Saturday, May 6, 2023

 

Saturday, May 6, 2023


Psalm 86

Exodus 30:11-38

John 12:9-19


Observance: John, apostle and evangelist [If not observed on December 27]


The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less.


There is a certain supermarket chain that, as part of their orientation program for new employees, includes a session with a representative of the relevant trade union. This trade union representative comes in to the tea room and hands all the new employees a booklet and then works through it, showing them all their legal workplace entitlements. At the very end of this booklet there is a table, and it is a rather grim one, listing all the different body parts one might lose and injuries one might suffer while at work, and shows the monetary compensation for each. While losing a digit might equate to somewhere between three and four figures, other body parts can be valued up to six. One cannot help but wonder who decided those numbers, and how. One also gets the sense that the cost of human health seems pretty undervalued when put to a dollar amount.


God knows exactly how much a human life is worth. God also sees that a human life is not just the span of time from conception to bodily death; a human life exists in eternity past as part of God’s sovereign plan of creation, through to eternity in the future. What happens in this life neither increases nor diminishes the value of an individual human being.


God’s valuation of a human life is reflected in the cost He paid for those He came to save. The ransom given for our lives was nothing less than the blood of Christ. It is not the half-shekel that is important today in Exodus; it is the fact that everyone owes the same amount. And we now know, as people living in the post-Easter epoch, that the coin could only ever be a reminder of the cost God paid for us. The true value that was actually paid was the life of Jesus: the source of all life, given to and for us, for the atonement of our sins, so that we may enjoy eternal life with Him forever.

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