Genesis 1:27 – “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them”. For starters, all humans on earth are made in the image of God. We are the only creatures of His creation that can have a personal relationship with Him, the Creator. Because you are made by God you are valuable and set apart from the rest of creation.
Many people view the Bible as just a
book for moral standards and think that’s the only reason why the Bible was
written. If that were so, the Bible wouldn’t mention anything about the good
news of Jesus Christ because we’d be good enough in our own eyes. Also, the
Bible isn’t even about us, it is all about God and His story! In the book of
Ruth in the first chapter, the author shows us the timeline of what was
currently happening. The Judges (men who were rulers) were in charge at that
time. In the previous book before Ruth, which is Judges, the central theme is
that they “did what was right in their own eyes”. This led them to destruction
and chaos.
In today’s culture, it feels great to
feel confident, valuable, and worthy. It seems right to put yourself above
others, because at the end of the day the world tells you all you have is
yourself and what you make of yourself right? Those are always good things,
until we make them who we are. If you truly were enough within your own being,
there would be no need for Jesus. He made us to be dependent, not independent. We
have all felt not enough at some point. Maybe you do right now. Luckily, we
have Jesus, who on our behalf died to make us worthy of God’s love. The word
“righteousness” means “the quality of being morally right or justifiable”. We
have no righteousness of our own because Ephesians 2 verses 1 through 10 tells
us,
“And you
were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following
the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among
whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the
desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of
wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in
mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when
we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by
grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us
with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming
ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been
saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift
of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we
are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake
he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God”. Jesus took on every bad thing we have ever done and died
because you and I are not enough. But through his death, if we have put our
faith and trust in Jesus, when God looks at us, He sees His son Jesus, not our
sin. That makes us more than worthy, because JESUS is the only person who is truly
enough because he is SINLESS and we are SINFUL; and will always be because of
our fallen nature. We will be in the presence of sin until Christ comes again,
but that sin is not our identity anymore. But that day on the cross, he died
and rose again for all places in our heart that feels empty. He fills us. None
of us are good in our own nature. The psalmist David says in Psalm 14:2-3, “The
Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who
understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have
become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one”.
