The NIV 365 Day Devotional

We are Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

This psalm began with David celebrating God’s total understanding of him—his every thought and word and deed. Here, David focuses on God’s knowledge of him from the time God made him in his mother’s womb (Ps 139:13–16). Some contemporary ethicists distinguish between a human person and a human being and claim that while an unborn baby is a human being, they’re not yet a human person entitled to human rights, because they don’t have the same mental capacities as older humans. But the Bible defines our humanness not in terms of our mental capacities, but in terms of our relationship with God, the one who makes us in his image (Ge 1:26–28).

In this psalm, we see God’s attention to David from the moment of his conception and how God already saw the whole of David’s life before he had even been conceived (cf. Isa 49:1; Jer 1:5). God makes each of us fearfully and wonderfully from the first, and he loves us from our embryonic stage.

Taken from the NIV Upside-Down Kingdom Bible.