Murder and the Image of God (The Sixth Commandment)

In a previous post we looked at what the Lord Jesus taught about the true meaning and extent of the sixth commandment (i.e. “You shall not murder” – Exodus 20:13), that it prohibits, not just the outward act of unjustly taking someone’s life, but also the inward disposition of hatred. (See Matthew 5:21-26.) In other words, the very root of murder begins in the heart, and such hatred is itself a violation of the sixth commandment. In that sense, we are all guilty of the sin of murder.

But the Bible has much more to say about this subject. For instance, in Genesis chapter 9 (after the great flood of Noah’s day had finally subsided), God told Noah that “every moving thing that lives” (i.e. animals) shall be as food for mankind (v.3). But right after that God also told Noah that for the lifeblood of a man (a human being) He would require a “reckoning” (v.5).

What is that reckoning? In Genesis 9:6 we read,

“Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.” (ESV)

This is not speaking of revenge or vengeance, which belongs only to the Lord (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19), but of capital punishment. This is a subject that is sure to cause some sharp disagreements among many in our day, but the Scriptures are more than clear on this matter.

So why do I bring it up? Not so much to stir the pot as to make a point. What reason does God give us there in that verse for His institution of capital punishment? What is the reason why “whoever sheds the blood of man” is to have his own blood shed by man (i.e. by the state, which does not bear the sword in vain – Romans 13:4)? He says that it is because “God made man in his own image.”

This is also taught all the way back in Genesis 1:26-27, where it says,

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. (ESV)

No less than three (3) times in those two short verses we are told that mankind was made in the image of God! God did not create animals in His own image or likeness – only mankind. That is to say that human beings are in an important sense different from the animals, and so are not to be reckoned as mere animals (not even as highly evolved animals). Human beings are created in God’s image, made by God for God, to be in fellowship with Him.

And so the unjust taking of human life by murder (which rears its ugly head in many more forms than we might care to admit) is such a heinous sin before God and deserving of the severest of earthly punishments and even of hell itself because it is, in a sense, ultimately an attack on the image of God in mankind. You could say that every attempt at murder is really an attempt at deicide (the murder of God). It is to wish that God were dead.

As Louis Berkhof writes,

“The crime of murder owes its enormity to the fact that it is an attack on the image of God.” (Systematic Theology, p.204)

So let us learn to take to heart the great biblical truth that every human being is made in the image of God. And may that cause us to examine our hearts when we are tempted to hate or unjustly harm another person.

If we were all more mindful of the image of God that is indelibly stamped on every man, woman and child (even in the womb!), how much differently might we begin to treat each other? How might that knowledge restrain our hate and even the very acts of murder that flow from it?

 

Blood Cries Out

Blood cries out to God for justice. And it does not go unnoticed by the Judge of all the earth. The Scriptures in both the Old Testament (Genesis 4:10) and New Testament (Hebrews 12:23) attest to this fact. In his book, Christ Set Forth, Thomas Goodwin writes,

“Many other things are said to cry in Scripture (and I might show how the cry of all other things do meet in this), but blood has the loudest cry of all things else, in the ears of the Lord of Hosts, the Judge of all the world (Heb 12:23). Neither has any cry the ear of God’s justice more than that of blood. ‘The voice of your brother’s blood,’ says God to Cain, ‘cries unto me from the ground’ (Gen 4:10).” (p.141)

Now Goodwin (1600-1679) certainly wasn’t writing about abortion as we know it (as such a thing was no doubt all but unheard of in his day), but his words most certainly apply to that vile practice. The biblical principle still stands – innocent blood cries out to God. And if Abel’s blood cried out from the ground against his brother who murdered him, what must the blood of well over 50 million babies sound like in the ears of the Judge of all the earth? Do we dare suppose that He will not bring the shedding of such blood to justice?

May God have mercy upon our nation, and turn us to repentance before it is too late.

And may He grant mercy and repentance to many of those who are even now guilty of shedding the most innocent of blood through abortion, so that they find forgiveness and life through faith in Jesus Christ, whose sprinkled blood “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24). The blood of Christ alone can cover the guilt of our sins, even the sin of murder through abortion.

Spurgeon on Atheism

“He who looks up to the firmament and then writes himself down an atheist, brands himself at the same moment as an idiot or a liar.”

These are the words of Charles Spurgeon in commenting on Psalm 19:1, which says,

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. (ESV)

Creation itself, especially the heavens and the firmament (the vastness of space with the sun, moon, and stars) – basically the things that are above and beyond us – says something. In the words of Psalm 19:1 it declares something – the glory of God!

The verses that follow (Psalm 19:2-6) make it clear to us the this declaration of the glory of God is abundant (“day unto day pours out speech” – v.3), universal in its reach (“Their voice goes out through all the earth“ – v.4), and it requires no translator, as it has no language barrier (“There is no speech, nor are their words, whose voice is not heard” – v.3). The declaration or testimony of creation is loud and clear to all who see it.  And that testimony is not to its own glory, but to that of its Creator, God.

So anyone who looks up at the firmament (or sky) and then still calls himself an atheist is (to use Spurgeon’s phrase) branding himself as an idiot or a liar. We all know better, regardless of what we profess to believe (or disbelieve). That is how abundant and clear the testimony of creation is to the glory of its Creator. To use Paul’s words in Romans 1:20, it renders atheists (of both the philosophical and practical variety) “without excuse.”

Putting Us In Our Place

There is a line from an old Eagles song that, sadly, is a good description of the majority of mankind:

You can see the stars and still not see the light.

A look up at the stars at night really should enlighten us.  It can serve as a cure for spiritual myopia.   How so?  By putting us in our place.

