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<\/source><\/picture>I was sitting in a college history class many years ago. My professor asked for a show of hands: \u201cHow many of you believe man is basically good?\u201d Most people raised their hands. \u201cHow many of you believe man is basically bad?\u201d Two or three people raised their hands, including me. I looked around somewhat perplexed; my Calvinist upbringing put me at odds with almost everyone. Yet when I look back, something was wrong.<\/p>\n
More recently, a young man who attended a Bible study I was leading asked me a question. During one study, I mentioned that God considered human beings valuable enough to save; otherwise, He wouldn\u2019t have sent His Son to die for people. I said we have inherent dignity; there\u2019s a worthwhileness about us. This young man came up to me after the study, confused. He quoted\u00a0Romans 3:12<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cAll have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.\u201d<\/p>\n He respectfully asked how I could say that humans are worthwhile if the Bible tells us we\u2019re worthless. I was thrown off guard, because I could see how I appeared to be directly contradicting Scripture. A plain, surface-level reading of\u00a0Romans 3:12<\/a>\u00a0led him to believe that men and women are worthless. God saved dirty rags (Isa. 64:6<\/a>), trash (1 Sam. 2:8<\/a>), worms (Job 25:6<\/a>;\u00a0Ps. 22:6<\/a>). Who are we to think of ourselves as worthwhile at all?<\/p>\n I realized in reflecting afterward that I had found myself caught on the horns of a false dilemma, but to understand the dilemma, we need to think about our historical context.<\/p>\n Total depravity<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s our inheritance as Protestants to think of ourselves as sinners, incapable of willing spiritual good. This was the underlying logic of Martin Luther\u2019s despair as he went through the repetitious cycle of the Roman Catholic sacramental system. He realized he would never measure up; he would never stop sinning in this life; his sin went so deep that he could never confess or do enough to merit salvation. He had a sober understanding of who he was before God, and this led him to be awed by the grace made apparent in the revelation of God\u2019s righteousness (Rom. 1:17<\/a>).<\/p>\n He realized that God\u2019s saving righteousness was Jesus Christ, and God stoops to save sinners. Therefore, when we throw ourselves on the mercy of God exhibited in the infinite grace freely given to us in our Lord Jesus Christ, then we experience the joy of salvation \u2014 by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It\u2019s no wonder that Protestants sing \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d with gusto.<\/p>\n Luther, however, lived in an age permeated by Christian thought. Protestants and Roman Catholics didn\u2019t argue\u00a0that\u00a0we were made in the image of God. That was a given; the question was: How far did we fall? Did we simply lose a certain grace that was divinely imparted to us so that we now stand in a somewhat neutral position before God (as Roman Catholic doctrine asserts)? Or did we fall so far that now we\u2019re unable to will true spiritual good apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (as classical Protestantism asserts)?<\/p>\n Moreover, the doctrine of total depravity, which has come to define the Reformed understanding of sin, wasn\u2019t even introduced at these debates between Luther and the pope, though Luther likely would have agreed with the doctrine. It was a century after the Reformation, at the Synod of Dort, that internal debates among Reformed churches in the Netherlands led to the doctrine of total depravity being systematically codified. These debates, like the debates between Protestants and Roman Catholics a century earlier, centered around how sin had affected man\u2019s being made in the image of God.<\/p>\n Arminians at the Synod of Dort posited that mankind wasn\u2019t affected wholly by sin; rather, we were affected only partially. The Reformed responded that sin has wholly affected our every faculty. Sin goes deeper than we all might realize; we cannot fully trust our minds, wills, hearts, souls, and bodies anymore, for they are prone to sin. Man can still achieve a measure of relative good (e.g., caring for our families, helping our community, being honest at work) apart from regeneration. However, apart from grace we don\u2019t do these things unto God\u2019s glory, so they are not\u00a0spiritual\u00a0goods. God\u2019s common, non-saving grace remains in effect, yes, because man is created in God\u2019s image. But his sin goes deep \u2014 in short, he\u2019s totally depraved.<\/p>\n Today, we are 500 years removed from these debates. The average individual on the street often has no inkling of what it means to be made in the image of God, much less any subtle theological understanding of just how much sin has affected our being created in His image. The very foundation for total depravity \u2014 the assumption that we\u2019re created in God\u2019s image \u2014 has been eroded. Witness the ongoing debates in our culture about human dignity: whether babies in utero have rights; whether women are women and men are men; whether sexual exploitation and pornography are empowering or not. Christians, as a result, may be tempted to forget about our being made in the image of God as well. And if we do, we will also forget what total depravity actually means, and we will be caught on the horns of a false dilemma:<\/p>\n How can we say that man has inherent dignity (the image of God) and yet at the same time he is a terrible sinner \u2014 worthless (total depravity)? Isn\u2019t he either the former or the latter?<\/p>\n The answer to this false dilemma is simply \u201cyes.\u201d We are both. Man is far above all other creatures (Ps. 8:5<\/a>); he is \u201cwonderful\u201d (Ps. 139:14<\/a>) and \u201cbeautiful\u201d (Prov. 20:29<\/a>). No other creature has the honor of being created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27<\/a>). But he has also fallen very far:<\/p>\n \u201cTheir throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive\u201d (Rom. 3:13<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cAll we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned \u2014 every one \u2014 to his own way\u201d (Isa. 53:6<\/a>).<\/p>\n We are deeply sinful \u2014 dead in our trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1<\/a>) \u2014 and can contribute nothing to solving our spiritual predicament. We cannot will the truly good and deserve judgment; in that sense, we are worthless.<\/p>\n So, the answer to my young friend\u2019s question about the worthwhileness of men and women was, \u201cYes, we are worthless, but we are also worthwhile \u2014 but not in the same way and in the same relationship.\u201d The image of God imparts dignity and worthwhileness to us in our very being because that is how God created man; but our every faculty has now been corrupted by sin in this post-fall world. We therefore deserve judgment. Ironically, the very judgment we deserve speaks to the dignity we\u2019ve compromised. We were created to be the pinnacle of creation and to experience eternal bliss; now we deserve eternal damnation.<\/p>\n So, we are worthless in terms of our spiritual good, but not in terms of our being human. Humans, both Christian and non-Christian, are always valuable because the image of God cannot be erased. It\u2019s marred in sinners but not eliminated. Moreover,\u00a0Christians aren\u2019t totally depraved<\/a>\u00a0any longer \u2014 the image of God is being restored in us (Col. 3:10<\/a>).<\/p>\n I wish that when I was in that college class years ago that I simply hadn\u2019t raised my hand at all. There are times when we\u2019re pressed to accept an oversimplification of a particular subject and it\u2019s best to abstain or reframe the question. What I experienced on that day was what\u2019s called a false dichotomy: dividing a complex subject into two different viewpoints, neither of which do justice to the subject at hand. The questions didn\u2019t allow for nuance: \u201cYes, in one sense, people are basically good, because they\u2019re created in the image of God, and no, they\u2019re basically evil in another sense, because they\u2019re sinners.\u201d<\/p>\n Let us therefore be careful, as Christians, to recognize the full scope of what it means to be human, avoid oversimplification, and speak discerningly with our neighbors about what we believe it means to be human for the sake of God\u2019s Kingdom and glory.<\/p>\n This article was first published in Tabletalk<\/a>, the Bible study magazine of Ligonier Ministries<\/a>. Find out more at TabletalkMagazine.com or subscribe today at GetTabletalk.com.<\/em><\/p>\n Rev. Thomas Brewer is vice president of publishing and senior associate editor of\u00a0Tabletalk\u00a0magazine. He is a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe image of God<\/h4>\n