Intrinsic Worth

A compilation

When Jesus was teaching on the law, two trick questions were placed before Him. The first was whether it was right to pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus brilliantly asked the questioner for a coin. When the man produced the coin, Jesus asked whose image he saw on the coin. The answer unhesitatingly given was that it was Caesar. Jesus promptly said, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”¹

This was a truly defining moment. The taxation burden on the Jews was huge, and they resented having to pay it. But then came the silence that ought not to have been. The man should really have asked, “What belongs to God?” That question would have underscored what lies beneath all political and economic responsibility. And Jesus’ answer would have been, “Whose image is on you?” That all-defining essence is at the heart of what it means to be human. We are made “imago dei.” We are made in God’s image.

This is even further underscored in the next trick question placed before Jesus: “Which is the greatest commandment?”² Having failed to trip Him up on “God against Caesar,” they tried “God against God.” With 613 laws to choose from, Jesus was asked to choose one. Amazingly, He didn’t fall for it. He said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’… The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

In other words, loving God and the resulting love for humanity are not only inextricably bound, but apart from that, all else of morality has no other ground on which to stand. This is the only noble truth. All else is an ignoble lie. There is no foundation without these and nothing greater than these. Truth-telling, sanctity of sex, sanctity of life, sanctity of ownership, etc., none is greater and none can be legitimate except based on the vertical relationship with God…

The logic of Jesus is compelling in what He has joined together. There is no absolute basis for loving your fellow human being without the first commandment. There is no way to claim to love God while being inhuman to your fellow human being. That which God has joined together, let no man put asunder.… You cannot be a genuine human being without acknowledging the intrinsic worth given to every other human being.—Ravi Zacharias³

Untold value

As I’ve attempted to implement the Golden Rule in my own day-to-day living—admittedly, not always successfully—I’ve found that I frequently need to recalibrate my perspective. In a world that all too frequently revolves around me, I’ve got to purposefully reorient my attitude on a regular basis if I’m ever going to follow this outlandish teaching of Jesus.

I periodically need to remind myself of the value that God places on other human beings, even when I don’t know the other person or when he or she is very different from me. But to be honest, that’s not natural for me to do. Every once in a while, though, I get a reminder, like reading about an incident that occurred in North Carolina in 1995. Ten-year-old Lawrence Shields was picking through a bucket of debris in a gemstone mine when a rock piqued his interest. “I just liked the shape of it,” he said. When he knocked off the dirt and grit that were clinging to it, and as he rubbed it on his shirt to polish it up, he saw that this was much more than just a rock. It turned out to be a sapphire. And not just any sapphire—a 1,061-carat sapphire!

Here’s the point: when we look at other people, we tend to focus on the outside, which is soiled by sin. We see the rebellion or failure, the bizarre lifestyle or proud attitude, and we often overlook the real value that’s on the inside—where each one of us is a gem of incalculable worth, created in the image of almighty God. We, as individuals, are so valued and loved that God was willing to pay the infinite price of his Son’s death to clean away our sin and restore us to himself.

So when you look at someone whose life has been thoroughly corrupted by sin, can you say to yourself, “Their life situation may be awful, but the image of God within them is awesome!” Can you look at the people you may have devalued because they’re different from you or poorer than you or less educated than you, and imagine the ultimate value that God attaches to them despite their circumstances? It’s like one of my favorite songs, “In Heaven’s Eyes,” in which Phill McHugh pictured people as they appear to God and found no worthless losers and no hopeless causes. When we see people from God’s perspective, all of a sudden we have a new inspiration to treat them with the same dignity, respect, and honor that we desire for ourselves.

Does that sound naive? Maybe so. But apart from that divinely altered perception, I don’t have a chance of being obedient to Christ’s command that I love others as myself. It’s simply not going to happen. That’s one reason why a motto of the church where I became a Christian is that people matter to God. All people. It’s a reminder to all of us that we need to see each other as having untold value in the eyes of Jesus.—Lee Strobel⁴

Love is the most important thing

There is a lot in the Bible about human relationships and about having love toward others. That’s the whole purpose for living, to love God and others. That’s the most important thing. The Bible isn’t talking about love for your computer or your work, it’s talking about love for the Lord and others. The Bible teaches us that love is the most important thing. “The greatest of these is love.”⁵

People are different, and we can’t treat them all the same. There are so many things written in the Bible about how the Lord wants us to treat people differently according to their needs. Jesus was very mindful of human weaknesses and didn’t require the same from everyone. The apostle Paul also instructed us to “encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone.”⁶ It all comes down to love and “doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.”⁷

“Am I my brother’s keeper?”⁸ The answer is obvious, and some people need to be “kept” even more lovingly and tenderly than others. When you’re working with someone, or cross paths with them regularly, the Lord has placed you in a position of interacting with them, and it’s our responsibility to love them.

We could all stand to improve in our relations with others, and the Bible has lots of counsel for us on that subject—how to work with others, how to treat them, how to be loving toward them, and much more. It talks about patience, longsuffering, love, unselfishness, and giving. In all of the passages about these things, the Lord is talking about relationships between human beings, not about our work or the relationships we have with things—our papers or computers or machines. He’s talking about people—and that’s not always easy. It takes patience, love, and humility.

What is the most important ingredient in our relationships with each other? In John 13:35 He said, “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love for each other.”—Maria Fontaine

Published on Anchor August 2019. Read by Jerry Paladino.
Music by Michael Dooley.

Posted in: audio, compilation, love

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