How precious you are.  How precious are you?  What a difference it makes to change the word order in these two short sentences.  We live in a world that seeks, in human estimation, to put a dollar or monetary valuation to everything.  How then may we as humans escape this pecuniary valuation assigned to the human life?  The unfortunate answer is that we cannot when discussing these things without contemplating, discussing and integrating God’s perspective and understanding of humanity.  This simple distinction may be the strongest influence in loss of life and under appreciation of human worth.  What then is the difference in these two life perspectives?  The enemy wants nothing more than to prohibit our conversation and review of these concepts, as asking these questions immediately points our hearts toward understanding and knowing God.

If you had to sum up the entire Bible in one sentence, you would inevitably be drawn to a single passage in the Book of John, 3:16.  This verse encapsulates the foundation of our limited Sovereign understanding.  Yet, just as in our review of the atom, we are left in awe regarding how complex such a tiny statement truly remains.  “For God so loved the world”.  Six words that seem at the outset innocuous, yet when contemplated, meditated and discussed are the basis of the root of humanity.  Why did God love this world, it appears unworthy of such priceless estimation?  That is exactly my point.  We seek to see through our own eyes, tainted by this propensity to place a valuation of our own accounting upon everything living or material.  We cannot understand God because we see things as worthy or unworthy, we have no understanding of the term, “unconditional”.  We have no balance through which to justify, weigh or estimate “life”, except that which is provided through God.  It has nothing to do with our worth as humans, it has to do with the characteristics of our AMAZING CREATOR.

He is capable of loving that which we find unlovable.  He is faithful and true and will forgive the most awful sin just for the “price” of trust, repentance and belief.  We cannot begin to comprehend this type of love, a love that would give a perfect child as ransom for all the other “unworthy” lot, to save them from their hopelessness.  To look upon this type of valuation we must leave our humanity behind for a period of time, as continuing to place a value upon everything, prohibits the tools necessary to this contemplation.  We cannot understand because we lack the requisite tools.  It is the same in our evaluation of the sub atomic particles.  Each time we have broken them down to their individual parts we realize that the argument has become “more complicated” as we begin to see that there are universes within universes, within strings, dimensions and forces beyond our reckoning.  We so much want to bring things in to the light of our own human definition and in so doing lose the capacity to see the “forest through the trees”.  Loving man has nothing to do with man’s worth or works.  Just as in an atom, the sub-components are priceless because they reflect the complexity of God, they invite us to relationship.

The next time you feel depressed, unworthy or undervalued, remember that God’s economy is different than human limited understanding and estimation.  He loves you because He loves you.  Therefore, since you are priceless to God, you are priceless to me.  He gave us the greatest gift that He could possibly give, the life of a perfect child, spent for the sole purpose of eliminating the barriers between sinful man and a Holy God.  If you ever doubted how much you are worth and feel useless, unworthy or just another toothpick and a great big jar, take a moment and remember how much God loves you.  Value is a human thing, life has estimable worth, to God it is worth “everything”.  That is why He gave Jesus, the Christ as ransom to buy you back from your captors, sin and death.  They can never touch you again, you belong to the King of Unconditional Love, the God of this universe and every universe.  Be loved, be strong, be true.

http://youtu.be/W-pLRM0rgjE  God is better from Francis Chan Jam