What is a human being, and why were we made? Scripture answers with a grand claim and a sobering diagnosis. From the beginning, God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness,” and so He created humanity male and female to reflect His reign and represent His rule within creation (Genesis 1:26–27). He fashioned Adam from the dust and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being, a creature both material and immaterial with a capacity for fellowship with his Maker (Genesis 2:7). Even after sin’s entrance, the ache for eternity remains; God has “set eternity in the human heart,” so that men and women sense there is more than the cycle of days can hold (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We are made for worship, and because “God is spirit,” His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth (John 4:24).
Yet the fall fractured what was glorious. Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and death spread to all because all sinned (Romans 5:12). Apart from grace we are “dead in transgressions and sins,” alienated from the life of God and unable to repair ourselves (Ephesians 2:1; Ephesians 4:18). The biblical study of humanity—often called theological anthropology—therefore moves along two lines: dignity as image-bearers and devastation under sin, with redemption in Christ re-creating what was ruined and promising a future in which humanity will be restored under the last Adam. In what follows we will set human identity within Scripture’s historical and cultural horizon, trace the narrative from creation to new creation, unfold key doctrines about the image, the will, the fall, and the soul and spirit, and draw out pastoral applications in this present Church Age while keeping clear God’s distinct plans for Israel and for the Church.
Words: 2696 / Time to read: 14 minutes
Historical & Cultural Background
The biblical claim that humans bear God’s image sounded in a world where surrounding nations carved images of their gods and installed kings as living emblems of divine power. Scripture redirects that idea: not statues but people are God’s appointed images, and not a select few but every man and woman share that dignity by creation (Genesis 1:26–27). The first mandate given to humanity—be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it—frames culture-making as a holy calling under God’s authority (Genesis 1:28). Work, family, language, and law belong within that calling, not as ways to become divine but as ways to reflect the Creator.
After the fall the image was not erased. God grounded the prohibition against murder in the abiding reality that “in the image of God has God made mankind” (Genesis 9:6). James rebuked cursing for the same reason: with the tongue “we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness” (James 3:9). The image remains, though marred, and therefore human life remains sacred even in a disordered world. In the unfolding administrations of God’s plan, responsibilities shift while the dignity endures. In Eden humanity lived in innocence; after exile, conscience bore witness; following the Flood, God instituted human government to restrain violence; later, under Abraham, promise became the focus; under Moses, Israel received the law; in this present administration of grace, God is forming the Church, one new man in Christ from Jew and Gentile with equal access to the Father by one Spirit; and in the age to come Christ will reign and restore all things in the kingdom (Genesis 2:25; Romans 2:15; Genesis 9:5–6; Genesis 12:1–3; Exodus 19:5–6; Ephesians 2:14–18; Acts 3:21). Recognizing those dispensational stages helps us read human calling with nuance: the image abides, sin corrupts, grace renews, and glory awaits.
Biblical Narrative
The Bible’s account of humanity begins with the artistry of God. He speaks, and worlds stand firm; He stoops, and dust becomes a living soul (Genesis 1:1; Genesis 2:7). He forms woman from man and presents her in covenant union, so that the two become one flesh, and calls this good (Genesis 2:21–24). In Eden humanity enjoys unbroken fellowship with God, meaningful work, and ordered love. The command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not a trap but a boundary that keeps life within trust (Genesis 2:16–17).
The serpent’s lie recasts God’s word as deprivation and promises divinity by grasping; the pair eats, their eyes open, shame enters, and they hide (Genesis 3:1–7). God’s judgments are just and fitted to the sin, yet even in the curse a promise glows: the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). Exile from Eden signifies the rupture—humanity barred from the tree of life, labor now painful, relationships disordered, death certain (Genesis 3:16–24). From that point forward, the story reveals sin’s spread and grace’s persistence. Violence fills the earth; yet God preserves a line, judges with the Flood, and then covenants with Noah, marking human life as sacred and charging people to fill the earth (Genesis 6:11–13; Genesis 9:1–7). At Babel, human pride seeks a name and security apart from God, and the Lord scatters the nations by confusing their language (Genesis 11:4–9). Then God calls Abram, promising a name as gift, a land, a nation, and blessing to all peoples through him (Genesis 12:1–3).
