We’re Not Worthy—and That’s Good News
A disproportionate amount of my time sheltering in place was spent watching videos of people I don’t know hanging out of their apartment windows and clapping. This nightly occurrence all over the world had an emotional grip on me, in part because of our innate desire to honor and celebrate those who are worthy of our praise.
Even in our increasingly divided and polarized political world, we find common ground offering a meager gift to those who risk their own well-being in order to serve their fellow man. At a minimum, we should all be able to agree that doctors and nurses treating critically ill patients at risk to their own health deserve nothing less than a hearty round of applause.
In this season we deem medical professionals worthy of our admiration. The praise we give them honors their sacrifices. What happens though when someone receives a gift they don’t deserve? When honor is given to someone deemed unworthy?
UNWORTHY RECIPIENTS
The story of Hosea and Gomer provides a captivating example of one’s unworthiness in comparison to the gift offered. Hosea was one of God’s highly-esteemed prophets. Gomer was akin to the town prostitute. And yet God commanded Hosea to take Gomer as his bride.
Hosea obeyed God, but instead of answering his kindness with faithfulness, Gomer wandered. Again, Hosea called her away from the arms of another lover and back to fidelity with himself. She was undeserving of his love, yet he was faithful to give it.
What do we make of a man like Hosea? Is he an anomaly in Scripture?
Hosea is one of many biblical examples that show this pattern of undeserved love, a gracious gift being given to an unworthy recipient. Think of . . .
The cowardly liar Abraham, who didn’t deserve the blessings God bestowed on him.
Then there was cheating Jacob, who didn’t deserve to be the father of Israel.
Joseph’s wicked brothers didn’t deserve his forgiveness and provision.
The murderer Moses didn’t deserve to have such a highly esteemed position before God.
The grumbling people of Israel who preferred to return to slavery didn’t deserve the manna God provided every day.
I could continue. Page after page of Scripture shows one disproportionate relationship after another—a generous gift offered to an unseemly recipient.
When honor is given to someone unworthy of it, the focus of our attention shifts. We take our gaze off the receiver and look back to the giver.
Of all those pictures of one receiving a gift they didn’t deserve, none illustrates the point more clearly than the cross, where Jesus died for the unworthy. He did not die for the lovely. He did not come for those who had earned his affection. He came to rescue the vilest of sinners. He came to pursue in love those who were in an attempted coup against him. He is the handsome prince who desires to husband the ugly whore.
At the cross we see God’s love for his people magnified because he died for those who did not deserve it.
WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS
Scripture defines our praise of God in light of our unworthiness to receive such a sacrificial gift. Paul wrote in Romans, “One will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die’ (Rom. 5:7).
We were neither righteous nor good when God enacted his rescue plan for sinners. When God sent Jesus into the world to die on our behalf, we were in outright rebellion against God. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
Do you see how God demonstrates his love for us? It is our unworthiness to receive the gift of Christ’s death that magnifies God’s love for us.
Isn’t one of the deepest desires in all of our lives to be fully known and still fully loved? God is keenly aware of who we are in our sin, yet he offers to us his sacrificial, bottomless, unconditional love. He willingly lays down his life for us, aware of our rebellion, our filth, and our unworthiness of his sacrificial gift.
As our maker, he knows us intimately. He knows things about us we have not yet discovered for ourselves. And yet his love for us has no time limit and no end. Nothing can cause his love to weaken or fray or ever fall away. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Rom. 8:35).
Paul asks the question and then answers it: “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39).
Because of the cross of Christ, we can clearly see God’s vast, endless love for his people.
WEEP NO MORE
The aged apostle John, exiled to the island of Patmos, had a prophetic vision in which the scroll representing God’s purposes in history was sealed. There was no one worthy to open it.
“Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” cried a mighty angel, the question echoing in despair as no one—not even the great ones—in that throne room were found worthy. “No one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly,” says John.
But one of the elders stopped John’s lament with these words: “Weep no more; behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals” (Rev. 5:2–5). John turned to see this conquering, victorious Lion—the lone one deemed worthy to open the scroll.
But instead he saw “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.” And the creatures and the elders bowed before Jesus, that slain lamb, singing this new song:
“Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9)
HE ALONE IS WORTHY
The world honors those who are found worthy of earthly praise. Those who get the most votes. Or conquer with power. Or achieve great things by their intellect and hard work.
But heaven praises as worthy the one who was slain, who brought life through his death and lavished an eternally rich salvation on the unworthy.
Adapted from The Good Portion: The Doctrine of Christ, for Every Woman published by Christian Focus, 2020.
Jenny Reeves Manley is a former Chief of Staff in the U.S. Senate. Jenny now happily lives on the Arabian Peninsula, where she serves in an international church with her husband Josh, a pastor, and her five children. Helping women from all over the world study scripture in a Christ-exalting, God-glorifying way is one of her greatest joys.