Worthy and Deserving are NOT the Same Thing

Overheard:

“I just feel so worthless!”

Perhaps the deepest, most pernicious lie many people believe is that they are “worthless”. The WordNet definition of worthless is, “Lacking in usefulness or value”.

Synonyms offered include despicable, ugly, vile, useless, insignificant, pointless (Yes, I see that hand over there!).

Anyone who has carried around the sense of being worthless has felt all of those things, and more.

But, all of them are lies!

While we may be undeserving of any good thing, deserving and worthy are two very different things.

To be deserving means to have earned something and goes to functional value. Worth, on the other hand, is not about “doing” but about “being”, and goes to essence.

Let me give you an example:

Suppose you have a block of gold sitting on the table in front of you. That block of gold, being gold, has an inherent worth no matter what form or shape it is in. If it is melted down and shaped into a doorstop, its worth is still the same, but its functional and aesthetic value has changed.

That same block of gold melted down into a creamery to use with grandma’s fine chine tea service will have a different functional and aesthetic value, but it is still gold and it still is worth what it was before anything was done to alter it.

Now, we can fashion that gold into a magnificent jewelry ensemble, greatly increasing its functional and aesthetic value, or we can leave it in its rawest from and stuff it under a manure pile. The one thing that does not and will not change is its INHERENT WORTH.

In like manner, when we consider each and every human being on planet earth, we find that each and every person – no matter what they have or have not done – is created in God’s image.

This concept of being bearers of the imago dei goes all the way back to the earliest chapters of the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Three times this phrase appears there, and each time it refers to God’s view of mankind, not mankind’s view of himself.

First we see God creating man in His image (Genesis 1:26-27). Then we see that the children borne of the first man and woman are also considered to be “in the image of God” (Genesis 5:1-3, with 1:26-27 revisited).

The third time we see this phrase is highly significant and points to the sanctity of human life – again from God’s perspective – when God’s institutes capital punishment for murder.

Noah and his family have just departed the ark and God gives them the basic laws they are to live by. Two are brand new: first, from this point on you will be eating meat: don’t eat it raw. Second, ““Whoever sheds human blood, by other humans must his blood be shed; for in God’s image God has made humankind.” (Genesis 9:6)

In the New Testament, Jesus’ half-brother James revisits and intensifies how we are to regard one another when he says, “But no human being can subdue the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people made in God’s image.” (James 3:8-9)

But this is only the beginning of how we are to understand our inherent worth and value.

In Psalm 8, David muses over how it could possibly be that the Divine Creator of all that exists would have regard for mankind, and –even more significantly – would place His creation in the hands of mankind to steward and to manage.

In Matthew 6, Jesus invests quite a few moments commanding His listeners to not be anxious about any need they have because their Heavenly Father knows all of their needs, just as He does the needs of the birds He provides for, and “you are of far more value than they”.

God also provides beautifully for the grass and flowers, even though, once again, mankind is worth far more and will be provided for even more than they.

Later, Jesus says something else that is significant. In Matthew 16:26, He asks, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

As far as Jesus is concerned, one person is of more WORTH more than the created world!

In Luke 12:6-7, Jesus declares, “Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”

The list goes on and on, including how there is rejoicing in heaven when ONE sinner turns from their sinfulness and surrenders to Christ as Savior (Luke 15:7, 10).

This rejoicing comes as a result of the restoration of a lost loved one loved to their rightful and intended place as a future co-inheritor with Jesus and one who will be glorified right along beside Him (Romans 5:1-2, 6, 8, 10; Romans 8:16-17, 28-29).

Remember that block of gold? When we have turned from our ways and surrendered to Him, another change takes place. Our inherent worth is still there, but there is a change in our functional value (2 Corinthians 5:17).

In Ephesians 2:10, we find one of the most beautiful word pictures in all of Scripture that explains: “For we are His masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works He determined long ago would be our way of life.”

Thank of a master artisan, like Michelangelo, crafting a magnificent statue out of a clump of marble. It doesn’t start out very pretty at all, but the end result is a magnificent piece of art. That is the way the word poiema (masterpiece) can be best understood.

What this means is that, instead of getting our sense of worth and value from what we do and how flawlessly we do it, we focus on being who He created us to be and allow the “doing” to flow naturally from the “being”, like ripe fruit falls from a tree.

A peach tree does not have to sit out in the orchard and focus all of its attentions on growing peaches – it simply grows peaches because it IS a peach tree…the “doing” flows naturally from the “being”.

God created us worthy of love, worthy of dignity, worthy of His very best –the sacrifice of His Son in our place – and there is nothing that can change that any more than we can change our DNA from human to any other creature.

Our inherent worth is just as much a part of us as our humanity and it cannot be taken from us. And even if there are those in our life who now deny or have denied us that dignity and worth, it does NOT change the fact that we are inherently worthy of it.

There is more that I will say about this in a future post, but please hold on to the truth that, while we are deserving of no good thing (it cannot be earned), we are fully worthy of God’s BEST (we were created that way!

Soli Deo Gloria