Israel’s story shows what humanity under law cannot achieve. The law is holy and good, but sin seizes the command and produces death. Paul confesses the war within: he desires the good yet finds another law at work in his members (Romans 7:12–19). The prophets promise a day when God will give a new heart and a new spirit, when He will write His law within and pour out His Spirit so that obedience springs from renewal (Ezekiel 36:26–27; Jeremiah 31:31–34). In the fullness of time the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us; the last Adam succeeds where the first failed, obeying to the end and tasting death for everyone (John 1:14; 1 Corinthians 15:45; Philippians 2:8; Hebrews 2:9). At the cross Christ bears our sins in His body, and in His resurrection He inaugurates new creation life, the firstfruits of the harvest to come (1 Peter 2:24; 1 Corinthians 15:20–22).
In this present age God calls people from every nation into the body of Christ. By grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works prepared beforehand (Ephesians 2:8–10). The Spirit regenerates, washes, and renews, so that those once dead live to God and cry “Abba, Father” (Titus 3:5; Romans 8:15). Believers are being renewed in knowledge in the image of their Creator and are called to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24). Death remains, yet it has lost its sting. We await the redemption of our bodies, when the mortal will put on immortality and the image we bear will be fully conformed to the image of the heavenly man (Romans 8:23; 1 Corinthians 15:49–54). In the kingdom to come Christ will rule in righteousness, Israel’s promises will be fulfilled, the nations will be shepherded, and finally, in the new heavens and new earth, God will dwell with His people and wipe away every tear (Isaiah 11:1–4; Luke 1:32–33; Revelation 21:3–4).
Theological Significance
To say that humans bear God’s image is to affirm a constellation of capacities and callings. It includes rationality and moral discernment, the ability to relate to God and to others, and a vocation to steward the world as vice-regents under the King (Genesis 1:26–28). Because the image persists after the fall, every person possesses inviolable worth, and every assault on human life is an affront to the God whose likeness we carry (Genesis 9:6). The image is also dynamic in redemption: in Christ we are renewed into that likeness so that character aligns with calling (Colossians 3:10).
Human freedom must be framed with equal care. Scripture presents genuine responsibility and real choices. Moses set before Israel life and death and called them to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19). Joshua summoned the people to choose whom they would serve (Joshua 24:15). At the same time Scripture refuses any autonomy that would make grace unnecessary. Apart from the Spirit, the person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God; they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:14). God works in His people “to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose,” so that our willing and doing are gifts of His prior working even as they are truly ours (Philippians 2:13). The Church Age displays this doubleness vividly: the gospel is offered freely to all, people are commanded to repent and believe, and those who do so discover that the Father drew them and the Spirit made them alive (Acts 17:30; John 6:44; Ephesians 2:4–5). Responsibility is real; grace is decisive.
The doctrine of the fall explains why this grace is necessary. In Adam, sin spread to all, and all sinned; the result is spiritual death, corruption touching every faculty, and universal guilt (Romans 5:12; Romans 3:23). Scripture portrays this as both condition and conduct: we were by nature children of wrath, and we walked according to the course of this world (Ephesians 2:2–3). Yet God, rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ; by grace you have been saved (Ephesians 2:4–5). The curse’s reach extends to creation itself, subjected to frustration and groaning until the revealing of the children of God; the hope is cosmic as well as personal (Romans 8:20–21). Anthropology therefore cannot be severed from Christology and soteriology: to know what humans are is to know what Christ became and what He is making us to be.
Questions about the human constitution belong here as well. Scripture speaks of body, soul, and spirit, sometimes distinguishing soul and spirit sharply, as when the Word of God is said to divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and to judge the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). Paul prays that believers be sanctified wholly—spirit, soul, and body—kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:23). The soul is often the seat of life and personhood, the self that thinks, loves, and chooses (Psalm 42:11; Matthew 22:37). The spirit is the human capacity most directly oriented to God, enlivened by the Holy Spirit in regeneration so that we can worship, understand, and commune with Him (John 3:6; Romans 8:16). At the same time, Scripture treats the person as a unified being, not a collection of separable parts to be ranked. In death the believer is away from the body and at home with the Lord, yet awaits the resurrection when the body itself will be raised imperishable (2 Corinthians 5:8; 1 Corinthians 15:42). The biblical vision is neither materialist reduction nor gnostic disdain but embodied spirituality awaiting glory.
