The image of God does not give anyone a list of banned procedures. It does something more basic. It tells us what a human being is before any doctor, parent or laboratory decides what to do with one. Read carefully, the texts point to a limit. A medical power has gone too far when it stops serving a person and starts setting a standard a person must meet in order to be wanted. This study tests that claim against the passages themselves and then carries it into three real areas: choosing a child’s sex, choosing a child’s traits, and caring for the dying.
You can work through it alone in one long sitting or with a group over two meetings. Each section opens with something to notice in the text before it says what the text means. Please do those observation steps. The whole point is to let Scripture speak first, so that the conclusions about medicine are earned rather than assumed. The material from Dr. Patrick Smith, a bioethicist at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Dr. Angela Guzman, an obstetrician at Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Children, comes from their Jude 3 Project podcast conversation with Lisa Fields.
Begin in Genesis, not in the clinic
Read Genesis 1:26-28 slowly, out loud if you can. Then read verse 27 again on its own: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27).
Before going further, write down three things you can see in the verse without any outside help. Most readers notice some version of these. God is the one acting. The image belongs to humanity as a whole, male and female together. And the verse makes no distinctions within humanity. No one gets more of the image for being stronger, older, healthier or more gifted.
That last point is easy to read past, but it carries the weight of this whole study. Genesis 1 is a carefully patterned account of God as Creator. Christians differ on how its days and mechanisms should be understood, and this study does not settle that. What the passage plainly asserts is that humanity as such bears God’s image. The image is not something a person earns by reaching a standard.
Now notice what the verse does not say. It never defines the image. Christian interpreters have offered several readings. Some locate it in capacities such as reason and moral awareness. Others read it in light of verse 26, where God gives humanity dominion, and see humans as God’s royal representatives in creation. Still others stress relationship, humanity made to know God and one another. These readings often overlap, and faithful Christians hold them in different combinations. For this study the difference matters less than you might expect. On none of these readings does a person’s worth rise or fall with performance.
The image after the fall
Someone might ask whether the image survived human sin. Two later texts answer that, and both connect the image directly to how we treat other people.
Read Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” Then read James 3:9: “Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.”
Look at the logic in each verse. In Genesis 9, after the flood, the image is the reason human life may not be taken lightly. In James, the image is the reason cursing a person contradicts blessing God. Neither verse treats the image as a theory. Each uses it as grounds for protecting someone. The pattern matters for medicine. In Scripture, the image of God mainly shows up when someone is vulnerable to harm from another.
Dr. Smith makes a related point about early human life. He reports that many Christians who think about bioethics hold that a clearly human entity has moral status, and that some see that life as “the least of these, or those who are on the margins” who should be given protection. He is careful to add that the question of how moral status attaches at the earliest stages is debated, and that “theologians from different stripes land different in different places.” Jude 3 Project’s own position holds that God forms both the woman and the child in the womb, and that every human life, including the unborn, bears his image and worth. It holds that conviction while refusing to demonize women who face hard decisions.
The womb in Hebrew poetry
Dr. Smith points to Psalm 139 and Psalm 22 when he talks about the developing child. Read Psalm 139:13-16 and Psalm 22:9-10 before you read anything else here.
The genre comes first. These are prayers in poetry, not textbooks of embryology. The psalmist is not explaining how a fetus develops. He is praising God for knowing and shaping him from the start. Psalm 139:13 says, “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” The word “reins” is old English for the kidneys, which Hebrew poetry often treats as the seat of a person’s inner life. The image is of God forming the person from the inside out.
So what can the psalm carry, and what can it not? It cannot answer technical questions about IVF. Using it that way would put a modern question into an ancient prayer. What it does affirm is that a person’s formation happens under God’s knowledge and care before that person can do anything. Dr. Smith draws a modest conclusion of exactly this kind. He says the uniqueness of developing human beings seems to be “under the purview of God,” whatever their genetic makeup.
Then he adds an observation from biology: “what’s normal about the human genome is this variance.” Put that beside the psalm. If variation is the ordinary condition of human beings, then a preferred version of a child is not a return to some standard. Someone has invented the standard.
Carrying the text to sex and trait selection
Dr. Guzman raises the case directly. Through in vitro fertilization, parents can already select a child’s sex, and she notes discussion of a future in which hair and eye color might be chosen too. Dr. Smith names the pull behind such developments, the assumption that “if we can do it, we ought to do it.” He then poses the real choice. We can see what develops in the womb as a person, and so “we should treat that person as person in its uniqueness.” Or we can see it as a commodity, “something that by definition is supposed to make us happy,” open to quality control.
Here the Genesis reading earns its place. Recall your observation that the image is given to humanity without distinction. A commodity has specifications. A bearer of God’s image does not. Selecting for a trait applies a standard of acceptability to a human being before that person has done anything at all. Dr. Smith’s follow-up question makes the problem sharp. He asks whether choosing certain characteristics “is that a negative value judgment against those who don’t have those characteristics?”
