(Originally Published on: May 19, 2015)
One of the most important truths the Bible teaches is the fact that God loves us totally and without any preconditions, and our self-worth should be based on this and this alone.
Love is not finite, because God is not finite. God IS love and the source of all love. Therefore, when God loves me, He gives me ALL of His love, AND He still has ALL of His love to give to you, and to each and everyone else. He doesn’t hold anything back.
And God doesn’t love us because of the way we look, or how smart we are, or how wealthy we are, or how successful we are. He places no circumstance or condition on it. A diamond, whether it is lying at the bottom of the trash dumpster or prominently displayed in a glass case in the museum, has exactly the same value.
And we do not, we can not, EARN His love.
Those of us who are parents, think about how much we love our children, even though we love imperfectly and incompletely. What did they do to earn our love, and yet we still love them that much?
There is nothing we can do, nothing we can say, nothing we can even think, that can separate us from the deep, unabating love of our Father in heaven.
Yes, our sin DOES separate us from God. But even in our sin, He doesn’t stop loving us, He doesn’t abandon us. When we sin, because of His great love, He made a way for us to come back, to restore our relationship with Him, through Jesus.
Many of us spend our entire lives searching for validation from parents, from spouses, from siblings, from teachers, from co-workers, from public accolades … from everything and everyone other than from God. But we don’t have to spend one fraction of a second searching.
God created each and every human being uniquely and intentionally, each with Intrinsic Value – it is innate, naturally inherent. This is because we alone among God’s created beings are made in His image. “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Gen 1:27 NASB)
We were created valuable and our value never decreases.
We must learn and understand this truth, really understand it at our core, and we must teach it to our children and reinforce it every day from the time they are small. (See Deut 6:4-9)
If each of us really GOT this, can you imagine how many of our societal problems would disappear over night? These problems are mostly symptoms of each of us searching for a different source for, and trying to earn, our value. But God wants us to be at peace. He tells us to, “Cease striving and know that I am God;” (Ps 46:10a NASB). It’s really that simple.
God values each and every one of us beyond human measure, which is why He sent Jesus into the world to redeem us. We just need to realize and internalize this each day, to understand how truly valuable we are, and we need to help others to do the same.