death penalty. But because time is very limited, we’re going to look at just two subtopics on this broader topic on the intrinsic value of man in death. Those subtopics are, and they are heavy ones, suicide and euthanasia, which are interconnected. Both involve the end of a life that is been made in God’s image ending prematurely in death.

What I cannot do here not only because of time but really because it’s outside of our scope of the study of Biblical Anthropology, is flesh out every single ethical issue associated with either of these topics. This is meant to just fall under that broader heading of the fact that we are divine image bearers, we have intrinsic value as divine image bearers, at conception, in life and in death.

With that, let’s start with this first subheading of Suicide. Suicide of course, is the taking of one’s own life and historically it’s been defined as self-murder. I think that is actually a proper characterization to call suicide murder, or self-murder, because by definition suicide is the taking of the life of one of God’s image-bearers. It involves intent, there is an intent to act. There’s the intentional taking of a human life. It’s by definition, murder. In this case it’s self-murder. Now, is suicide sin? Yes, it is, it is sin. To intentionally take the life of an image-bearer in this case, one’s own life is sin. Remember Exodus 20:13, “You shall not murder.”
Do Christians commit suicide? Tragically it’s so. Yes, that happens. Tragically that has happened. Tragically it does happen. Is suicide the unpardonable sin? No. According to Matthew 12 and Mark 3 and Luke 12, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unpardonable sin. But suicide is indeed sin. The difference between this specific sin, this sin of suicide, and so many other sins committed by Christians of course, is that there is no period of grace after the sin has been committed, to allow the sin to be repented of.

So does this mean that the person who committed this specific sin while claiming the name of Christ, has died in a state of unforgiveness and now they’re going to hell. Well, to allow yourself to go that far in your thoughts, you’d have to be willing to say that a Christian man who allowed his anger to get the best of him in a conflict with his spouse and then a sudden heart attack and died immediately before repenting is now despite his profession of faith in Christ, in hell. You would have to allow your thoughts to go so far as to say a woman who has an envious thought about another woman’s state of physical fitness and at the very moment she has that envious thought, she’s hit by a car and killed immediately that she is, despite her profession of faith, now in hell because she didn’t repent of that sin. I don’t think any of us could go that far and I don’t think any of us should go that far with our thoughts, because God’s Word doesn’t go that far. Rather, what God’s Word teaches is that “the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” I John 1:7, all sin, past, present and future. In other settings, of course we’re those who hold to an unlimited atonement here. An unlimited atonement, meaning Christ died for all sin, the sins of the whole world. So, we use those in broad inclusive terms in another context, why wouldn’t we do so here. Why wouldn’t we say here that all means all? Christ, His blood has cleansed us from all sin. Suicide is sin. Suicide is serious. Suicide is devastating not only of course to the deceased but to their surviving family members. But suicide, like any other sin, is forgivable. In the same way all other sin is forgiven and forgivable through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

Here’s the next one, Euthanasia. Euthanasia is the act of killing or permitting the death of a person who is hopelessly sick. The term euthanasia, it derives from a compound Greek word which puts together the word good and death. So, Euthanasia literally in Greek means good death. I don’t have time again to get into the ethical hangups and matters involving euthanasia, but I think what I’ll say just here as I wind down and close, in connection with our study of Biblical Anthropology not just tonight, but all summer is to do this. To acknowledge that demographically speaking and sociologically speaking, it’s somewhat understandable why there is a rise in cases of euthanasia or an interest in euthanasia. I looked it up this week that the average life expectancy in the year 1900, 126 years ago, was 48. Now it’s 79 years old. So, the life expectancy has expanded by 30 years. We’re living a lot longer and as we do so the cost of healthcare and prescriptions and nursing home care and memory care and life-sustaining treatments, we see it continue to skyrocket. We can see those variables out there sociologically and demographically and at least have some empathy for families who rely upon euthanasia to take care of what they perceive to be their need. But I’ll just say this and Biblically it needs to be left here. Genesis 1:27, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” All human life, no matter how old a human’s body is, all human life no matter how expensive upkeep for that human body might be, all human life is of exceeding importance in value to God.

The reality is human sickness and suffering are realities of this post-fall world in which we live. The reality is the sickness and the suffering that we see or experience for our loved ones see or experience, they point to a couple of things.

First is how glorious our eternal place of rest and home will be. How glorious it’s going to be to one day be in the eternal state where there will no longer be any suffering or pain or sickness or disease. Second, we have to remember that sickness and suffering is really, as C.S. Lewis once put it, God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. To wake them up, to wake up and stir up our Evangelistic zeal, but to wake them up as to the existence of this God that they reject. And the reality is every situation involving the end of one’s life, of course it’s going to, of necessity need some medical professional guidance but also Pastoral care. At minimum as we close here, what we need to steer clear of as good students of Biblical Anthropology is to embrace any view of euthanasia, which in any way demeans or devalues the intrinsic value of man as God’s image-bearer.

I have to leave it there, open-ended knowing that much more could be said. That’s a wrap for tonight on The Intrinsic Value of Man. Believe it or not we’re halfway through Summer in the Systematics. Next week, we’ll get into The Fall of Man. Let’s pray.