What Does It Mean to Be Human?
In this study
Made in God’s Image, Learning to Live as Genuine Humans
BetweenVerses · Written and facilitated by Koli Agbing
Aim: To understand the dignity and purpose God gives every human being, to recognise how false worship distorts that calling, and to see how Jesus restores us to the life for which we were made.
Main passages: Genesis 1:26–28; Genesis 2:15; Genesis 3:1–7; Psalm 8:3–8; Revelation 5:9–10; Revelation 22:1–5
For individual study: Read each passage before the teaching. Think or write before opening the possible response. Use the response as a starting point, not as an answer you must copy.
For group study: Read the passages aloud. Let participants answer first, then open the possible response when the group needs help connecting the discussion to the text.
Suggested time: One meeting of 90 minutes with the passages read beforehand, or two meetings. For two meetings, finish sections 1–3 first, then continue with Jesus, new creation, and the reflection.
Introduction · “I am only human”
We Filipinos often say, “Tao lang po, nagkakamali,” meaning, “I am only human; I make mistakes.” The saying can be an honest admission that we are limited and need grace. It can also become an excuse when we use it to avoid responsibility or continue hurting others.
The Bible begins the human story with something greater than our failures. Human beings are made in God’s image. Before anyone earns a title, proves useful, or achieves anything, God gives humanity dignity and a purpose.
This lesson follows that story from Genesis to Revelation. We will ask what God created humans to be, how that calling becomes distorted, and how Jesus leads us back to genuine humanity.
Opening question: When does “I am only human” express humility, and when can it become an excuse?
Possible response
It expresses humility when it leads us to admit our limits, apologise, accept correction, and make amends. It becomes an excuse when we use human weakness to defend repeated harm or refuse responsibility.
Opening prayer: Father, help us receive Your Word with honesty and hope. Teach us what it means to bear Your image, and lead us into the life You created us to live. In Jesus’ name, amen.
1 · Every human bears God’s image
Read Genesis 1:26–28.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
Genesis 1:27
Genesis opens with a bold claim: all human beings are made in God’s image. This was revolutionary in the ancient world. A king might be called the image of a god, and an idol might represent a god’s presence. Genesis gives the language of divine image to humanity—not to one ruler, one class, one nation, or one sex.
Every person therefore receives dignity from God. Wealth, education, ability, age, influence, ethnicity, and success do not create that dignity. Sin can seriously distort the way we live, but it does not give us permission to treat another person as worthless.
[ Tselem ]
Tselem is the Hebrew word translated “image” in Genesis 1:26–27. In other biblical settings it can describe a carved image or visible representation. In Genesis 1, the surrounding verses connect the word with humanity’s shared calling to represent God’s wise rule within creation. We are not gods, and we are not objects of worship. We are living representatives who belong to God.
Let us notice: God gives this identity before human beings have produced or achieved anything. Dignity is received, and responsibility grows from that gift.
Pause and discuss: What changes when every person, and not only the powerful, is understood as an image-bearer of God?
Possible response
No person is disposable or naturally beneath another. Power must become accountable service. We can still name harmful actions and require responsibility, while remembering that the person harmed and the person who caused harm both remain answerable to the God whose image they bear.
In everyday words: Every person has God-given worth, so the way I speak, lead, correct, protect, and care for others matters.
Faith with FootnotesImages, idols, and kings
In the ancient Near East, an idol stood in a temple as a representation of a deity, while kings could be described as the god’s image and appointed ruler. Genesis uses this familiar language in an unexpected way: God places His image throughout His world by creating humanity.
This background helps us hear both the dignity and the task in Genesis 1. Humanity represents God, but God alone is worshipped. No human ruler owns the image or may use it to make other people less human.
2 · Our human vocation
Read Genesis 1:28; Genesis 2:15; and Psalm 8:3–8.
“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”
Genesis 2:15
The image of God is not only something humans possess; it is a calling we are given. Genesis speaks of fruitfulness and rule. The human is placed in the garden to work it and keep it. Psalm 8 describes humanity as crowned with glory and honour and entrusted with the works of God’s hands.
Biblical rule is not a licence to exploit. God shares responsibility for His good world with human creatures. We are to cultivate its potential, protect what is vulnerable, and help life flourish under God’s wisdom. Work, creativity, family care, friendship, teaching, service, and stewardship can all become places where this calling is lived.
The source study describes humanity as “priestly kings.” Like kings, humans exercise responsibility under God. Like priests, they care for sacred space and help creation offer its praise to God. Adam and Eve receive a garden; their task is to tend what God has given and extend its goodness.
Let us notice: God’s gifts come with a question of stewardship. The important question is not only, “What do I have?” but also, “What has God entrusted to my care?”
Pause and discuss: What people, places, abilities, or responsibilities has God placed within your care?
Possible response
Our answers may include a child, an older relative, a friendship, a classroom, a team, a home, a craft, a community responsibility, or part of the natural world. The calling is to help what has been entrusted to us flourish without acting as though it belongs to us absolutely.
In everyday words: To bear God’s image is to use what I have been given for faithful care, wise creativity, and the good of others.
