Worth Dying For

In a world that tries to base each person's worth on how they look, how much money they make, and what social connections they have, it's easy to find yourself questioning your value.

Being a woman, the world tries to determine our worth by certain attributes: our age, the size of our waist, how we dress, whether or not we wear makeup, and so on. Being a black woman, this often gets confounded even further... our worth also gets judged by how dark or light our skin is, how we wear our hair, what our sexual history consists of, and how we speak.

Regardless of your gender or race, it's important to recognize that what society uses to determine your personal worth are all temporal, worldly things. They are things that will almost certainly change over the course of your life, and one day — when you leave this world — you won't have them at all. Still, often we inwardly agree with what society has to say about the value of these things, and move through life as if our self-worth is in fact tied to them. Viewing ourselves that way can be dangerous, and here's why.

When we tie our value to the things of this world, our sense of self-worth will fluctuate anytime the world’s ideas of those things fluctuate.

In other words, when the world says that what we have is "in," we’ll feel good about ourselves. When the world says that what we have is bad or less than, we will feel like we are less than. Living that way is burdensome and futile... afterall, it's impossible to win in a game where the goal-post is constantly shifting.

So, how do we shift from this way of thinking? How do we combat what the world tries to lead us each into thinking about ourselves? By using the only method that exists for combatting a lie: declaring the truth.

The truth is that no matter how you look, speak, act, or go about making a living in this world, God sent His only Son, Jesus, to die for you.

Already knowing that you might not ever accept Him as your Lord and Savior, Jesus still sacrificed His life for you in order to save you from having to be punished for your sins (John 3:16 - 18). He chose to die on your behalf — and it had nothing to do with what color your hair is, how many followers you have on Instagram, or whether or not you have a 401k. Jesus gave up everything for you simply because in His eyes, you are worth it.

The King of Heaven came down to Earth to die for you for one reason, and one reason only: He sees you as worthy.

The world says that in order to be deemed worthy, we have to meet certain requirements. The living word of God — Jesus — said that you were worthy long before you were alive to do or "be" anything at all.

What a statement that alone makes about your value.

Not only did God choose to die for you before you did anything at all, He chose to die for you knowing that you would actually live contrary to Him.

“Rarely would anyone die for a righteous person — though maybe for a good person. But God showed His love for us through this: even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:7-8)

Imagine you’ve got an arch-nemesis. This is a person who, no matter what you do, always has to be against you. No matter what you say or ask, they always choose to do the exact opposite. They insist on being contrary to you in every way possible and if you ever try to correct or confront them about it, they resort to violence. Now, could you see yourself choosing to sacrifice your life and die for that person?

That is exactly what God did with us. For thousands upon thousands of years, human beings have opted to live contrary to God’s wishes and disobey anything He says — even though He only has good plans for us (Jeremiah 29:11). Since the beginning of human history with Adam and Eve, mankind has shown that we will consistently choose self-interest and what we think is good, over following God’s will (Genesis 3:1-7). We continue to do it to this day.

Even knowing all of that, the Lord chose to die for us — because He loved us and valued us that much.

Rather than exalting our own traits and behaviors (or those of others), God calls us to exalt His Son — Who left His throne in the highest Heaven and chose to be brought low, entirely for our sake.

The world will challenge your level of self-worth everyday. All you have to do is turn on the television, play the radio, look at the NASDAQ stock market, or scroll through social media for a few minutes. Pretty quickly, you'll see which traits and behaviors are praised and valued most in our society.

Only by looking up to Jesus can we be saved from this world (John 3:14 - 15), as well as its lies and falsehoods about where our value stems from. Only by looking to Jesus will we see that we have each already been irreversibly determined worthy. The fact that He died for us assures us that the God of the entire universe declared that we are unconditionally valuable… so valuable that we were even worth dying for.

Jesus's sacrifice overrides anything that the world may try to assert about our worth as we walk through this life.

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Lord,

We ask You to help us learn & internalize what Jesus has already stated about our worth. Let Your Word ring louder in our hearts than any of this world's notions about our value. We praise You and honor You for proving that we are wonderfully and fearfully made, and for declaring that we were even worth dying for.

In Jesus's name,

Amen.