Does the Cross Reveal YOUR Worth?

Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. This segment, by the way, also aired on our podcast. If you don't listen to our podcast, you definitely want to head over to fightingforthefaith .com and subscribe to our podcast because we do 10 hours or more of this type of discernment work every single week, long-form discernment, to help teach you how to properly understand God's Word, properly distinguish between law and gospel, and understand the sound biblical categories of sin, grace, repentance, and the forgiveness of sins, and even a Christ-centered hermeneutic.

So our podcast is a valuable resource. So here, what we're going to do now, we're going to look at Todd White. Todd White. This is a fellow that is becoming quite popular and let me get this up. There we go.

And Todd White has... we're going to be looking at segments from two videos where he claims in one video that the cross reveals your value and the other one that, you know, he asks the question, how much are you worth?

And it kind of works off of the principle in, you know, in the economy that something is only worth what you pay for it. So, since it costs you to be saved, the blood of Christ Himself, that must mean you have inherent worth.

Because, you know, heaven was willing to go bankrupt in order to save you. The problem is this, is that we actually have clear text in Scripture that revealed to us the reasons why God, well, had compassion on us and even pity.

And it's not because of our inherent worth. And so no scripture actually says what we're gonna hear Todd White say. But here's the first clip. I want you to hear it so you can at least understand what it is that we're gonna be looking at when we look at the biblical text, at least what Scripture reveals in this context.

Here we go. The cross to me isn't the revelation of my sin. The cross is actually the revealing of my value. So sin is horrible and it covered this. We were covered by sin, but Jesus paid a price.

He covered by sin? No, actually we became sinful by nature. That's what Ephesians chapter 2 verse 3 says, that we are by nature objects of God's wrath.

Who knew no sin became sin, so that I might become something. And so if he became sin, so that I might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, then the cross is the revelation of my value. See, in the world, if I'm gonna pay for something, I'm only gonna pay what something's worth.

Like if I were to sell somebody a house and a realtor and say, listen, this house right here, I want you to give me, you know, two and a half million for this house, but it's only worth $70 ,000 in the market.

It doesn't make any sense and you'd never give somebody that for it.

The Cross Reveals God's Love, Not Human Worth

Yeah, now notice, this is human reasoning based upon current market conditions and the way the market currently operates. But no biblical text says what he's saying. He's deducing it from his understanding of how the market works.

And by the way, Todd White recently purchased a really expensive home. He works for a gateway church. Yeah, it's a ginormous mansion, by the way.

It's not worth it. And a car is the same. If you were gonna go buy a new car and that car was, you knew it was worth $22 ,000 brand new, right? And that was the sticker price on it. But they wanted to charge you four times that.

You would never do it because it wasn't worth it. Well, if something on the earth, the price that you pay for it determines its value, how much did heaven pay? How much did Jesus pay to get us back? I mean heaven went bankrupt.

So the value of a person is determined by the price that was paid for it. And when you see the price that heaven paid for you on the cross, your whole life will change.

Now, it's true. It's absolutely true that, you know, heaven paid quite a bit for us to be saved. But the whole argument is based upon human reasoning, not a biblical revelation. So the idea is in order for something to be a Christian doctrine, it actually has to appear in Scripture.

No text says what he just said. In fact, there are texts that give us the reason why God saved us, and it's not the reasons that he just gave from his market savvy reason. Now, let me give you another example of Todd White saying pretty much the same thing.

This is part of his standard shtick, if you would. This guy's a false teacher. You want to avoid him like the plague. But here's Todd White. How much are you worth? Here we go.

The value was placed on my life was determined by the cost that was paid for me. See, the cross isn't just the revelation of my sin. It's the revealing of my value. Something underneath of that sin must have been of great value for heaven to go bankrupt to get me back.

So, I mean, I'm just the bee's knees. I really am a diamond in the rough. I'm, wow, I'm so amazing. Notice how this takes your ego and just puffs it up ginormously.