Faith with FootnotesWhy “priestly kings”?
Genesis joins two kinds of responsibility. Humanity is told to rule creation, language associated with kingship. The garden is also presented as a place of God’s presence, and Adam’s work resembles the later task of priests who guard and serve holy space.
The phrase “priestly kings” is a theological description rather than a title used in Genesis 1. It helps connect the passages: humans represent God’s rule by serving His purposes and caring for His world.
3 · When worship distorts us
Read Genesis 3:1–7.
The garden story shows humanity refusing God’s wisdom and taking the right to define good and evil on its own terms. The serpent recasts God’s generosity as deprivation. The humans see, desire, take, and eat. Their vocation to trust, tend, and protect gives way to grasping.
The pattern continues whenever we hand our allegiance to money, power, sex, success, approval, possessions, or another person. These may include good things, but they become idols when we ask them to give us the identity, security, or rule that belongs to God. What we serve begins to shape the kind of people we become.
An idol reverses the human calling. Instead of representing God and caring for creation, we surrender ourselves to something within creation. We were meant to rule under God, yet the thing we desire begins to rule us. Possessions can possess us; success can decide our worth; fear can control our relationships.
This helps us understand the Filipino saying more carefully. Human limitation is real, but cruelty, greed, manipulation, or repeated dishonesty are not the goal of being human. They are distortions of the humanity God intended. Confession is not a denial of our humanity; it is one way God restores us to it.
Let us notice: sin is more than breaking a rule. It bends our worship, our relationships, and our use of power away from the purpose for which we were created.
Pause and discuss: How can we tell when something good has begun to rule us?
Possible response
A good thing may be ruling us when we lie to keep it, harm someone to gain it, neglect our responsibilities, refuse correction, or believe we cannot be whole without it. The issue is not simply that we desire something, but what place that desire holds and what it asks us to become.
In everyday words: I become like what I trust and serve, so I need to ask whether my desires are helping me reflect God or surrendering my life to another master.
Faith with FootnotesA literary illustration · Sméagol and the Ring
In The Lord of the Rings, Sméagol wants the Ring so intensely that he kills to possess it. Over time, the object he owns begins to own him. Desire, secrecy, isolation, and repeated choices shape him into Gollum.
This is an optional literary illustration, not a diagnosis of another person. It gives us a picture of how worship and habit can deform a life. The hopeful contrast in the biblical story is that Jesus can free people from powers they once served.
Faith with FootnotesHuman depravity and human dignity
Christian theology uses “human depravity” to say that sin reaches every part of human life—thoughts, desires, bodies, relationships, and societies. It does not mean that every person is as evil as possible or that anyone has lost all worth.
The image of God remains the ground of human dignity, while sin explains why our lives so often fail to reflect that image. This keeps us from naïve optimism and from treating anyone as beyond the reach of God’s mercy.
4 · Jesus, the truest human
Read Mark 1:14–15; Mark 10:42–45; Colossians 1:15; and Romans 8:18–25.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”
Colossians 1:15
Jesus announces the kingdom of God and shows what God’s rule looks like in a human life. He loves enemies, welcomes the overlooked, tells the truth, heals, serves, and refuses the kind of power that makes people into tools. The King of kings rules by giving Himself for others.
In Jesus we see the human vocation lived faithfully. He reflects the Father without distortion and exercises authority as service. He does not merely give us a better example. Through His death and resurrection, He defeats sin and death and begins the renewal of creation.
Following Jesus is therefore an invitation into the original way of being human. His kingdom frees us from false masters and teaches us to use strength for service, truth for healing, and authority for the good of those entrusted to us.
Let us notice: Jesus does not become less kingly when He serves. His service reveals what God’s kingship—and genuine human rule—has always meant.
Pause and discuss: Which part of Jesus’ life most clearly shows you what genuine humanity looks like?
Possible response
People may notice His compassion, courage, truthfulness, prayer, welcome, protection of the vulnerable, or willingness to serve. Each example shows a human life fully turned toward the Father and generously turned toward others.
In everyday words: Jesus shows me that true human strength serves, protects, tells the truth, and gives life.
5 · Humanity restored
Read Revelation 5:9–10 and Revelation 22:1–5.
“You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
Revelation 5:10
The Bible’s final vision returns to the themes of its opening chapters. God dwells with His people. The river of life and the tree of life appear again, now within a garden-city whose leaves bring healing to the nations. The curse is gone, God’s servants worship Him, and they reign for ever.
The human vocation is not abandoned; it is restored. Revelation describes Jesus’ people as a kingdom and priests. The broken mirrors are being made whole. Human beings again serve God, care for His renewed world, and reflect His life without the distortion of sin.
This future begins to shape us now. Each time we repent instead of defending harm, care for what God has entrusted to us, refuse an idol, tell the truth, protect someone vulnerable, create something life-giving, or serve without needing control, we practise the life of God’s coming world.
We do not restore ourselves by effort. Jesus rescues and the Spirit renews. Our practices are a response to grace: ordinary ways of learning to live the story we believe.
