Made in His Image

At the center of the covenant God sets a line about blood: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.” The reason sits at the end. Human life is not guarded because it is useful or strong, but because every person carries the image of God. To assault a human being is to strike at Him. On Sunday Kent Keller drew out the shape of this verse — a chiasm, an X-pattern that means pay attention, this matters. He asked a disarming question: where did we get the idea that life is supposed to be fair? This is the only world we know, and it runs on injustice. “We get it from God,” Kent said. The instinct that recoils at cruelty is His fingerprint on us. Kent was honest that this verse reshaped his own convictions, and he handled it with care — justice belongs to the state, never to a private grudge. But the nearer point is for your ordinary day. The same truth that dignifies the victim dignifies the person in front of you: the difficult coworker, the stranger, the one easiest to dismiss all bear the very image you are tempted to overlook. You will meet image-bearers today, and some of them will be hard to honor. The clerk, the critic, the person whose politics you cannot stand — each one stamped with the likeness of God. To treat anyone as disposable is to forget whose image they carry. Let the weight of Genesis 9:6 land where you actually live: honor the person in front of you, because God made them like Himself.