Articles
Veritable Value
To deal with ballooning inflation rates, recently Venezuela tried to deal with the problem by removing 5 zeros from the ends of its bolívar notes, which is the national currency. The socialist country is experiencing such deep financial woes, to purchase a cup of coffee takes near 2 million bolívars. This problem is primarily due to the country’s solution to dealing with financial woes in recent years has been to print more money, but not improve the economy on the whole, thus causing hyperinflation. There is no real increase in value.
Since all value in our physical world is assigned by humans, we must make sure we are assigning value to things in an appropriate manner. The value that God places on people, experiences, or relationships is often at odds with human reasoning, thus we must be ready to change our values accordingly.
There are many places in scripture that speak of the surpassing value of wisdom (Proverbs 3:13-15), wise speech (Proverbs 20:15), and all of God’s considerations. “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! / How vast is the sum of them!” (Psalm 139:17) It is important to see that there are things we can seek out in this life that do not have true spiritual value, and they all pale in comparison to God’s righteous communication. How much differently would we consider how we spent our time if we valued wisdom as God does, and the people who exhibit it? (Proverbs 31:10)
Jesus addressed the concept of value, and applied it specifically to the value of His Kingdom over all of the temporary pursuits humans can engage in. Those who see the value of His Kingdom trade everything so that they may obtain it! (Matthew 13:44-46) On person who truly understood this value was Paul. “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…” (Philippians 3:7-11)
The visions of the spiritual and eternal we are given in Revelation often address the world’s value of worth versus what is spiritually true. All of the descriptions of the heavenly Jerusalem are meant to bring to help us see the value of our spiritual relationship with God that will last into eternity. (Revelation 21:10-27) This worth is true because it is the city of God who is worthy. “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.” (Revelation 4:11) Those who take part in this city are able to do so because of God’s Son, who has immense worth. (Revelation 5)
When we are establishing the things in our lives that have value, let’s use the only measure that is true, eternal, and has been set by God Himself. (Matthew 16:26)
