The Source of Significance

The source of significance


The war against the soul

Studies in the Doctrine of Man and Salvation
By Joshua Law

Introduction:
Our source of significance

Prisoners of Approval

There are a number of things other than God's Word that people depend upon for their worth.

Some people let their sense of worth depend on how they think others see them. Their behavior is designed to attract the approval of others, and they avoid doing some things they ought to in their interpersonal relationships, for fear of jeopardizing that approval. Essentially, they end up the prisoner of what other people think and consequently can be manipulated in wrongs ways. Pop psychologists call this "approval addiction."

Lackeys of Love

Then there are those who have swallowed what Dean Martin used to sing about: "You are nobody till somebody loves you." Their whole sense of worth depends on the love of other people. This is known as "love addiction."

There are other things people can depend upon as their source of significance, such as achievement. The idea, "I must be productive; if I don't constantly come up to my standard of productivity, I must not be worth much."

When we talk about significance, we are talking about our sense of worth, how we value ourselves, where our thinking is regarding our identity. When we talk about a dependency upon others' approval, or dependency upon love, or achievement, or worth, we are talking about the foundation of our feelings of significance. If I need the approval of others, or love, for significance, then I am believing that those things are the source of my significance. But the Word of God reveals a totally different basis for our worth; it can lead us to the true source of our significance.

Chapter 1
The Lord's Evaluation determines our worth

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 4:3-5 that our significance is based on nothing less than the Lord's judgment.

I Cor. 4:3-5
"But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God."

There were some people who had come along attempting to convince the church at Corinth that Paul was not a true apostle. These were what we call Judaizers, who said if you really believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who we know is the Jewish Messiah, you must bring along to your faith all of Judaism. For example, you gentiles should be circumcised ; you should keep Kosher food laws. Paul puts it very bluntly here: it is a small thing how you evaluate me. I don't care whether you accept me or reject me. It makes no difference what you think; look, I don't even evaluate myself. I am not the source of my significance, and you are not the source of my significance either.

Do You Buy It?

Actually this is what it comes down to, isn't it? It is not really so much what other people think, it is what you buy into of what you think they think! It really comes down to your own judgment of your worth. Any time a person has low self esteem, he has made a judgment himself regarding his own worth. If he thinks others reject him and therefore he doesn't have worth, he is only buying into that perceived disapproval of other people. I really comes down to your own evaluation. Paul says, I don't even get hung up on that. He says the One who really determines my worth is the Lord. He goes on to say,

"Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God."

Wouldn't it be something if we had a machine that could project all your thoughts on a screen? Wouldn't it be weird, to have that kind of discernment about where everyone is? In a sense this is what this verse is saying will happen on the day when believers are judged. There will be manifest all of the secrets you have buried for so long - the counsel, the motivations of your heart. Notice the beauty of what the Lord then promises: " and then shall every man have praise of God." There's going to be something in your life and mine for which the Lord can give praise. When it's all brought out in the open, God Himself is going to praise us for something positive about each one of us.

Accept His Evaluation

Does the Lord praise that which is worthless? Yet it says here that each one of us will have praise of God. When God Himself evaluates you and me, He is going to praise us. Catch the logic behind this prophecy of scripture:

1) there is something about each one of us concerning which God gives praise,
2) God doesn't praise what is worthless,
3) it is God's judgment that really counts.

Anytime I let the evaluation of other people determine my worth then I am falling into a cognitive distortion called magnification. I am making the evaluation of other people far, far more significant than it really is. I am blowing it up. I am also committing magnification if I let my worth depend upon my own evaluation; I am making my own judgment higher and greater than the Lord's! The sole basis of my significance ought to be the Lord. He is the only one who can determine your worth or mine; and He is already gone on record saying each of us has worth.

Notes:
Dealing with sins
What about all the bad things we Christians have done in our lives? At the judgment (bema) seat, (not the great white throne) all of the bad things that we have done will be covered in the Lord's blood. The problem is that if we have not confessed our sins, we would then not allowing us the experience of the Lord's forgiveness. Then those un-confessed sins will work behind the scene in our hearts to give us guilt feelings which propels us to sin more or going to try to point out everybody else's sin. If we continue in sin, confessions would become hypocritical and that hardens our hearts, which would then produce bitterness and guilt in our hearts. This vicious cycle will begin to spin and soon we will not be able to experience forgiveness. What a sad scene it has become!

