Aug 25

Part 8: The Creation of Humanity

Todd Pruitt |Series: Genesis |Genesis 1:24-31


So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

The sixth day of creation represents something of a pinnacle in God’s creative work for it was on the sixth day that God brought forth humanity.

The biblical account of creation has, understandably, been the focus of relentless attacks. What is surprising is when those attacks come from within the household of God. But this too is actually quite understandable. Christians, like everyone else, do not want to be made to feel stupid or strange. So many Christians have sought to accommodate secular theories of human origins having believed the assertion that evolution via natural selection is a proven fact. But, of course, this is not true. Perhaps at no other time since the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species (1859) have scientists and philosophers been as willing as they are today to 1) acknowledge profound problems with the theory and 2) state their opposition to it. Neither time nor the scientific method have been kind to Darwin’s theory of human origins.

The creation of mankind was special, meaning that the man and woman are distinct in fundamental ways from the rest of the living creatures. There are surely similarities because, after all, humanity is among the “living creatures” brought forth on the sixth day; however, humanity differs from all else in creation having been endowed by God with his image. It is also clear from the Scriptures that the creation of mankind, like God’s other acts of creation, was supernatural. While God typically acts through ordinary providence, he made the man and the woman through supernatural means.

Only the Bible’s account of creation guards the dignity of human life. Darwinism reduces mankind to an unguided product of random mutations. Such a being can possess no inherent nobility or value. Also, by tracing all humans back to a common lineage, the Bible’s account offers an objective basis for the unity of humanity rather than the sort of racial superiority so inevitable in evolutionary thought. And most significantly, only the Bible’s account of human origins paves the way to the redemption that is ours in Jesus Christ. While the ruin of sin is explained by the failure of the first Adam, the hope of our salvation is found in the person and work of the Second Adam (Romans 5:12-21).


More From This Series