A Person’s Worth in the Eyes of God

A Devotion for 2/21/2016.           

          What is a person’s worth? Since the dawn of civilization humans have been asking this question and have developed many attempts to answer it. We have not become good at answering the question. We live in a pluralistic world where we have created many faiths in which the person must climb their way upwards to find some kind of enlightenment. Even the Christian Church has had a hand adding to the difficulty of the question by often downplaying the worth of a person.

            One way we try to answer to this complex, human question, is through the practice of trying to find acceptance among others. As humans we think, “Well if I just work hard enough and make enough money then I’ll prove my worth to everyone,” or, “If my body looks this certain way then people will finally start noticing me,” and “If I say the right things, wear the right clothes and drive the right cars like all the successful people are doing, I’ll be in.” So, then it would seem that it is society’s role to deem what is acceptable and what isn’t.

            

          The problem in giving society the ability to determine your worth often has disastrous consequences. In the quest for our success among fellow humans, we often sever relationships for the sake of image. Indeed, we often turn our perceived self-image into an idol that becomes the center of our life and we do everything we can to feed it. We become focused on acquiring material possessions to show our worth and to feel accomplished, and yet there is still a lingering emptiness. We get to the top of the mountain, but then we look around and realize we are alone because there was only room for one person at the peak.

            There is also the issue of failure. What happens when we fail to live up to all the was expected to us? What happens when we don’t find acceptance because whatever we are doing to prove ourselves to others isn’t working. The failure of not being accepted is like a bus that keeps running us over and over. It creates a situation of desperation and worthlessness. In this desperation people turn to things for comfort like drugs, alcohol, or perhaps even self-harm. All this to dull the pain while not realizing that this only drags them down further until they are existing in some kind of living hell. Our spirit cries out, “Who will liberate us from this hell?”

            The Bible, however, presents a clearer picture of our worth, and one that isn’t grounded in society's approval. King David, the author of Psalm 8 starting in verse 3, writes:

³ When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, ⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? ⁵ You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. ⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: ⁷ all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, ⁸ the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. ⁹ Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth (Psalm 8:3-9).

In this passage, our worth is viewed directly through the workmanship of God, the creator of the universe, as a reflection of His image and majesty. David continues this notion in Psalm 139 where he states the it is God that forms our inner most being, that we are stitched together by God in our mother’s womb, fearfully and wonderfully made. We know that we are a wonderful work because God’s works are wonderful.

            If that is still not any indication of your worth, then consider this next passage of Scripture, consider the words of Jesus himself,  “For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life,” (John 3:16). The son of God came to us here on Earth and died for you in order for, as 2 Cor. 5:19 says, God to reconcile the world back to him. So, even though our sin separates us from God in a way that we cannot repair and makes us look unworthy, He still ascribes worth to us. The kind of worth that is worth dying for. The world that says, you must do this or that to be accepted, the world helps create a mindset where you say, “I can fix it myself” only to find that you can’t. However, what we do not sometimes realize is that we also have a God, the creator of the universe, who reaches His hand to us and says “Let me fix it for you.”

            Even in a person’s deepest, darkest moments, when they have sunk to a place to where it doesn’t seem like they’ll see the light of day any time soon, or perhaps they have committed such an egregious sin that they have been locked away by society, the Hand of God is still there because He deems them worth it. When a person accepts His extended hand, their worth is sealed for all of eternity because they stand Justified before God. We become co-heirs with Christ as God liberates us from the bondage of the powers and principalities of this word and reveals our true worth.