How Your Worth has Nothing to do with What You Deserve

We’re  Americans. We tend to confuse our value with our just desserts. But our intrinsic worth as human beings created in God’s image is a universe away from what we deserve from him.
 

 
Unfortunately, we hear messages all day long that tell us we deserve all kinds of special treatment.
 
“You’re worth it,” said the old L’Oreal advertisement. “He doesn’t deserve you,” says the girl to her friend. “You deserve a break today,” said MacDonalds.
 
In a world of entitlement, it can be counter-intuitive to hear, accept and properly respond to what God has to say about what we deserve.
 
Spoiler alert: It’s not pretty.Let’s take a look at Romans 6:23, starting with the first part.
 

“For the wages of sin is death.”

 
Here’s how it works. We are all sinners. Wages are what you earn, or deserve. What you and I have coming to us as the result of our actions, words and attitudes is the death penalty.
 
We deserve to be punished. We deserve permanent exile from the presence of God. 
 
There’s no way you can appreciate the second part of Romans 6:23 until you get this part first. If you think you are entitled to something better on your own merit, you haven’t yet understood what Jesus did for you.
 
This rankles, doesn’t it? We don’t want to accept that we are actually that bad. Maybe Hitler, but not us, right?
 
One pastor tells the story of how his elder board was meeting with him in order to confront him about some things of which he felt he didn’t deserve to be accused. His wife was very supportive, encouraging him to set the other guys straight.
 
Just before the meeting began, the pastor heard the Holy Spirit say, You are far worse than they have made you out to be.
 
The men stated their case. They asked the pastor if he had anything to say for himself. Stunned and wide-eyed from what God had just told him, he shook his head.
 
He had just had a glimpse of the rottenness in his own heart, and lost all interest in defending himself!
 
“Whatever you do, don’t ask God for your wages,” he quips.
 
We tend to think we are far better than we are — until God gives us a glimpse of our pride, greed, and selfishness.
 

 
“But that’s worm theology!” you cry. Quite the contrary.
 
We must first understand how broken we are in order to appreciate how loved we are.
 
This is where we get confused. We think we must perform well to earn God’s favor, but that’s the opposite of grace.
 
Grace says you have intrinsic value, just because you are a man or woman that God created. He is the artist that made you, and he is the only one that can take care of your sin problem.
 
The term “deserve” means “worthy of merit or reward.” Grace is defined as “undeserved favor or merit.” We are unworthy of God’s favor, and there’s no way we can earn it.
 
Despite that,  here’s the second part of Romans 6:23:
 

“…but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
 

All this points to the greatness of our Father’s heart! Despite our condition, despite our propensity to sin and then deny it, despite the sickness in our hearts, he sees our value.
 
We are his treasure — not because of what we do, but because of how he created us.
 
I don’t deserve a thing from my gracious Savior — yet I am worth so much in his eyes that he bled and died on my behalf.
 
This is love and this is grace, from the God who deserves all praise.
 

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