God’s Worth is the Basis of Your Worth
In 2017 the painting Salvator Mundi sold for a record $450 million, the highest price paid for a painting to date. As the name would infer (Salvator Mundi means “Savior of the World”), the painting depicts Jesus and has been attributed to the artist Leonardo da Vinci who painted it somewhere around the year 1500.
How is it possible that a single painting could sell for nearly half a billion dollars? It’s very simple. Leonardo da Vinci painted it. Had Leonardo’s brother painted the exact same painting instead of Leonardo, or had it been a work of one of da Vinci’s many art students, the image probably wouldn’t have even survived to the present day. And that’s one of the most fascinating things about the buying and selling of art. The value of a piece is directly linked to the status of the artist.
It is not far off to consider every last man, woman, and child who has ever walked the earth to be a statue in tribute to the living God. In fact, that’s what it means to have been fashioned in the image of God. People are supposed to look at you and get some idea of what God is like. We’re not God, just like a statue of Alexander of the Great is most certainly not the man himself. However, viewers of any statue are supposed to be able to see more clearly what the person depicted in the statue is like, and upon the seeing the intricate handiwork and attention to detail carved out of stone with hammer and chisel, viewers are supposed to explode with praise in honor of the sculptor. In the case of humanity, God is both the artist and the subject. We both see him in mankind and are able to praise him as the all-wise Creator. You were fashioned to put on display the wisdom and power and glory of the one true living God.
As such, your worth is truly priceless, certainly much more than da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. From before you were even born, God went to work fashioning your every last trait (Psalm 139:13). He knows you through and through because of the incalculable loads of time he’s poured into you, his special work of creation. And if the world had eyes to value the almighty Sculptor of heaven and earth and of you, they would tremble to even come near you.
This means that your worth is derived from God’s worth. You are valuable because God is valuable and created you to reflect his image to the world the way a mirror reflects the image that looks into it. You’re the mirror. No one ever has ever come up to a mirror to admire the glass. They look into a mirror to behold the image there, and the image you’re meant to reflect to the world is God as we able to know him through his Son. To change the analogy for a moment, the happiest toaster in the world is not the toaster who spends all his time trying to make good coffee. The happiest toaster in the world is the toaster who makes the best toast he’s possibly able to make. If you want to be a really happy mirror, stop trying to get people to notice you, the glass, and instead shine so radiantly that people forget all about you and when they do see you, they are drawn to the image of the living God who dwells within you. In other words, may they see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven—not glory to you (Matthew 5:16).
All this means that not only you, but even your worst enemy, even your terror of a brother or sister, has worth that is beyond comprehension because he or she, too, was fashioned by the same hands and hammer and chisel of the living God into a different but equally valuable work that he crafted to put his glory on display for all the world to see and wonder at. You might have to look hard to see it. In fact, you might need new eyes. But it’s there. There’s dirt all over it, and in some places the stone has some pretty nasty cracks and chips. But his glory is there. The hands of the greatest artist this universe has ever known brought him or her into being, just like he brought you into being. And if you had eyes to see the incalculable worth of the Sculptor who carved him or her, you’d tremble in that person’s presence.
God hasn’t forgotten a single sculpture of his. He knows them all. He delights in them all for the skill with which he crafted them, for the beauty that he imparted to them, and for the purpose for which he made them, that is, to let the world’s jaw drop in wonder at his glory.
Drink deeply from the well of this truth. Let it shape how you see yourself, how you see every last person you ever come in contact with, and how you see your enemies. Build your life on this truth.
Past Posts in this Series
Truths to Build Your Life On: Open Letters to the Class of 2020, Part 1
Truths to Build Your Life On: Open Letters to the Class of 2020, Part 3
Truths to Build Your Life On: Open Letters to the Class of 2020, Part 4
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