Let us notice: salvation is not an escape from being human. God’s purpose is the healing of humanity and creation, brought to completion in Christ.
Pause and discuss: How does the Bible’s ending help us understand our purpose in the present?
Possible response
The future of worship, healing, service, and faithful rule gives direction to our lives now. We can care for people and creation, resist dehumanising powers, and practise the character of God’s kingdom because we know where His story is going.
In everyday words: Through Jesus and the Spirit, I am being restored to worship God, care for His world, and help life flourish.
Faith with FootnotesThe garden becomes a garden-city
Revelation does not simply repeat Eden. The biblical story moves from a garden to a garden-city filled with people, culture, worship, and the healing of nations. Human work and community have not disappeared; they have been purified and brought under God’s presence.
This is why Christian hope includes resurrection and renewed creation. God completes the purpose announced in Genesis rather than discarding it.
Questions for discussion
1. What does it mean to say that God’s image gives us both dignity and a vocation?
Possible response
Dignity means every person has God-given worth. Vocation means that our lives also carry responsibility: we are called to represent God’s wise and generous rule by caring for people and creation.
2. Why would Genesis 1 have sounded revolutionary in a world where kings claimed divine status?
Possible response
Genesis gives the identity of image-bearer to all humanity. It refuses the idea that only rulers or elites represent the divine and places every human being under God’s authority and within God’s calling.
3. What is the difference between caring for something and controlling it?
Possible response
Care receives a responsibility from God and seeks another’s flourishing. Control treats a person or gift as a possession and makes our preferred outcome more important than truth, freedom, or dignity.
4. What does the statement “we become like what we worship” help us examine?
Possible response
It asks what receives our deepest trust, attention, sacrifice, and hope. Our worship forms our habits and relationships. Money may make us measure people by usefulness; power may make us see supporters and threats; worship of God forms us toward truth, mercy, justice, and love.
5. How does Jesus redefine what it means to rule?
Possible response
Jesus uses authority to serve, heal, protect, and give His life. He shows that God’s rule is neither domination nor weakness; it is holy, courageous, self-giving love.
An everyday situation
A person has been given responsibility for a family property and begins making decisions alone. They silence questions, speak harshly to relatives, and say that their authority gives them the right to decide what is best.
What would it mean to exercise authority as an image-bearer of God in this situation?
Possible response
Authority should be exercised truthfully, fairly, and for the good of those affected. The person should listen, give an honest account, welcome appropriate checks, and protect the dignity of every family member rather than using responsibility as ownership.
How can others respond without copying the same contempt or desire for control?
Possible response
They can name the behaviour clearly, ask for transparent decisions, seek wise support, and keep necessary boundaries. Respect for the person’s dignity does not require agreement, silence, or participation in harm.
In everyday words: God-given authority is a responsibility to serve and protect, not a right to possess people or silence them.
Closing · Living as God’s image
To be human is to receive both a gift and a calling. God gives every person dignity, then invites humanity to represent His wise rule by tending, creating, protecting, and helping life flourish.
Sin distorts that vocation when we mistrust God, serve created things, or use power to grasp and control. Jesus is the truest image and the faithful King. Through His death and resurrection, He frees us from false masters and begins the renewal of humanity and creation.
Genuine humanity is not measured by status, success, or independence. It is seen as our lives are brought under God’s rule and formed into the likeness of Jesus—truthful, creative, responsible, merciful, just, and self-giving.
Closing question: In your own words, what does it mean to be genuinely human?
Possible response
To be genuinely human is to receive our God-given dignity, worship the Creator rather than created things, and live our calling to reflect His character by caring for people and creation. In Christ, we are forgiven and restored to this purpose.
Closing prayer
Father God, You created us in Your image and entrusted Your world to our care. Forgive us for the times we have surrendered our hearts to false gods, used power to control, or forgotten the dignity of another person. Free us from whatever rules us. Make us more like Jesus—truthful, courageous, merciful, and willing to serve. Through Your Spirit, teach us to care faithfully for the people, gifts, work, and places You have entrusted to us. Let Your new creation begin again in us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Reflection to bring home · What has God entrusted to me?
Read again: Genesis 1:26–28; Genesis 2:15; Colossians 1:15; Revelation 22:1–5. Then respond slowly to the questions below.
1. Receive your dignity. Where have I measured my worth by achievement, approval, possessions, usefulness, or independence?
2. Honour God’s image. Is there someone whose dignity I have ignored in my words, decisions, or assumptions?
3. Name what has been entrusted to you. Which person, place, ability, relationship, or responsibility is God asking me to tend with greater care?
4. Examine your worship. What receives my deepest trust, attention, sacrifice, or hope? How is it shaping me?
5. Follow Jesus’ way of ruling. Where can I use strength, influence, or authority to serve rather than control?
One faithful step
This week, with God’s help, I will:
I will take this step when and where:
A person or source of support I can turn to:
Thought to carry: I bear God’s image, and through Christ I am learning to live the calling that image gives.
Prayer for the week: Lord Jesus, free me from false masters and teach me to care faithfully for what You have entrusted to me. Form Your life in me today. Amen.
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