Have the Hope that Makes us Happy

For our happiness, we should look to His return, not other people's approval. As Titus 2:13 says,
"Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ."

The word blessed means "happy". Looking for that happy hope, the hope that brings happiness. It's when people don't have anything to look forward to, When there is nothing out there to focus in on, that despair, sadness and depression come, Then we lose hope. That is why it is essential that each day, we bring into our thinking the blessed hope, the thought of any moment, Jesus Christ returning, and when He returns, each of us is going to receive that praise from God. All of the bad things our life will be burnt out.

I Corinthians 3:13-17
"Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are."

Our bodies are going to be glorified, (restored into God's image) our souls will receive their complete salvation, and we are going to be right with Jesus Christ, entering into Heaven itself. Jesus Christ is going to have us stand right along beside with Him in a presentation to the Father as His collective bride. We are going to become actual priests of Heaven's Temple, and then we are going to rule, He says over this entire universe, with Jesus Christ.

We think about all the wonderful things that are going to happen upon the return of Jesus Christ, to gather the church unto Himself. You have an incredible amount of significance when you think about that. If you didn't mean anything to Him, why should Jesus Christ even bother to come for you? And yet He is. That hope ought to produce a happiness in us if we focus upon it. Or we can choose to focus on other things, and be in despair and sadness.

It is a matter of focus: if you are sad, you are focusing on a loss; if you are anxious, you are focusing on a potential loss; if you are angry, you are focusing in on the cause of a loss. If you are happy, you are focusing in on a gain. And what greater gain will you ever receive than what you will receive when Jesus returns? Go through the Bible and write down all the promises that relate to the return of Jesus Christ and see just how much you have coming, and meditate on it, and live this present life in light of those gains. It will produce happiness!

Seek to please the Lord
We should seek to please the Lord, not others.

Galatians 1:10 states it clearly,
" For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ."

As long as the Apostle Paul was doing what was pleasing to the Lord, he did not care what other people thought. He was not out there to please other people. But if your source of significance depends on what other people think, then naturally your whole life is going to be lived accordingly. That is hot going to do much for you; in fact it will entrap you in a wrong thought pattern.

Now back in Romans 15:1-3 we are told something that seems contradictory to the Galatians passage,

"We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me."

But if you read the whole context of Romans 14 and 15, the motive for honoring the scruples of others, essentially "weaker bretheren," is not to feed our sense of significance, but to express concern for their welfare. Such concern is very pleasing to God. On the other hand, if what you would be doing to win approval from others would displease God, forget it. You please God, not other people. In either case, your significance is not on the line; it is God you are trying to please regardless. Let His approval be your ultimate concern.

Don't Fear to Be Free

Galatians 2:11-12
"But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision."

"Fearing," see, lest he lose the approval of those he deemed important. The Apostle Peter here let fear turn him into a hypocrite. When he was by himself with the gentile believers, he enjoyed open fellowship with them. But when the higher-ups from the Jerusalem church came to visit he backslid to his Judaistic ways. This tells me it is certainly not scriptural to let other people becomes so important to us that we do what we do because they expect it of us. We should do what is right, not what those who are important to us expect.

To defy the advice of these scriptures is to magnify the importance of what other people think. You are letting them determine your value, or else you are buying into what they may think. This magnifies their opinion over what God has already said concerning your worth. If you let your worth depend upon Him, however you can be free from this kind of bondage. Free to have happiness dependent on the Lord, free to please Him and not others, and free to function in a way that is not always shat people of importance to you expect. If our significance is determined by the Lord's evaluation, we will not be caught up in the "approval addiction."

Chapter 2

THE LORD'S LOVE DETERMINES OUR WORTH

What about love? what about this idea that I can't be happy, indeed I have to be depressed, if no one loves me. Well someone does love you, and that someone is Jesus Christ. Matthew 13:45-46 tells us just how much.

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it."

