So last week I turned 18, and to celebrate, I decided to do the most 18-year-old-ish thing I could think of at the time and so I grabbed an R-rated movie to watch. (This wasn’t technically my first R-rated movie but it felt sort of special because I got to watch it on my own without having to ask anybody). Anyways, I decided to watch “The Passion of the Christ” because I’d never seen it before but I’ve always wanted to, and I thought I would just share my response/ the conversation I had with God about it afterward.

I got up this morning and went down into the basement storage room of the girls dorm (which I frequently use as my quiet space to spend time with God), and I sat down because I wanted to talk to God about this movie. What was sort of haunting me about this movie was not what I had watched, but my response to it. All I can remember thinking as I watched the portrayal of Jesus as He dragged himself toward the cross was “Ew, that’s God?” I felt kind of heartless because everybody else who has seen this movie told me it was so powerful and that it really moved their hearts, some to the point of weeping. But I didn’t really cry that much. Rather than emotional compassion and feeling amazed at how much God loves me, I was honestly just filled with disgust.

So I went before God and I basically said this: “There’s no way I’m worth that. God, you must be out of your mind.”

Nobody could possibly be worth that. Not me, not anyone. He should have destroyed us all. He certainly would have been right in doing so. And instead we see this depiction of Jesus-the very one and only Son of God, God himself, the One who made all the earth, dragging his half dead body in the dirt and spitting up blood like a baby, and clinging to the people around him because he can’t even stand up on his own. And we spit in his face! And we laughed at him like it was all some really stupid joke or something. And who got to go free while Jesus was beaten to a pulp out there? Some toothless murderer! Us!

I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. We’re not worth that. Yet I refuse to believe that God is a fool. There is no way He would give all this and go through all this, for nothing. I know that’s not how He works because He wastes nothing and does nothing in vain. He would never let this happen unless He had some profound motive for it.

I had to ask myself the question, so what are we worth to God? That is such a huge question, one I don’t believe our tiny human minds can ever really catch hold of the answer to. But God does answer this question for us, and He explains it in as many ways as we could possibly understand:

He tells us He is a father, and we are His own children, His sons and His daughters

that He is a husband, and we are His beautiful bride

He is a teacher, and we are His favorite students

He is a Lord, and we are His beloved servants

He is the artist, the potter, and we are His clay, His hand-crafted work of art

He is a shepherd, and we are His precious sheep

He is a king, and we are His glorious treasure

The list goes on and on.

All over the Bible are these descriptions and analogies that clearly say to God we are worth something, to Him. And it is in the cross that we find just how much we are worth to God. Oh He must love us with the craziest, most radical, most loyal, most deep and immense love we would ever even imagine!!

I can still see in my mind that picture of Jesus crawling through the dirt and covered in blood. And I can hear God say, “Yes, to Me, you’re worth even that.”

So let’s just pray that we would have the power, together, with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses all knowledge-that we may be filled with the full measure of all the fullness of God. And let’s worship this God who can do immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine and just praise him “to you, Jesus, be the glory forever and ever amen!” (Ephesians 3:-21)

Thank You, Jesus!