The Sanctity of Human Life

by David P. Gushee

The bottom line of Jesus’ teaching is God’s love for the world; for humans; for each and every human. This is perhaps the ultimate foundation of Christian belief in the dignity of human life.

Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection. The New Testament and the Christian theological tradition are filled with reflections on the career of the Christ, in its three primary movements: incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. It is almost impossible to overstate the significance of Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection for belief in the dignity of human life.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn 1:14). The New Testament writers consistently marvel at the divine condescension, in which God stooped low to take on our frail, humble, sinful flesh, carry our nature, suffer humiliation and death at our hands, and bear our sins as our suffering servant (Php 2:1-11). The paradox of the incarnation is that when divinity stooped low and took on humanity, humanity revealed its lowliness and yet was elevated through God’s mercy. And it was elevated forever. After the incarnation, God has always been the One who became a human to save us in Jesus Christ.

When God becomes man, when divine nature and human nature join in Jesus Christ, God’s dignity touches humanity and is transferred through Christ to humanity in an unprecedented way. We are no longer “just” made in God’s image, cared for in creation, delivered from our distress, protected by God’s laws, and promised eschatological shalom. Now God is one of us, and if God is a human being, no human being can be seen as worthless. No human life can be treated cruelly or destroyed capriciously. Human dignity can never again be rejected, or confined to only a few groups or individuals.

The incarnation also elevates human bodiliness. What happens to human bodies (not just minds and spirits and souls) matters to God and must matter to us. What happens to people’s bodies must matter to us because God came in a body in Jesus Christ.

God not only took flesh in Jesus Christ, God sacrificed that flesh at Golgotha, for our salvation. This staggering New Testament claim only deepens belief in the extent of God’s love and care for humanity. God stopped at nothing to reach out to us. God-in-Christ suffered and bled and died for us. What more can anyone—what more could the divine One—do to demonstrate his love for human beings?

The New Testament teaches that Jesus died for “the world,” that is, everyone, people in all states, conditions, nations, and orientations toward God and neighbor. Paul reminds us that Christ laid down his life not just for his friends but for his enemies (Rom 5:6-11). The universality of life’s dignity is affirmed. Paul’s formulation becomes highly influential here: “Who am I to harm one for whom Christ died?” (1 Cor 8:1-13). If the population of those “for whom Christ died” includes every human being in the entire world, the moral implications are clear. Everyone must matter to us, because everyone matters to God, who sent Christ, who died for all.

And then Christ rose again. It is significant that Christ rose in a body. It was a new, different kind of body. But it was still a body. This was a body that could be seen and touched. In this body Jesus ate and drank. Paul concludes from Christ’s bodily resurrection that we too shall have bodies at our own resurrection (1 Cor 15). Human life never ceases to be bodily, even at the resurrection. Once again, human bodiliness gains powerful affirmation.

The Resurrection also marks the triumph of life. In the Incarnation, the One through whom all things were made, the One who sustains and holds together the creation itself, became flesh, took on human life. At the Cross this human being suffered and lost his life. But in the Resurrection, Jesus lives again; life wins; and therefore God wins. We are reminded that the triumph of life is indeed the triumph of God.

God is for life. All that wars against life is enemy to God, and God has defeated it proleptically at the Cross.

The Witness of the Early Church. Finally, we turn to the early church. As the first Christians formed churches and began Christianity’s long historical journey, they sought to proclaim and embody the kingdom ministry of their Lord Jesus Christ. The literary evidence indicates clearly that despite setbacks the church honored and incarnated human dignity in revolutionary ways.

The Book of Acts depicts a rapidly growing church led by the Holy Spirit toward an ever-more inclusive and hospitable community ethos. The initial community of approximately 120 quickly expanded into the thousands after the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. What had initially been a “Hebrew” community of Christ-followers rapidly expanded to include Greek-speaking Jewish Christians, and then later, large numbers of Gentiles who had no Jewish heritage.

Opening the church to Gentiles, and not requiring them to live according to the dictates of Jewish Law, was clearly the most contested decision of the early church era. But Paul offers the most expansive theological effort to defend this revolutionary transformation of relationships between Jews and Gentiles. His oft-quoted words in Galatians 3 are nothing short of breathtaking in their context: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). Paul has worked out a new anthropology, or perhaps better a theological ecclesiology, in which all humanly significant distinctions are transfigured and overcome by and in and through Jesus Christ. “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two [groups] one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph 2:14). In Christ, we are “one new humanity,” (Eph 2:15) and this is what ultimately matters.

The early church’s ecstatic experience of the Holy Spirit created powerful momentum toward radically inclusive and egalitarian community. This would be a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-racial, gender-inclusive, class-inclusive community. It would also be a community committed to pressing toward enemy-love, in obedience to Christ. What mattered was not how enemies treat Christians, but how Jesus responded when he was mistreated (1 Pt 2:21-25). When reviled and abused, we must not return evil for evil but should instead walk “in his steps” (1 Pt 2:21) in patient endurance and forgiving love.

What ultimately emerged were congregations that believed that in their own experience of transformed human relations lay the beginnings of the redemption and restoration of the world. Their leaders addressed them with such seriousness on these points because so very much was at stake. Christ came, died, and rose again. The world at large remained in the grip of dark forces, and yet in Christian churches new seedlings of a new community that upheld the restoration of the sanctity of human life could be found. Here rich and poor, young and old, male and female, Jew and Greek, slave and free, celebrated God’s transforming love in Jesus Christ. And before this love all stood equally needy, equally benefited, and equally overwhelmed with gratitude. Until Christ returned, these communities would seek to live in love toward one another and to all.

Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next

Comments

ALSO IN GOVERNMENT

by Gideon Strauss

by Os Guinness

by Gideon Strauss