By Charles Gerber
People buy and sell some outrageous items on eBay. I heard about someone who tried to sell an elastic band you put around your head to hold your mobile phone to your ear. (It sounded an awful lot like a rubber band.) No one bid on it. (What a surprise!) However, someone actually did buy a half-eaten taco!
Yard sales are places you can find some great bargains, but at auctions you are more likely to pay a premium on your purchase. Perhaps the most expensive sculpture sold at auction was L”Homme qui marche, created by Alberto Giacometti. Its price tag was $104.3 million. In 1993 a treasured porcelain vase sold for $1.2 million.
The value of an object is determined by the seller, not the purchaser. The seller can stick any price he wants on an item, but it doesn”t mean he will get it. The purchaser, in deciding what he is willing to pay for the item, also determines its value. Remember one man”s treasure is another man”s trash.
Paul writes about Christians being purchased or bought. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20). He also writes, “You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men” (1 Corinthians 7:23),
What price did God pay to redeem us? It was his Son. Why would God pay such a high price? Isaiah 43:4 gives four reasons. “Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life.” This is how God sees all of mankind!
God sees us as precious, honored, loved, and exchangeable. Jesus was our exchange. Paul writes about this exchange in 2 Corinthians 5:21. Why did Jesus make the great exchange for us? It is because we are of great value to our Creator.
“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18, 19).
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Charles Gerber is the founder of Christian Counseling Services in Muncie, Indiana, and has served in this ministry more than 25 years. The counselor and author also serves as an elder with University Christian Church and as an adjunct professor with Central Christian College of the Bible, Moberly, Missouri.
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