The merchant is Jesus Christ, who looks upon all of us who together make up His church, the body of Christ; and He see us as a pearl of great price. He see us as having so much worth, that He goes out and sells all that He has in order to buy us. And what is the purchase price of the church? The blood of Jesus Christ, the payment of His very life upon the cross of Calvary. He didn't do it based on whether we were good or right, but out of love He did it. We were worth the payment. Paul develops this thought in Romans 5:7-8

"For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Our Potentiality

In Luke 15 the lord gives a different picture, adding to our understanding of what His love actually does for us. Remember the woman who had the coin and lost it? She did everything she could to find the coin. Why would she spend all that time trying to find a coin? Because while it was lost, it had a value that was not being realized. Jesus looks at us and He sees a value that we have, and He wants us to discover that value and to recognize what He recognizes. If we plug into His grace, He is capable of taking our value and amplifying it considerably and making it even more valuable. We have great potential.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13

Jesus laid down His live for you because He loves you. Now you tell me, are you going to lay down your life for somebody who has no value? Why would you give up your life for somebody who has no value? Why would you give of your life for someone who was a total zero, had no potential, no value. It is totally incongruous that Jesus Christ would die for a worthless humanity. I can't buy that. Humanity must have worth; why else would He give His life for it?

Now I believe we have a depravity; I believe the entrance of sin through Adam brought a curse on us. But I see Jesus dying to remove the curse so there could be a discovery of the value God intended us to have at our creation. I see humanity of great value; I see people are important. One of the greatest tragedies of the Pharisees was they got so caught up in their religious forms that they lost sight of the value of people. They always put forms above people. Yet Jesus by the act of His death upon Calvary, put people above form. This is where our attitude ought to be.

Our significance is to be determined by the Lord's evaluation, not our own. It is measured by the Lord's Love as expressed by His death upon the cross of Calvary. In response to that we need to consider these two things:

Our Lovability

How lovable we are is not affected by the lack of love from others. Just because there's someone with whom you are infatuated, and they do not respond in kind, doesn't mean you are not lovable. In fact even if someone you care about actually hates you, that doesn't mean you are not lovable either. It doesn't mean you will be able to identify - a little anyway - with Jesus Christ. Jesus cared a whole lot for the Jewish people, yet John 15: 24 tells us many of them did not reciprocate.

"If I had not done among them works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father."

He loved the people, and they ended up hating Him. Does that make Jesus unlovable? I Peter 1:8 fills in the picture of our lord's lovability.

"Whom having not seen. you love: in whom, though now you see Him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls."

We have found Jesus Christ to be very lovable, those of us who believe in Him and have entered into a relationship with Him. Even though many in all ages have hated Him, the true believer finds Him very lovable.

Just because someone hates me doesn't mean I am unlovable. If I think so, I am committing the distortion of personalization. If I think it is wholly my fault when someone hates me, that's not necessarily true. If the other parties are not open, if they are not willing to communicate, or if I have done something wrong and have apologized and they are not willing to forgive, that's their problem.

We need to stop personalizing - thinking we are to blame for everything that happens. Of course when you are to blame, you need to admit it, deal with it, and put it behind you. But if you are not to blame, don't personalize, think you are. That is a distortion of truth.

Our Acceptability

How acceptable we are is not affected by the rejection of others.

When I was in high school, I developed a terrific crush on a very attractive girl. But though she treated me nicely, but she just was in no way interested in me. Finally I gave up. But there was this young lady who was always looking at me with an attractive grin. I knew in my heart that she was attracted to me. This kind of acceptance or rejection has to do with the subjective taste of others. I may not be one person's cup of tea, but that doesn't say a whole lot about me. It just reveals the other person's particular taste and values.

Now if there are good objective reasons for a rejection, then I can take responsibility and do something about them. For example, if I have a problem with body odor, or if I'm discourteous, those are good objective reasons why girls would not have chosen to go out with me.

"He came unto His won, and His own received Him not." John 1:11

Jesus too experienced rejection, but it did not say anything about His value. When we consider what the Word of God says, let us not go through life letting our sense of worth be based upon whether other people approve us, or show us love. Instead, as believers in Jesus Christ, our true significance rests upon His evaluation of us, and our true value is measured by His infinite love.

The End