The Importance of Being Us

You have have heard this before. If not, you may have thought it. Or, more likely, felt it. One way or another, I think this idea is extremely common. "God must have found us pretty important if He sent His Son to die in our place."

Nice idea and all. Sounds good, but that's largely because it's coming from our inherent self-centeredness, our humanism. When laid up against Scripture, I think, it becomes problematic. You see, The Word says, "Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other" (Deut 4:39). There is no other. Not even me. Or us. God is the highest and best. He is the one and only. He is the Creator. There is no other.

You see, if God is going to be consistent with reality, He must regard Himself as the highest being. So when we think that God found us important enough to surrender His own will or desires or even His Son, we've missed it.

Would you expect different? If your friend, Bob, made a really cool vacuum cleaner and then chose to consider it more important than himself, would you congratulate him on his insight or have him seek professional help? But us? We're thinking that God ought to think more highly of us than He ought to. We've missed it.

God didn't make us because He thought we were important. He made us for His glory. The error of sin isn't because we're naughty children. It's because we fall short of the glory of God. We miss the point. God made us for His glory. He made us as a gift for His Son. Because His Son is of equal importance and deserving equal love.

Now, imagine this. I love my wife. (Okay, that doesn't take imagination; I really do.) So let's say that my wife loves special orchids. (Now that is imaginary.) Her birthday is coming, so I decide to grow her a special orchid for her birthday. This orchid is special because it is sentient, and it is special to me because it is a gift for my wife whom I love. So I spend time tending to my orchid. I feed it and water it and give it sunshine and nutrients and ... everything it needs. What would such an orchid begin to think? Well, of course, it would conclude, "He must have found me pretty important if he spends so much time on my needs." Easy to think that way, really. Understandable. But wrong. Because I love my wife, and I care for the orchid because I love her. The orchid is important to me because I love her and it's a gift for her.

Before time began, God promised us to His Son (Titus 1:1-3). We are a love gift to His Son. We are important and loved in so far as God loves His Son. So He sent His Son to make us a suitable gift ... for His Son. Indeed, the ever popular verse, John 3:16, says that "For God loved the world in this manner; He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." It is a special love placed on those who believe. And we are made for good works that glorify Him (Matt 5:16; Eph 2:10). We are in work to be conformed to the image of His Son (Rom 8:29), a Bride suitable for the King of kings. We are His love gift to His Son. That's the importance of being us. We are important simply as a gift for God's Son. It is not for nothing that we are warned "not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think" (Rom 12:3).