God, Human Dignity and You

Transcribed Extract: A Broad Sense and Narrow Sense of the Imago Dei

Now the Reformers, if it’s still a little hazy or confusing, the Reformers very helpfully, better than I, come and give us two senses in which we might speak of the image of God, brings us some clarity in how we are to speak about men being the imago dei, the image of God. And they speak about man being made in the image of God in a broad sense, as well as a narrow sense. When they speak about man made in a broad sense in the image of God, they are talking about the physical constitution of man, and particularly his spiritual soul and his intellect, his will, as we uniquely image God in a manner that no other creature does. And then when it speaks about the narrow sense, in which we image God, they bring into view the ethical component, the ethical component of original righteousness. And so the Reformers say that, in a large sense we are… in our physical constitution we image God in our rational capacities and our volitional capacity and yet in a narrow sense, it is ethical. Friends, the radical effect of sin is not only that we are cursed by God, put out of the Garden, put out of the very presence of God, but that we lost the image of God in a narrow sense, original righteousness. Not only that, but sin marred, corrupted, spoiled our physical constitution, that even our rational faculties are corrupted, our will is turned inward and away from God.