Jesus paid such a high price for me on that tree, and when I see that, I see my value. So when I look at the cross, I can't sing that song, I'll never know how much it cost. I have to sing, I need to know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross.

Yeah, because I need to know what my worth is. Now, what does the Scripture say in this regard? So we're gonna look at several passages, and we're gonna look at Deuteronomy chapter 7, verses 6 through 8.

We're gonna look at Isaiah chapter 54, 7 through 8. We're gonna also look at Exodus 34, 6 through 7, and we're going to also spend some time in Romans chapter 5, 6 through 10, and 1 John 4, 7 through 10.

I want to give you those ahead of time, so if you want to look them up, you can. But we're gonna start with, why did God save the people of Israel? What was the reason why he saved them? And we're gonna see something about God here.

Deuteronomy chapter 7, starting at verse 6, says this,. For you are a people holy to Yahweh your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you, and chose you, for you were the fewest of all of the peoples. But it is because Yahweh loves you, and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh of Egypt.

The idea being this, it's because God loves you. It's not because you have inherent value. In fact, the whole point that the Lord was making regarding saving Israel, it's not because you guys had great inherent worth.

Yeah, like far from it. No, it was because of my great love for you. And this is what we're going to see over and again in Scripture, is it's because of God's nature. It's because of his love that he saved us.

Isaiah 54, verses 7 and 8 say this,. And so it's not because of our worth, it's because of God's love and his compassion. What compelled him to save us, for him to send the only begotten Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, suffers under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, buried, for our sins and for our salvation.

It wasn't because of our worth, it was because of his compassion. God had pity on us in our sinful state. In fact, we learned that this is the very nature and glory of God. If you look at Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 and 7, we're going to note something here.

In the previous chapter, Exodus 33, Moses asked to see the glory of God, and God basically said, no, you can't see that and live, but I will cause my glory to pass by you, and I'll hide you in the cleft of the rock and put my hand over you, and as my glory passes by you, then I'll remove my hand and you'll be able to see the backside.

But so as the Lord passed by, this is the glory of the Lord. Here's what it says in Exodus 34. The Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

See, this is the glory of God. This is his nature. Keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.

This is the glory of God. He is merciful. This is his nature. He is kind and compassionate, slow to anger, forgiving. But see, it's not because we have such inherent value and worth. In fact, Romans chapter 5 kind of makes that point.

Romans 5 verses 6 through 10 says this,. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.

But God demonstrates or shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. You see, a sinner, an ungodly one, has no value in the kingdom at all. See, God had compassion, pity, mercy upon us.

For while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified. That means, by the way, justified means to be declared righteous by his blood. How much more shall we be saved from the wrath of God?

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of the Son. How much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life? If anything, the cross reveals the magnitude and the worth of God's love, his mercy, his compassion, even for the ungodly, for sinners, for his enemies.

That's...

You see, it's a revelation of God's love and his nature, his compassion. And this is really what 1st John chapter 4 verses 7 through 10 is getting at, when it says this, Beloved, let us love one another.

For love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. And in this is the love of God, which was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. So Todd White's metaphor, you know, the market metaphor, oh, the cross reveals our value, our worth.

I must have really been worth something for God to be able to be willing to, you know, pay the ultimate price in the blood of the Son of God. I have to be so amazing. The emphasis is on the wrong syllable.

It's not that we are so amazing, it's that God is. It's amazing to believe that God would send his Son to bleed and die for me and for you, who are sinners, who are ungodly, who were his enemies. It is because of his great love, his compassion, even his pity, that he has done this.

And it reveals his great love, not our great worth. Todd White has it totally wrong, backwards, upside down, and inside out. And he is narcissistically filling people's heads with nonsense. And like I've already pointed out, no biblical text says any of the things he's saying.

He just thought that up in his little sinful mind, because Todd White is about Todd White. I think you get the point. Now, if you found this helpful and would like to share this with other people, that'd be a great way to support us.

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Until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ, and His vicarious death on the cross, for all of your sins. Amen.