What is your true worth?

What is your car worth? Cars can lose more than 10 percent of their value during the first month after you drive off the lot! The amount your car is worth will just keep falling. According to current depreciation rates, the value of a new vehicle can drop by more than 20 percent after the first 12 months of ownership. Then, for the next four years, you can expect your car to lose roughly 10 percent of its value annually.

Similar processes happen in the corporate world. Some businesses depreciate their assets down to a zero value. It seems that just about everything loses it value over time. But what about you?

Do you sometimes feel worthless?

Or, at times, have you been slighted or treated as though you were of little value? If someone had to put a dollar value on you, how much would you be worth? What factors need to be taken into consideration when evaluating a person’s worth? Annual salary? Contribution to society? Aesthetic appeal?

Most of us don’t have money to burn. When we buy something, we want to be sure to get full value for every cent we spend. But we also know there are values that can’t be measured in dollars and cents. But how much are you and I truly worth? And what value should we place upon each other?

Often we’ll look at the work someone is doing, and if they’re doing a poor job, perhaps always making mistakes, then we view that person as of little value. But is this the correct way of seeing value in someone? In a friendship, if one person is not showing kindness, sympathy or love to the other, is it because they don’t really value or appreciate that person as they should?

Paul says, “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6–8).

The meaning of those verses is clear. Everything about us was undeserving of what God paid for us. This is the very meaning of grace.

Therefore, when God sends Jesus to die for us, He is doing so to signal our innate value. Think about it, if we truly saw the value of people as God does, would we still treat each other (and ourselves) the way we do?