How Valuable Are You?

Mark 10:42-45

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Back in the late 1980s, there was a little girl who was kidnaped down in Florida. She was the granddaughter of an oil executive. The family was told to come up with millions of dollars as a ransom in order to buy her back. The family put the money together, and about the time they were going to bring it to these kidnapers, luckily, the police got in the way and found out what had happened.

How valuable do you think you would be if you were ever kidnaped? What kind of money might loved ones or someone have to come up with in order to bring you back? A bigger question, though, is how valuable are you to God? Listen to what Jesus says about himself, calling himself the Son of Man.

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But that is not the way it is to be among you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45)

Now the Bible teaches us that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We’ve been, if you will, kidnaped away by the devil and to his kingdom of darkness. But Jesus has now come the Son of Man, in order to give his life as a ransom to buy us back into God’s grace. And he did this not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. And Jesus is wanting us to reflect on just how valuable we are in the eyes of God. That he would give up his own Son and have him suffer our hell for us so that we could someday come to heaven. That’s how intensely God wants you to be in heaven, and how valuable he sees you to be.

Now, he also wants Christians to look that same way toward people in their lives. How valuable are you now to the people in your life? Listen to what Jesus says. “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.” Jesus instructs us to think differently than how the world does about greatness. The world defines greatness by what you get out of it. Heaven defines greatness by what you give. The world defines greatness by how far you are able to rise up above others, and heaven defines it by how willing you are to stoop low to help others. The world defines greatness as kind of a race to the top, but heaven defines greatness as a willingness to serve those, even in the lowest parts on the bottom.

God would have us seek out the different aspects in our lives, different duties and parts of our vocation where we can serve our fellow man, whether it’s at work, in your community, in your home life, in your marriage. And rather than letting our motivation be money or power or fame, look instead to how we can serve other people. I want to close with a quotation from Martin Luther. He said, “don’t consider other people like geese in your life,” In other words, lower and below you, “the better and the higher and the more honorable the station of life is which a man occupies, the more diligently should he see to it that he may advise, assist, and encourage others.”

Now we can do this knowing the great value that we have in God’s eyes because of what Christ has done for us. So may God stir up our hearts and faith to also show the great value of Christ to others by how we treat them. Amen.