“Let your adornment be the inner self with the
lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s
sight.”
— 1 Peter 3:4 (NRSV)
It’s the quickest, most effective
way to a depressed and debilitating result. Comparisons with others, or
deriding ourselves for all manners of failure, rejection or embarrassment, are
the prime vehicles to questioning our worthiness, as is dabbling again, devoid
of God, in past or present guilt, shame or sin.
We can be our own worst enemy when
it comes to doubting our intrinsic worth. We quickly forget that our worthiness
has been defined, long before we were born.
Our Worthiness Has Been Defined
Let’s not forget who bought us; if
we believe Christ, we are one in him; we are won to him. We are hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).
An unfathomably high price was
paid for us—Jesus died so our sin would not be a barrier excluding us from fellowship
with the Father. Sometimes we need to be reminded of this.
Worth is a thing no longer in
contention. Not one single person alive, or dead for that matter, is of less
worth than Christ dying for their sin. That is a concept so marvellous that we
could consider it every conscious minute for the rest of our lives and still
not comprehend the fullness and magnitude of it.
No matter what we do or don’t do
in this life, we are unable to shake or de-shackle from this fact. This fact is
beyond all our deeds; what we think and say; or even how worthy we think we are
or aren’t.
God has defined our worthiness by
the measure of Christ.
We cannot argue with the logic of
God, for if we do, our defiance of God just leaves us confused and lacking in
spiritual sense.
Accepting the Work, On Our Behalf, of Jesus’
Obedience on the Cross
If we can put thoughts of our
unworthiness to bed, seriously settling for the inherent worthiness in the
glory of being human under God, we begin to live a more spiritually peaceful
life—a peace that transcends our understanding.
At the simple transactions of
recognising God’s grace we are afforded a simple blessing: the knowledge that,
because of what God has achieved, we are worthy.
When we accept the work of the
cross, the obedience of Jesus to the Father’s timing for that once-for-all-time
redemptive act, the record of history in the Bible, and these by faith, we do feel worthy and we know our worthiness.
Accept the work of the cross. Accept the unique worth implicit in being
you.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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