Worthy and worth

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
    to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
    and by your will they existed and were created.” Revelation 4:11

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between worthy and worth. We serve a God who is worthy of glory and honor and power, just as recorded in Revelation 4. God is holy and good. God is perfect love.

Sometimes I think we can feel a lack of worth when it comes to God’s love, grace, and forgiveness in our lives. Though we may cognitively understand that Christ died on the cross and rose from the grave for us, we seem to have a really hard time feeling as though we are worth His love—as though we are just prone to fail, always falling short, always undeserving of His love and forgiveness. And for some, in some ways, this whole faith-in-Jesus thing can almost feel like a losing battle, as though we’ll never be enough.

Here’s what I believe we must understand: John 3:16 does not say, “For God so hated the world that He gave His one and only Son….” It says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son….”

Scripture tells us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We need a Savior. But I think we can get the notions of worth and worthy conflated. Worthy is an adjective meaning deserving of respect, merit, or honor. However, worth is a noun referring to the value of something. God alone is worthy. And because we are created in His image, we have worth.

Think of an artist’s masterpiece. Van Gogh’s Starry Night is not a masterpiece simply because it is oil on canvas. It is a masterpiece because it was painted by Van Gogh—a worthy artist deserving of merit and respect. The painting has worth not because of anything it has done, but because of who the artist is who painted it. In the same way, we have worth not because of anything we have done, but because of who our Creator is—the God of the universe—worthy of glory, honor, and power, and all praise.

Do you see the difference? Christ did not die for us because we are worth nothing to Him. Christ died for us because we are worth everything to Him. No matter where you’ve been, what you’ve done, or how you struggle even today, you are worth everything to Jesus, and He has made a way for you to abide in Him—now and for all eternity.

Because God is worthy, we have worth.

~ em

 Social media photo credit: Pure Julia on Unsplash