Dr. Guzman pushes the question back toward the image itself. She observes that “some people may feel that their image is more reflective of God than other people’s.” She worries that trait selection will follow those feelings, and she notes that “those who can afford to even do this kind of technology are already the ones that don’t look like us.” Her concern is a forecast, not a report of what has happened, and it should be read that way. Dr. Smith answers it with history. He recalls that the image of God has been twisted to claim that Black people bore a lesser image, and he says plainly that “this is when theology has become hijacked.”
Notice how far that misuse sits from Genesis 1:27. The verse gives the image to humanity without ranking. Any reading that ranks people by appearance has to bring that ranking in from outside the text.
There is a fair objection. Dr. Smith warns against the shortcut of calling some choices God’s and others ours. He observes, “Sometimes we would cherry pick for things we are uncomfortable with.” That warning applies to this study too. The image of God does not forbid medicine. Treating a disease serves the person who has it. The texts give a reason for concern only where an intervention decides which person is worth receiving.
At the bedside
The same reading reaches the end of life, where the image-bearer is often at their weakest. Genesis 9 and James 3 ground the image in protecting vulnerable people. A dying patient is vulnerable in the plainest sense.
The conversation does not set out rules about treatments or life support, and this study will not invent any. What it does address is power. Dr. Guzman describes training under a Christian hospice physician who spoke about Christ with every patient. She asks whether that is ethical when patients are so vulnerable. Dr. Smith agrees the power gap is real. He urges Christian clinicians not to “manipulate people or have them thinking that our genuine care for them, our genuine love of neighbor” depends on whether patients are open to Christian spirituality. He suggests that “sometimes we can take our lead or our cue from the patient and the families.”
He also takes on the fear that silence will leave a patient’s blood on the doctor’s hands. He respects that seriousness, but he says “it could potentially be a bit of hubris,” because “we don’t know what God might be doing in that person’s life.” Read in light of the image, the point is this. A dying person is not a project to finish. They bear God’s likeness whether or not they respond to us.
Philippians 2: a limit shaped like Christ
Read Philippians 2:5-8. Verse 7 says Christ “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7). Paul writes this to a church with rivalry in it, so his point is about the mindset believers should share, not about medicine. Applying it to bioethics is an application, and it should be held as one.
Dr. Smith makes that application carefully. He reads the passage as the Son setting aside privileges to serve broken humanity. He concludes, “There are certain privileges that maybe we have that perhaps we should give up for the sake of serving others, so that we can, in the end, ironically, be more like Christ.” The assumption that we should use any power we have runs one way. This passage runs the other. It shows a power laid down for someone weaker.
A practice: two columns before a verdict
Choose one real case: sex selection, selection for a trait, or a decision about care near the end of life. On a sheet of paper, draw two columns.
- In the left column, write only what the passages in this study actually say. Use Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 9:6, James 3:9, Psalm 139:13-16, Psalm 22:9-10 and Philippians 2:5-8. Use your own plain wording and give the verse reference each time.
- In the right column, write each conclusion you want to draw about your case. Draw a line from each conclusion to the verse it depends on.
- Circle any conclusion that has no line, or whose line runs to a verse that does not really address it. Those circled items are not necessarily wrong. They are the places where you are reasoning beyond the text and need other evidence, such as medical facts or wise counsel.
- Last, write one sentence answering this: in this case, is the power serving a person, or setting a standard a person must meet?
This exercise slows a reader down in the same way Dr. Smith describes moral philosophy slowing a decision down. As he puts it, “many moral judgements turn on non-moral facts.” The text supplies the conviction. The facts of the case still have to be learned.
Questions for discussion
A word to whoever leads. Some people in your group may have used IVF, lost a pregnancy, or made decisions about a parent’s final days. Keep the discussion on what the texts say and what follows from them. Do not turn it into a verdict on anyone’s past choices. Let people pass on any question, and do not ask anyone to share their own medical history.
- Genesis 1:27 never defines the image of God. Which reading (capacities, royal representation, relationship) seems best supported by Genesis 1:26-28 itself? Does your answer change how you would apply the image to a person who has lost some of those capacities?
- Genesis 9:6 and James 3:9 both use the image as a reason to protect someone. Why might Scripture bring up the image mostly when a person is at risk?
- Psalm 139 is a prayer, not a medical text. What can it fairly support in a conversation about embryos, and where would using it become overreach?
- Dr. Smith asks whether choosing some traits is a negative judgment against people who lack them. Can you build a case where selecting for a trait passes his test? What would it need to look like?
- Dr. Guzman connects trait selection to who can afford it. How does the cost of a technology change the moral question, if at all?
- Dr. Smith calls the fear of having a patient’s blood on one’s hands potentially “a bit of hubris.” Do you agree? What would humility look like for a Christian with power over someone who is dying?
A question to carry
The next time you read about a new medical capability, try one more step before deciding what you think. Go back to Genesis 1:27 and ask whether this power receives the person God is forming, or writes a specification and asks that person to meet it. If you cannot yet tell, that is useful to know. It means the work of learning the facts is still ahead of you, and the text has already told you whose dignity that work must protect.