A dispensational lens helps situate anthropology within God’s unfolding plan. Israel remains Israel, the nations remain the nations, and the Church—formed in this age—is one body in Christ made up of Jew and Gentile without collapsing Israel’s covenants into the Church’s identity (Ephesians 3:2–6; Romans 11:28–29). Human vocation is refracted through those economies. Under law, Israel was to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation; in the Church Age, believers are ambassadors of reconciliation, a people who display the life of the age to come amid the present evil age (Exodus 19:6; 2 Corinthians 5:20; Galatians 1:4). In the kingdom, humanity’s calling to rule will be exercised under the visible reign of Christ, fulfilling what Psalm 8 foreshadowed and what the first Adam forfeited (Psalm 8:4–6; Hebrews 2:6–9).
Spiritual Lessons & Application
A biblical view of humanity grounds dignity that cannot be canceled. Every neighbor bears God’s image; therefore the Church must defend life from womb to old age, oppose partiality, and speak with gravity about any injustice that treats people as less than image-bearers (Genesis 9:6; James 2:1–4). This same view steadies our sense of self. In Christ we are not defined by our failures or by the labels our age invents; we are defined by the One whose likeness we bear and into whose likeness we are being renewed (Colossians 3:10).
Understanding the will under grace breeds humility and hope. We call people to choose the Lord, to repent and believe, to turn from idols to the living God; and we pray because only God gives the new heart that loves what is good (Acts 20:21; Ezekiel 36:26). Evangelism, parenting, and pastoral care all rest here. We exhort without despair and we intercede without presumption, trusting the God who works to will and to act in His people (Philippians 2:13).
Recognizing the depth of the fall protects us from thin therapies and equips us for patient sanctification. The struggle Paul describes—wanting the good and doing the opposite—still rings true for believers who must walk by the Spirit and put to death the deeds of the body (Romans 7:15–19; Romans 8:13). This is not defeatism; it is clarity. The Spirit’s fruit grows over time, and obedience is learned in community under the Word (Galatians 5:22–23; Hebrews 10:24–25). Because the body matters, our ethics include how we use our bodies—sex, speech, food, work—and look forward to bodily resurrection as part of our hope (1 Corinthians 6:19–20; 1 Corinthians 15:42–49).
Finally, the soul and spirit shaped by Scripture call us to whole-person discipleship. We feed the mind with truth, aim the will toward obedience, train the affections to love what God loves, and open the spirit to the Spirit through prayer and worship (Romans 12:1–2; John 4:24). We grieve as those who know that to depart is to be with Christ, yet we fight death as an enemy whose final defeat is sure (Philippians 1:23; 1 Corinthians 15:26). We live as citizens of heaven and servants on earth, anticipating the day when the image will shine without stain and creation itself will share our liberty (Philippians 3:20–21; Romans 8:21).
Conclusion
Theological anthropology gathers Scripture’s witness to say this: humanity is glorious by creation and ruined by sin; redeemed in Christ and destined for glory. We were made in God’s image to know Him, love one another, and steward the world under His reign (Genesis 1:26–28). We fell and were exiled, but God promised a Savior and kept His word in Jesus, who bore our sins and rose as the firstfruits of a renewed humanity (Genesis 3:15; 1 Corinthians 15:20–22). In this present administration of grace He is forming a people in whom the image is being renewed, while His promises to Israel stand and His mercies to the nations advance (Ephesians 2:8–10; Romans 11:29). Our future is not disembodied escape but resurrection life under the last Adam, when He will make all things new and dwell with His people forever (1 Corinthians 15:49–54; Revelation 21:3–5). To know what a human is, then, is to know whose we are, what has gone wrong, what God has done, and where He is taking us.
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24)
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