The Image of God

Renewing Your Mind

Ligonier Ministries

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

People often look at the issues of abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment in political terms. But these are profoundly theological issues. Today, R.C. Sproul points to the foundation of human life and dignity: the image of God.

Request R.C. Sproul's book The Hunger for Significance, plus lifetime digital access to A Shattered Image teaching series and study guide, with your donation of any amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/4399/offer

Live outside the U.S. and Canada? Get the digital teaching series and study guide for A Shattered Image with your donation: https://www.renewingyourmind.org/global

Meet Today's Teacher:

R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine.

Meet the Host:

Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of media for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, and host of the Ask Ligonier podcast.

Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	There's a lot of debate among theologians, but there's no debate in Scripture.
0:04.1	Scripture unambiguously, clearly teaches that after the fall, man is still in the image of God.
0:19.3	Why do Christians believe in the sanctity of human life?
0:23.6	Why did the Old Testament prescribe capital punishment for those who commit murder?
0:29.6	Because all people are made in the image of God.
0:32.6	And as a result, all of us, no matter what we believe, our status in life, whether we're inside or outside
0:40.6	the womb, have dignity. Welcome to the Tuesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham.
0:49.3	As I said yesterday, people today are having an identity crisis. People don't know what it means to be human.
0:56.6	They can't explain why humans have worth, and they can't agree why or if human life is more
1:02.8	valuable than animals in a zoo. So we're spending this week in R.C. Sproles series A Shattered
1:10.3	Image. Well, here's Dr. Sprole to help
1:13.6	us consider what the Bible means when it says that we are made in the image of God.
1:19.6	In our first session in our study of the Doctrine of Man, we had a little historical
1:25.9	reconnaissance where we skated lightly over various ways in which
1:30.3	people have attempted to define our humanity in the biological sense or in the psychological sense
1:37.9	by pointing to our mental capacities or to our ability to make choices, our volitional
1:43.4	inclinations.
1:45.6	We saw a brief glimpse that attempts to define man in terms of his sexuality or in terms
1:51.1	of his economics or existential philosophy and the rest.
1:55.7	And I think that one of the philosophers in the 20th century wrote a book by a title that
2:00.0	itself said something somewhat
2:02.6	captivating. Herbert Marcoza wrote a book called the one-dimensional man. Have you ever wondered if you
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ligonier Ministries, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Ligonier Ministries and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.