“I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast showed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands.”

               -Genesis 32:10

Let me know if I’m off the mark here, but it seems like Christians today have become increasingly consumed with self-confidence. Maybe it’s because the world would have us believe we are all worthless, but many who disagree with this have taken things to the opposite extreme by suggesting God couldn’t live without us and wants nothing more than for us to “ask Him into our heart” so we can fill a man-shaped hole in His. If you don’t know what I mean, simply tune in to your local Christian music station or visit the inspirational section of any bookstore. It probably won’t be long before you find yourself squarely confronted with the idea that God actually needs us as much as we need Him. “We were worth dying for,” is the message.

What I have a hard time with, however, is beholding the bruised and bleeding Son of God and thinking for any length of time that I was worth that. Certainly we must have held some value in God’s eyes if He sacrificed His very life to gain us, but God’s love is not the result of our own goodness. Did adulterous Gomer deserve for Hosea to take her back? No, and we didn’t deserve for Jesus Christ to be killed on our behalf. Since when are we the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45-46)?

In “Dug Down Deep”, Joshua Harris puts it this way: “I had always heard [the cross] explained in terms of my great worth. I am so valuable that God would send Jesus to die. The question [John] Piper closed his message with deeply challenged me. “Do you love the cross because it makes much of you” he asked. “Or do you love it because it enables you to enjoy an eternity of making much of God?"  Turning the cross into a monument of humanity’s worth is to rob our Redeemer of the glory for the greatest thing He ever accomplished.

Again, I believe it’s important to combat the lie that humanity is worthless. Each of us has been created in the Divine image of our Creator, but to think that we were worth even a drop of Christ’s innocent blood turns His sacrifice into a mere transaction. Only when we recognize just how unworthy we truly are can we fully experience the joy of being God’s child.