Just Valued. (How Do I Know God Values Me?)
I remember sitting on the couch with an old mentor. I was crying to her about how upset I was that when I decided to make Jesus Lord, no one emphasized the importance of understanding my identity in Christ and understanding that He loved me. I was in a state of grief: the anger stage. Blaming is definitely a part of the anger stage, so that’s what I was doing–blaming those who led me to Christ for my deficit. And while it may have been my truth that not enough time was spent building the foundation of love, God was showing me my deficit and it was now my responsibility for allowing the Word and Holy Spirit to fill up that void.
Fast forward 2.5 years later. I’ve just finished a slower read of 1 John, which is becoming one of my favorite books of the Bible.
In 1 John 5:3-5, the disciple that Jesus loves says: “In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”
How did this verse help me to understand that I am valued by God?
The key is in the part that says, “Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”
Our belief that Jesus is the Son of God helps us to overcome the world (self-hatred, insecurity, shame, etc.) because if we believe that Jesus is the Son of God we believe that:
- We need saving (because we are powerless)
- God sees us as worth saving
- God has saved us
We Need Saving
We need saving because we have sinned, we do sin, and we will sin. It’s part of our fallen humanity and there is no shame in that. We need saving because we can not save ourselves. We can not save ourselves because we did not create ourselves and there is no shame in that.
The one who created us, created us for love, relationship, and intimacy with Him.
We were not created for sin.
Isn’t that good news?
God Sees Us As Worth Saving
God saw what sin did to his creation, his children, and he started to put a plan in motion. (I have reason to think that God knew humanity would fall even before we did, but he decided to create us anyway!) The very fact that God decided to save us from our fallen state, brought about by our own choices, shows that we are very valuable to him. I mean, I “save” leftovers from being thrown out when they taste really good. How much more valuable are we than leftovers? We are worth saving simply because God thinks we are worth saving and His opinion is the only one that matters because He is our creator.
God Saved Us
The way that God chose to save us was to send His Son to die for us. Jesus was God in the flesh. He was our creator with skin on. And he put that skin on over his glorious, eternal nature so that he could beat the very thing that was against us–sin. He went through everything we experience: trauma, temptation, heartbreak, and betrayal to show us who we are meant to be and he was perfect so that he could be the perfect substitute for fallen humanity. He exchanged his perfect nature for our fallen one on the cross because we were that valuable to him.
So since he saved us because he created us and loved us–we are saved. But, we have to believe it.
Believing the gospel of Jesus Christ reveals both our sin and our value–our depravity and our worth–our problem and our purpose.
Would you go through all of that trouble for someone who wasn’t valuable? I think not.
So in the words of Jesus himself, “stop doubting and believe.”
Love and Light,
Kourtney Naomi
