What you're worth vs. what you deserve

“Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.” 

—George MacDonald

Dear Warriors,

The way the world is now, people think they deserve everything, and do not understand that there is a difference between being worthy and being deserving. Have you ever stopped to think about if you actually deserve something? Or if you are actually worthy of them?

Think of it in terms of gifts: if someone were to you give you a gift, you would be grateful for it, would you not? If you were given a gift, you would not throw it on the ground saying you don’t deserve it or that you’re not worthy of it.  You would not ask “why?” but rather say “thank you.” It is a gift, which means it is freely given, not earned. Therefore you would accept it with a grateful attitude. You also would not say you "deserve" gifts, as though gifts were a requirement, rather than something freely given by others. 

God’s grace, His forgiveness is just the same as that. It is a gift. God gave us His only son as a living sacrifice—not because we have done anything to deserve it (we haven’t and we don’t), but because He deems us worthy. To understand what that means, you must understand what it means to be worthy. The root word here is “worth,” meaning that there is value to it. God placed value on you not because of anything you’ve ever done or will do, but simply because He loves you. He created you so He could love you perfectly, and so you could lavish your love and worship on Him in return. He decided you were worth the ultimate gift, the ultimate sacrifice.

Every single person that has ever lived is worth that gift, no exceptions. No one deserves it. But God decided that we are worthy of it because He values us. To reject that gift is to reject God’s gift; to deny forgiveness or say you don’t deserve to be forgiven is to snub Christ’s death on the cross. Just as you wouldn’t throw a gift on the ground and break it to bits, you wouldn’t throw Christ’s death on the cross on the ground and say “No! I won’t accept it because I don’t deserve it!” Of course you don’t—but it is God’s gift to you. A gift freely given. A gift paid with by the life of God’s own Son. A truly priceless gift.

(And in the reverse, it would be foolish to say that you deserved Christ's sacrifice on the cross. By no means!) 

“We do not have to make God willing to forgive. In fact, it is God who is working to make us willing to seek His forgiveness” -Richard J. Foster

Deserving something comes out of our own efforts. For instance, when we work a day’s labor, we deserve a day’s pay. Romans 6:23 says, “The wage of sin is death.” We labor in sin, and our pay is death. When we ‘deserve’ something, we inherit the consequences of our actions. So when I commit a crime, I deserve to go to jail for what I have done. No one deserves any less than that. Romans 3:10 says, “There is no one righteous. Not even one.” It is clearly written out that we all deserve punishment. Since the fall of man, we all deserve hell. No one is exempt from this. We do not deserve God’s love, and certainly not His forgiveness! We don’t deserve salvation, and we could not earn it even if we tried.

But this is where the good news comes in! (For whatever reason, we forget how good this news really is. It’s just kind of become “okay news”--but really this is the most incredible, phenomenal news the world has ever heard!) God’s grace bridged the gap for us! It bridged the gap between deserving and being worthy! He carried us over from the hell we deserved, into the Love He deemed us worthy of. Ephesians 2:8-9 says that we do not deserve God’s love or His forgiveness, or His salvation. We are worthy of it. Though we deserve hell, we are worthy of heaven. This is all by the power of His grace! You see, being worthy has nothing to do with you or who you are or what you’ve done. God has placed value on you, and on your life. That alone is what makes you worthy.

I will share it in the way it was explained to me: you may have a pocket-watch that your grandfather gave you, or that you inherited from him. To you, that pocket watch is priceless because it belonged to your grandfather. To someone else, that pocket watch may mean nothing at all. If it fell on the floor and broke open and the watch face shattered, someone else would simply sweep up the pieces and throw it away because it had no real meaning to them. But for you, the reaction would be entirely different. You would be devastated because you placed incredible value on that pocket watch. To you, it was priceless, irreplaceable. You placed value, worth on your grandfather’s pocket watch.

That is precisely how God sees us. God has placed value on us, so we are valuable to Him. Priceless. He has placed worth on us. So how dare we say that we are unworthy of God’s love, forgiveness, and salvation—of His gift to us? Who are we to tell the Creator Himself what is or is not of value or of worth to Him? We are worthy of heaven. We are worthy of salvation. We are worthy of forgiveness. We are worthy of His Love. We are worthy of Him! All because of what He has done—not what we have done. He places the value. How could we degrade, or devalue or abuse what is priceless to our Creator? We are worthy of far greater things than we deserve! That is the beauty of who God is.

“The work of Christ on the cross did not influence God to love us, did not increase that love by one degree, did not open any fount of grace or mercy in His heart. He had loved us from old eternity and needed nothing to stimulate that love. The cross is not responsible for God's love; rather it was His love which conceived the cross as the one method by which we could be saved.” 
—A.W. Tozer, The Radical Cross: Living the Passion of Christ

We should embrace our worthiness to God, and celebrate Him for that phenomenal, unparalleled goodness He has given. If we are to live in His will, then that which is important to God becomes important to us. If God values our lives so much that He would send His only Son to earth to be sacrificed in the most brutal possible way, then we should protect that. We should cherish that gift. It is the ultimate treasure! We should not throw it away simply because we don’t see ourselves as worthy yet, or because we have chosen to live a life that reflects our worthless opinion of ourselves. That dishonors God. That insults Christ’s crucifixion. It grieves His spirit. As messed up as we are, we are still His children, we were created by Him, and we are of great worth to Him. 

You are worthy, beloved!

Humbly yours,
Warrior Beloved

Partial excerpt from Mere Humanity, Becoming A Mature Christian In An Immature World

©Michèle Aimée, 2015