First & foremost, it puts us in our place by reminding us of the greatness & glory of God!  Psalm 19:1-4 says,

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

So the heavens declare the glory of God; they proclaim His greatness & majesty!  And that declaration is loud and clear in every place, in every tongue, at all times.  So the heavens above us should serve as a constant (and often needed!) reminder of the greatness & majesty of God.

Second, by reminding us of the greatness and majesty of God, the heavens also put us in our place by reminding us of our smallness and insignificance in comparison.   Psalm 8:3-4 says,

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

What is man indeed! The world doesn’t revolve around us; we are not the center of the universe – God is!  The heavens are the Lord’s heavens (“your heavens” – v.3) – they were created by Him and for Him alone!

Think about just how big the known universe is.  Some estimate that there are around 10 sextillion stars in the universe.  (If you are anything like me, you never even knew that such a number existed.)  A sextillion is 10 to the 21st power, or a million trillion.  It is difficult to even fathom such a number.  It might as well be infinity.

So there are around 10 million trillion stars in the universe, many of which are far larger than our own sun!  Our sun is approximately 333,000 times larger than  the mass of the earth.  Is your head spinning yet?

How much matter exists in the universe?  To us any number that we could hope to assign to such a question would stagger the mind – again, it might as well be infinite!  And yet God simply spoke it all into existence!  Psalm 8:3 calls all of that the work of his “fingers” (!).

To say that God is big and we are small is a good start, even if a massive understatement.  The universe dwarfs us, and God dwarfs the universe, so we are really just a speck on a speck in the grand scheme of things.

Third, by reminding us of the greatness and majesty of God, as well as our smallness and insignificance in comparison, they also remind us of the amazing goodness of God toward us.  Why should the God who spoke the entire universe into being take any notice of us?  But He does!

Psalm 8:5-8 tells us that God has bestowed great honor upon mankind:

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
        and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
        you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
        and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
        whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

God made mankind in His own image (Genesis 1:26-27).  That is a staggering honor that is ours despite our relative smallness and insignificance in relation to the rest of the universe, (much less in comparison to God)!

But wait, there’s more!  We are not just specks on a speck, but rebellious & sinful specks on a speck!  The Fall of mankind into sin (Genesis 3) has marred the image of God in mankind (even if it has not completely obliterated it).  And yet God still cares for us!

And last (but by no means least), it should serve to make us magnify the grace of God toward sinners that is found only in the gospel of Jesus Christ!  For Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of Psalm 8.

The writer of the book of Hebrews quotes Psalm 8 and tells us that it was actually prophetic of the incarnation, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ!  In other words, it is about the gospel! (And it was written about 1,000 years before the time of Christ!)

Hebrews 2:5-9 says:

For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere,

“What is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honor,
putting everything in subjection under his feet.”

Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

For us, being made a little lower than the heavenly beings is an honor, but for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, it was an act of infinite humility and grace!  He was made man that He might suffer death for our sakes, so that we might have life in Him.

He allowed Himself to be put in our place, so that He could die the death that we deserved for our sin & rebellion, and so that we could have His righteousness accounted to us by faith!  Because He was put in our place, we can, in Him, be adopted as the children of God!

So look up at the night sky tonight.  And when you do, don’t miss the light!  Be reminded of the greatness of God, as well as His amazing grace toward you in Jesus Christ!

The Whole Story of the Bible in a Nutshell (Bavinck on Genesis 3)

“In principle Genesis 3 contains the entire history of humankind, all the ways of God for the salvation of the lost and the victory over sin. In substance the whole gospel, the entire covenant of grace, is present here. All that follows is the development of what has been germinally planted here.” (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol.3, p.200)

What an wonderful affirmation of the divine inspiration & unity of Scripture.  If the Bible were a merely human book, it could never hope to achieve such a single-minded unity of purpose & message.  Genesis 3 contains the seed planted that grows & expands throughout the Old Testament until the gospel of Christ is fully revealed in all its glory in the New Testament.

From the opening chapters of Genesis all the way to the final chapters of the book of Revelation, we have one Bible, one message, and one Savior at the center of it all – the Lord Jesus Christ!

Genesis 3 is the whole story of the Bible in a nutshell!

The Only Thing That Was “Not Good” in the Garden

Did you know that there was only one thing lacking in the paradise of the Garden of Eden?  Everything was “good” except one very specific thing.

Genesis 2:18 says,

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

It is interesting that this is the only time that the LORD said something was not “good” prior to the Fall (Genesis 3).

Everything else God had made in Creation was created “good.”

Day 1: Light and Darkness (Genesis 1:3-5) – “God saw that the light was good” (v.4).

Day 2: Waters & the Heavens (Genesis 1:6-8)

Day 3: Dry Land & Vegetation (Genesis 1:9-13) – 2X “God saw that it was good” (v.10, 12).

Day 4: Sun, Moon, & Stars (Genesis 1:14-19) – “And God saw that it was good” (v.18).

Day 5: Fish of the Seas & Birds of the Heavens (Genesis 1:20-23) – “And God saw that it was good” (v.21).

Day 6: Beasts of the Earth, Livestock, and Adam (Genesis 1:24-31) – “And God saw that it was good” (v.25).

In case we missed the point that God created everything good, Genesis 1:31 gives us a summary statement:

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

But when we get to Genesis 2:18-25 (the story of the creation of Eve), we are told that it was “not good” that Adam should be alone. (The animals were nice, but not sufficient.)  Adam needed Eve.

So if you are a married man, thank God for your wife. If it was not good for Adam to be alone even in the perfect environment of the Garden of Eden before the Fall, how much more do we need the blessings of marriage in a world filled with sin and misery!

Some men have the gift of singleness (1 Corinthians 7:6-8), but for the rest of us, the respective wife that God gives to each one of us is a most desperately-needed helper and companion in life and ministry.