I’ve always heard it said that the value you place on something is shown by what you are willing to give up for it. If something is really worth a lot to you, you’re willing to give up a lot to get it.
Apply that logic to the way God pursued us and it’s startling. God demonstrated the price he was willing to pay to redeem you by giving himself. There could be no higher price. What does that say about the value we have now?
The more I ponder God sacrificing himself for us, the more it boggles my imagination. He didn’t need us. He created the universe in a single breath. He could have made another just as easily. And he could have replaced us, too. After all, humanity’s track record has been less than impressive. We are masters at deceit, unbelief, ingratitude, destruction, and death. Rebellion is our native tongue, and hatred toward God runs in our blood.
God didn’t place worth on you or me because he saw potential. We weren’t some “diamond in the rough” that just needed a better chance. A million extra chances wouldn’t have made a shred of difference.
Far better to say that God values us for reasons unknown. We are, as Sally Lloyd-Jones says, lovely simply because he loves us.
But we cannot let our unworthiness blind us to what God has actually done. According to the cross of Christ, God really does love us to the point of death. He thought we were worth saving. In the book of Hosea, God shows us the depth of our sin and the tragedy of his broken heart. But still he tells his people, “How can I give you up?” (Hosea 11:8)
God has so tied his emotional state to ours that he refused to be satisfied until we were saved. That reminds me of how I felt after my fourth child was born. I told Veronica that I didn’t think I could ever be truly happy again because my happiness was now so tightly bound up in the happiness of my kids! And since one of them was always sad or angry about something, I concluded that I would be, too. (Yes, I can be a little bit of a downer sometimes. But you get the point.)
That’s what God did with us: By his own free choice, he tied his emotional state to ours. He now loves us as his children, and his heart breaks—or soars—with ours.
This is good news, indeed. You have worth because of the value God has placed on you.
There are a lot of different places people try to find worth these days. A lot of us try to find worth based on how many people follow us on social media. We live in a world where we measure our acceptance by the numbers of “likes,” “mentions,” and “follows” on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. We filter our lives so that other people will think we’re worthy of their love and admiration. (And with Instagram, I mean literally filter.) If people looked at your social media feed, they might think you went from one victorious adventure to the next. Of course, you don’t post anything about your clogged toilet or how scared you are to be alone in life. Why? Because your worth is tied to your social media likes, and you’ve got to have people approve.
You don’t have worth because of your money, or your career success, or how good-looking or smart or athletic you are. You don’t have worth because you have a boyfriend or a family or because everybody knows your name. Jesus didn’t die for you because you had anything. He died for you because you had nothing.
You have worth because the God of the universe has set his love on you. You have worth because of the price he was willing to pay to get you. Jesus didn’t want heaven without you; he thought you were worth saving. So he gave his life to redeem you.
Christian, previously you were unworthy. You were an enemy of God. But in Christ, because of his sacrifice, you have incalculable worth. That’s a truth worth celebrating. That’s a value worth counting. And that’s a God worth worshiping with all of our heart, mind, and strength.
