What is Man?

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Food For Your Soul

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When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? (Psalm 8:4-5. Read the whole Psalm)

Many centuries ago, the Psalmist David, on a fresh, calm and serene Eastern night, was contemplating the breathtaking scene of a star-spangled sky. Realizing his smallness compared to the immensity of “these infinite spaces” (as Blaise Pascal called them in His PENSEES), he asks Him who is the Architect and the Builder of them all this question: “What is man?”

We ask ourselves the same question when we are in situations that prompt us to reflect on the frailty of human existence. The sight of a man ruined by a debilitating disease that makes him completely unable to help himself and entirely dependant upon others for his daily living causes us to wonder: “What is man?” You may also find yourself asking that question after a visit to a hospice where formerly famous and influential men and women are wasting away, becoming inexorably day after day the shadow of themselves, because of this terrible degenerative disease called Alzheimer’s.

Basically two kinds of answer have been given to this ever-topical question. The first one comes to us from secular humanism, which is atheistic and materialistic. The second one is provided to us by God Himself who, because He created man, is more qualified than anyone to say what man is.

Those who profess a mere materialistic view of man assert that man is the culmination of a long evolutionary process, a more advanced cousin of the chimpanzee or of the orangutang, an aggregate of cells arranged by chance, and that disintegrate at death. There is no room in such a view for an afterlife. Since there is no God, no spirit, no soul, everything ends at death. The motto of those who embrace such a view is: “Let’s eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” (1 Corinthians 15: 32 b)

God’s answer to the question “What is man?” is not only the only true one, but also the only one that restores to man his dignity, contrary to secular humanism that actually debases man whom it regards as a cosmic accident, a being with neither purpose nor destiny. The Swiss theologian Franz J. Leenhardt was right to say, “Only God speaks well of man.” The answer puts man in his right place: man is not God, for he was “made”; therefore he is a creature. But not a creature without value, for he was “made a little lower than God, and…crowned…with glory and honor,” having received “dominion” from the Creator over the creation.

This is where many are tempted to question the veracity of God’s answer. It is true that man, as we know him today, has to a certain extent dominion over the works of God’s hands. (Consider, for example, the scientific and technological feats achieved by him today.) But in many respects, one may wonder where is this creature “crowned with glory and honor?” Doesn’t the Bible itself speak of our lowliness and our humiliation? Our present body is called “lowly” in Philippians 3:21, “perishable” and “dishonorable” in 1 Corinthians 15:42-43. So how to make sense of this contradiction between how we see man today and what David, speaking by the Spirit of God, declares him to be.

To understand that, you must consider the three states of man: his past state ─ as God created him; his present state ─ as he has become after the Fall, and his future state ─ as he will become in Jesus Christ.

I. Man came from the hands of the Creator in a state of moral perfection. There was no trace of blemish or corruption in him. This state of affairs had positive repercussions on nature. Not only peace and harmony prevailed – for at that time the wolf dwelled with the lamb, the leopard lay down with the young goat –, but also man exerted his lordship over the creation without any risk to see it turn and harm him. In the book of Genesis the dominion God gave man over the works of His hands was made evident in the establishing by man of the nomenclature of the animal kingdom:

Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. (Gen. 2:19-20 NKJV)

Such was man in his original state ─ “crowned him with glory and honor,” as the vice-king of the creation, having received from the Creator dominion over the works of His hands.

II. But this creature that was the object of God’s predilection was soon going to yield to the temptation of the Adversary. At his instigation, man grabbed hold of the “knowledge of good and evil” that God would certainly give him in due time, once the probationary time would be complete. But Satan caused him to fall by the very thing that brought about his own demise, that is, the desire to make himself the equal of God (cf. Isaiah 14:12-15). He made this malicious suggestion to the woman: “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen. 3:4-5). Since then, nothing was the same. Death entered the world, and until now the whole creation is chained to what the apostle Paul calls the “bondage of corruption,” and it “groans and labors with birth pangs” (Romans 8: 21-22). Man lost, if not totally, at least partially, his dominion over the creation; for, as a Christian author put it so well, “If man eats the sheep and the oxen, he is in turn eaten by the lions and the tigers.”

Such is man in the state of the Fall. Observing man in that state, the poet Lamartine, answering, as for him, the question “What is man?” enunciated this quite pertinent definition of him: “Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.”

III. But this remembrance of heaven, which the author of the book of Ecclesiastes calls “eternity in their heart,” will man regretfully retain it forever? Will he be banned forever from the paradise he lost by his fault? No! Because, if there is man, as he is in the Fall, there is also man, as he will be in the Redemption brought about by Jesus Christ. The Bible lets us catch a glimpse of what this man will be:

…Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. (Philippians 3: 20-21)

Because of his disobedience man lost that “power that enables him to bring everything under his control” . That’s why the author to Epistle to the Hebrews says, “We do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death.” (Hebrews 2: 8-9)

The point the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews wants to make here is that Jesus came to the rescue of mankind in order to accomplish what it has lost the power or the right to accomplish. God had put a crown of glory and honor on man’s brow, and man cast that crown in the dust by his rebellion against God. But the Redeemer recovered that crown in behalf and on behalf of the human race, as he himself declared it: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” (Mat. 28: 18) He is the Forerunner of the ransomed humanity (cf. Hebrews 6:20) . In Him the redeemed humanity has found again its royal dignity God has given it over the works of His hands. There will come a day when all who believe in Him, who accept His salvation, will also be crowned with glory and honor. There will come a day when this scripture: “You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands” will be true not only of Jesus Christ, but also of all those who believe in Him and accept Him as their Savior and Lord.

But this hope is not for all. There are two humanities: the humanity in Adam, which is fallen; and the humanity in Jesus Christ, redeemed by Him. The gateway to both humanities is birth: the natural birth for the humanity in Adam, and the spiritual birth (the new birth) for the humanity in Jesus Christ, the “last Adam” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15: 45). Hence the necessity of the new birth to become a member of this redeemed humanity that is promised to glory. (cf. John 3:3)

After we missed our destiny in Adam, God offers us an even nobler, more elevated destiny in Jesus Christ – which is to reign with our Redeemer over the entire universe. Wouldn’t you like, you who haven’t yet known Jesus Christ, to seize this ineffable grace God is offering you, by receiving in your heart Jesus Christ as your Savior and your Lord? May God grant you the wisdom to do it now, before it’s too late!

Pastor Hubermann Larose
Associate Pastor

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