The Most Valuable Thing in the Universe

I heard a preacher recently says that God values people – human beings – more than anything else in the universe. Is it not God who sets the standard for us for what is the most valuable? For example. God is love, therefore love is to be valued. God is just, therefore justice is to be valued. So, if people are the most valuable thing to God in the universe, then people ARE the most valuable thing in the universe. Therefore, according to this preacher, people are the most valuable thing in the universe, and we are to value people more than anything in the universe.

But isn’t God the most valuable thing in the universe? Are we not to value God more than anything in the universe? And if this is the standard we are to live by, and if it is imposed upon us by God, then God must value God more than anything in the universe. So if God values God more than anything in the universe, and we are to value God more than anything in the universe, then we cannot value people more than anything in the universe because we cannot value people more than we value God. WE CANNOT VALUE PEOPLE MORE THAN WE VALUE GOD!

John Piper puts it this way,

Perhaps you have heard people say how thankful we should be for the death of Christ because it shows how much value God puts upon us…Jonathan Edwards calls [this] the gratitude of hypocrisy… “they first rejoice, and are elevated with the fact that they are made much of by God…their joy is really a joy in themselves, and not in God."
A Godward Life, p. 214

If we value God more than anything, as God values God, then we will be able to shine forth true light to people, so that they can share in this glorious truth, that God is the most valuable thing in the universe. That is the purpose of missions and evangelism, “to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” On the contrary, what this preacher is proposing is the worship of Man. What humans value most, they worship.

If Jesus, as a man, placed man as God’s most important value, then He would, in essence, be worshiping Man. But God was at the center of Jesus’s life and ministry. Jesus loved people, but God was supremely valuable, the very center of Jesus’s life and ministry. If Jesus came mainly to love people because God valued them more than anything, His mission would have looked quite different. His ministry would have catered to their needs. Of course, He met needs, but He did not make people’s needs His ultimate mission. His eyes were set on the vindication of His Father’s glory. Ω