Bible Reading: 1 Peter 1:18-19

God paid a ransom to save you. . . . He paid for you with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 1 Peter 1:18-19

Several centuries ago, a scholar named Morena was forced from his home. Living in poverty in Lombardy, Italy, Morena became very ill. He was taken to a hospital for the poor. The doctors, assuming that the wretched-looking patient was uneducated, began speaking in Latin among themselves at his bedside. They said, “This worthless creature is going to die anyway, so let us try an experiment on him.”

Morena knew Latin almost as well as his native language. Summoning his strength, he raised himself up and said to the surprised doctors, “How can you call ‘worthless’ someone for whom Christ died?” Right on.

It isn’t tough to look around your world and see all the ways people decide how much someone is worth:

• A baseball team decides a player is worth tens of millions of dollars throughout his playing career.

• A soldier in combat discovers he is worth a human life when another soldier takes a bullet to save him.

• A mom with very little money finds she is worth the efforts of volunteers who spend days repainting her broken-down house.

But as Morena clearly understood, our greatest value as Christians comes from the fact that God the Father allowed Jesus Christ-his sinless Son-to die for our sins. In 1 Peter 1:18-19, the apostle Peter said that no amount of silver or gold could com­pare to that sacrifice. Jesus declared what we are worth when he said, “The greatest love is shown when people lay down their lives for their friends” (John 15:13).

In God’s eyes, you were worth the death of his Son. While you were stuck in your sin and at war with God, there was nothing about you to attract God or to cause him to send his Son to die for you (see Romans 5:8). You weren’t righteous. You weren’t good. You were a sinner, the total opposite of the perfect Lamb. But God saw you as lovable, and your value skyrocketed when Jesus gave up his life for you.

No matter what your value is to others in earthly terms, you are eternally price­less because of the price the Father lovingly paid for you.

TALK: Why are all people worth treating with respect? What does that have to do with respecting yourself?

PRAY: God, give us an understanding of our value to you. Help us to see that you have made each of us more valuable than all the silver and gold in the world.

ACT: Think of the people you’ve looked down on as less than valuable. What can you do for one of those folks today to prove his or her great worth to you and to God?

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