MY WORTH & MY UNWORTHINESS
(5-minute read)
MAJOR LIFE TRANSITIONS often plunge us into uncharted waters and unfamiliar territories, leaving us with questions about our self-worth and feeling unprepared to tackle all that lies ahead. Whether it is an unplanned retirement, being single again, a career change, or simply growing older, we naturally think of what was, what has been and what will likely be the realities for us in the future.
Throughout his teachings, the apostle Paul emphasized that a believer’s true worth and identity in Jesus Christ transcended worldly measures of success or failure. The singularity of his life mission undergirded everything that he did and the way he lived. This was especially clear when he reflected on his time in Asia before departing for Jerusalem under extremely risky conditions, “I have done the Lord’s work humbly and with many tears. I have endured the trials that came to me from the plots of the Jews. I never shrank back from telling you what you needed to hear, either publicly or in your homes… I have had one message for Jews and Greeks alike… And now I am bound by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem.” (Acts 20:19-22).
He asserted in his (now famous) final analysis, “my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus” (Acts 20:24).
Who are you when you are pushed out of a job that you were thriving in, when you have to accept that your personhood extends beyond the confines of a relationship, or when you are navigating various ambiguities brought on by chronic health challenges.
The question, ultimately, is about where we place our self-worth. Not surprisingly, this is something that many of us avoid thinking about because self-reflection is an uncomfortable exercise that demands vulnerability on our part. Yet deep down, we know that self-rationalization will only go so far because God alone gives us the right conviction for the path forward.
In truth, our worthiness and unworthiness can only be addressed through our relationship with Jesus Christ, who Himself is the fulfillment of God’s Word.
OUR WORTH
When parents look at the ultrasound pictures of their still developing and unborn child, all they see is a full human and a full member of the family. Their joy is complete even before the child is capable of doing anything to reciprocate their love. [
God looks at us in exactly the same way. Ephesians 1:4-5 tells us that “Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure.” In fact, God is not only our Heavenly Father, He is the only One who can say that He knows us inside out!
The Psalmist reminds us of this truth in Psalm 139:13-14, “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous - how well I know it.”
Though we are all broken people with fragmented perspectives, God sees in us, through Christ, the potential fulfillment of His purposes. He sees us worthy of His salvation before we even knew it and He extends it to us through His grace as a gift (Ephesians 2:8-9). While we may never fully embrace or grasp how worthy we are to God, it does not alter His perception of us.
Chonda Pierce’s song ‘Mercy Saw Me’ best expresses it (click to listen):
[Chorus] Beautiful, that's how mercy saw me,
For I was broken and so lost; Mercy looked past all my faults.
The justice of God saw what I had done, But mercy saw me through the Son;
Not what I was but what I could be, That's how mercy saw me!
Indeed, as Christian writer, Christin Baker, blogged, ‘We are clothed in His beauty that will never wilt. We are clothed in His strength that will never fail. We are clothed in His power that will never diminish.’
OUR UNWORTHINESS
So, if we are worthy in God’s sight, why should we think about our unworthiness? This is because to say that we are unworthy is to admit that we are dependent on God’s mercy and grace in redeeming us from human deficiencies and failings.
For those who may be unsure about their unworthiness, let Isaiah 64:6 enlighten us, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” In other words, without our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, nothing we do can make us acceptable to the Holy God.
The apostle Paul often spoke openly about his unworthiness, beginning from the time God found him ‘as is’ - unreformed, and still persecuting the followers of Jesus Christ who would later become his peers. By his own admission, he considered himself the least of all the apostles, and “not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God’s church.” (1 Corinthians 15:9). You know he did not say these things out of feigned modesty because he acknowledged that he had previously persecuted the church. He went further to elaborate on his standing in society and his sterling credentials (Philippians 3:3-5). But whatever privilege and power he gained by birth and achieved by his own effort, he now considered worthless compared to what he gained through Christ (Philippians 3:7-8).
So at the end of the day, we all face the same existential question that transcends our daily concerns and that touches on the core of our being: Who am I, if not for Jesus Christ in my life?
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 20 January 2024.
