If I were to ask you, “What is your worth?” what would you say?
Put another way, “How do you evaluate your worth?”
Same idea, but from a different angle, “Why should you be worth anything?”
For many of us, these questions and many other variations are answered regularly–and not always positively. To be sure, some of us had a healthy upbringing, steady disposition, etc., that cultivated a solid and biblical understanding of worth.
However, there are others who, even as adults, are still wrestling with ways to prove they have value. This conflict manifests in various forms: internalizing anger-praying it doesn’t go public; battling bitterness expressed in disillusionment; feeling sad with no hope for the future; extreme drivenness without being able to explain or understand the motivation; and more.
We can oscillate between a healthy understanding of our self-worth and destructive self-disgust.
So…
How do we make sense of our worth? Is there a light to pierce through the dense fog? What is a biblical vision for our worth?
God’s Word gives us our answer. God’s Word provides a better way, a hopeful path, and the best next step toward a biblical vision for individual worth.
Where to begin?
A biblical understanding of our worth must (1) correct flawed thinking, (2) filter fragile voices, and (3) appropriate God’s Word.
Flawed Thinking.
Let’s start with a story. Years ago, I had a friend share a story about a man who stood up while another man was praying and gently corrected him. The praying man said, “Lord, we are so worthless…” The other man corrected the praying man, stating, “We are not worthless but unworthy.”
What’s the lesson? That exchange was rooted in one man’s straight view of biblical worth and another man’s distorted view. Let me put it this way…
- God made mankind in His image (Gen. 1:26-28).
- All that God made is good (Gen. 1:31).
- Therefore, mankind, in God’s image, was made good (Psalm 139:13-18).
The man who was praying misunderstood his- and others’- worth. He forgot that being made in God’s image means humankind has dignity and worth provided by God. What the man did by standing up and gently correcting the man was to make straight some crooked thinking expressed in an odd prayer.
Why might this be important?
Fragile Voices.
Can people allow voices to influence and dictate their sense of worth? Yes. Therefore, Christians must wisely filter external and internal voices to keep from having their worth defined by the unpredictable and ever-changing opinions, ways, and expectations of others and themselves.
External
Strong and influential voices outside are present in the form of family, friends, culture, or a significant person. And, when our family, friends, culture, or influential person is the external voice defining or dictating our worth, we give them a position they were not meant to fill.
First, are external voices consistently godly? Could external voices be wrong? How wrong might they be?
- What if someone you admired said that good people wear x, y, or z clothes? What if your culture told you that good people only accept x, y, or z jobs? What if your family said you’d never amount to anything? You’re a failure. What if your friends told you the only way you can prove your friendship is to do x, y, or z to another person? And the list goes on…
Second, will those external voices always be there? What if the external voice is a hometown culture, and you move?
- The sad reality of life is that people and relationships will all end with the death of a loved one, the end of a job, and more.
People change, we move, and external voices vary. Therefore, empowering external voices to shape our sense of worth is not wise because they are fragile.
Internal
Internal voice tension is having one desire to do or possess one thing and simultaneously having an equally powerful desire for something else.
First, is it possible to have a desire to spend time with your children and simultaneously a desire to spend time with your spouse?
- What if the internal voice told you that the happiness of your spouse and children defines your worth? These desires would conflict.
Second, what if your internal voice told you that a successful career and a healthy body define your worth?
- What happens when, seeking to have a successful career defined by working long hours, you remove time for working out? At the same time, what if your internal voice also tells you that the scale decides your worth? Again, these desires would conflict.
Internal voices range and oscillate from one end of the spectrum to the other. One day, we’re not eating chocolate; the next day, we’re only eating chocolate. We have competing desires, and that’s fragile.
The bottom line is that external and internal voices are fragile; therefore, we need a better voice. Where is a better voice?
God’s Word.
When God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into our world, He did so to preach a “good message.” This was not a good message set to military, political, or monarchical ambitions. No, instead, it was a good message set over against all the failures of wrong thinking and fragile voices within every human institution.
Indeed, Christ’s entrance into our existence was to redeem, restore, and reclaim His image-bearers. Christ’s first advent brought a revolution within humanity, meaning that those in Christ have a new worth tied directly to Christ. Consequently, mankind’s re-creation into Christ’s image provides the only means to glorify God by loving Him and our neighbor rightly. Love expressing worth–worth expressed from love.
Why is it so hard for Christians to glorify God by loving Him and their neighbor as themselves?
One reason is that we have forgotten our worth.
What do I mean by saying, “Since we have forgotten our worth, we are not loving God and others rightly?”
I mean at least three things:
- A poor view of worth leads to a poor view of God (altering my love of God by making Him small, insignificant, and unable to meet me in my most profound need: redemption).
- A poor view of God leads to a poor view of what God made (altering my love for my neighbor by minimizing their worth, significance, and purpose).
- A poor view of what God made leads to a poor view of self (repeating the cycle of 1 and 2 indefinitely).
What’s the solution?
Jesus Christ.
When Christ asked his disciples in Matthew 16:13, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” He sought to establish his identity against all others before and after Him. In other words, by asking this question, Christ provided them an opportunity to answer not as man answers but as God answers. Thus, Peter responds, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus replied, “…flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”
This exchange is at the heart of our worth.
How so?
When God reveals Himself to us, and we see Him for who He is, we can see ourselves for who we are. Until then, we measure our value or worth by what we do, what others say of us, and what we can control. On the other hand, when our worth is directly related to Christ, who is God, we are not the same.
What do I mean by saying, “When we’re directly related to Christ, we’re not the same?”
Our trust that the person and work of Christ is sufficient to pay for our sins and restore us to God enables us to see God as our Savior, making us His new creation: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” 2 Cor 5:17.
How is this possible?
“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” 2 Cor 5:21.
In conclusion, our worth is not in flawed thinking or fragile voices but in God’s Word, which gives us a better word for life and godliness and a biblical understanding of our worth.
We press on! Remember God’s love for you… so that you can rightly love yourself and others His way, for His glory and good.
— February 14, 2024