The Essence of Human Being

Creation and the Incarnation reveal the true and inherent nature of humankind, the essence of human  being. The creation of humankind reveals that we are made in the image of God and to be like God:

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
     So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)

This is what it means to be human, and the essence of who we are. Though through the disobedience of Adam death entered into the world and came upon all, whereupon all sinned (Romans 5:12), yet this did not change our true, inherent nature. Indeed, it could not, for nothing can change the nature of anything God has made. Though mortality and sin did distort and obscure the image of God in us, but could not destroy or remove it from us. Nor did they become part of what it means to be human; though all are affected by them, they are not essential to human nature. We remain made in the image of God, and to be like God.

In the Incarnation, our Lord Jesus Christ united divinity with humanity, God with humankind. This shows that human nature is able to bear the image of God and to be like God. For Christ, who united himself with human nature, and so with all humankind (for we all partake of the same human nature, the only one there is) is God.

The Incarnation also shows that sin is not inherent to being human. For though Christ was fully human as well as fully divine, he did not sin.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15)

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

Sin is not essential to what it means to be human but, quite the opposite, takes away from it. It is the same with mortality; it is not essential to human being but is an aberration. We are made in the image of God and to be like God. Death is not essential to God, and so it is not essential to us. Death does not even come from God. It is not a creation of God. It has no being but is a lack of being. Just as darkness is not a thing in itself but is the absence of Light, so death is not a thing in itself but is the absence of Life. Likewise, sin and mortality are a lack of human being and not inherent to it.

By the Incarnation, our Lord Jesus Christ defines what it means to be human. For he did not become merely a human being but he has become human being itself. All humankind is summed up in him. United with us by the Incarnation, he is what God intended from the beginning for humans to be, and in him we are made complete and become partakers of the divine nature. It is, then, in Jesus Christ that we are made in the image of God and become like God.

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. (Colossians 1:15)

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. (Colossians 1:9-10)

Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:4)