We continue our series by moving from merely understanding God’s fatherly love to receiving it in our hearts, asking the Spirit to make familiar truths fresh. Using the hymn “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us,” we talk about the New Testament reality that God has made us his treasure, and how this means accepting God’s evaluation of us rather than living from guilt, shame, pride, or low self-esteem.

We reflect on Romans 8:1 (“no condemnation”) and Ephesians 1, emphasizing that God doesn’t love us because we’re worthy—he makes us worthy because he loves us, and even God’s “inheritance” is his people made glorious.

We contrast “Karma Town” (earning worth) with the kingdom of grace (receiving worth), note how self-evaluation shapes how we judge others, and end with a brief contemplation of God smiling at us and the Lord’s Prayer.

00:00 Introduction

00:42 Prayer for Heart Change

01:38 Wretch Made Treasure

03:22 No Condemnation in Christ

04:49 Ephesians Prayer and Inheritance

06:58 Worthy Because Loved

08:12 Karma Town vs Graceland

10:44 How We Judge Others

12:45 Living as the Beloved

13:52 Contemplation and Lord's Prayer

Welcome back to In Light of the Cross.

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We're joyfully recording

these podcast episodes.

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leading up to Holy Week and

Easter and, what a joy to be

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talking about the love of God.

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Yeah.

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You know, when we started talking about

doing this series together, I knew it

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was gonna be a lot of work, and it has

been, but as we're actually recording

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them, it also makes me spiritually

excited or joyful, as you say.

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Yeah, it's good.

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I mean, we've been reflecting the past

couple days on God as our father and

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his love for us, and our hope today

is that we, as we continue that.

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Theme.

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We can not just understand this with our

minds, but receive this with our hearts.

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Right.

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Sometimes that's the hard part.

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Yeah.

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The greatest distance, I think

Chesterton said is that distance

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between our head and our hearts.

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Mm.

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Good quote.

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So let these, these ideas, these

truths, sink down deep into us and.

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Form us in the very core of our being.

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And so to that end, we recognize

we need the spirit's help.

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So let's just pause as we've been doing

and make your prayer that God would,

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maybe not necessarily reveal something

new to you, but make these truths new

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and fresh to you today so that they

may transform you to be the kind of

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person God has created you to be.

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So go ahead and pause and ask

for the spirit's help and just

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yield your time now to God.

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So a great hymn sung around this time

is How Deep The Father's Love for us.

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It says how deep the father's love

for us, how vast beyond all measure,

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that he should give his only son

to make a wretch, his treasure.

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What a great hymn.

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Yeah.

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It's, uh, is it true though that

God has made us his treasure?

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Yes, it certainly is.

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That's the great, great truth of the

New Testament, and it's hard to believe.

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It's hard, it's hard to believe.

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It's hard to receive.

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Sometimes I don't feel like it.

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No.

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Very often we feel more like a wretch.

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Yeah.

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and, and that's.

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That's not all bad.

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When we recognize that apart from

God, there is a certain wretchedness

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to us, but we have to remember,

we're not apart from God now.

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Yeah.

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So let's talk about this today,

this, this idea that, One of the

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implications of God's love for us

is that we ought to love ourselves.

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We ought to accept ourselves.

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Right?

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What, what that means that

we are God's treasure.

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Yeah.

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And there's a sense in which we do love

ourselves, in the sense that we seek

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our own good, you know, we feed our own

bodies, we take care of our own bodies.

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but here we're talking

more radically about.

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Accepting God's evaluation of ourselves.

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So it's not so much loving ourselves

in the sense of, trying to feel better

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about ourselves, but it's more just

making this radical break in our self

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understanding and rejecting our former

way of thinking about ourselves and

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our self-worth, and thinking about

and accepting God's evaluation.

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And I recall here the passage

that begins Romans eight, one.

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We've been camping out in Romans

eight this week, and it starts out

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with, there is now no condemnation

for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Yeah, it's, it's easy to recognize

all the ways that we fall short.

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We've been talking about

sin a lot in the podcast.

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We've been talking about brokenness.

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We've talked about our complicity with

sin and brokenness and, That truth has a

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way of sinking down deeply in, into us.

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the direction it should lead us into is

confession and repentance and recognition

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that we are forgiven and we are loved.

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But oftentimes it's hard to hold

those two, together because when

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we look at ourselves and how sinful

we are, it leads us more to guilt.

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Yes.

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And, and here's the thing that is the

primary tool of the enemy is guilt.

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And the reason it works so well is

because there's a half truth in it,

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is that we are guilty of many things.

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That's the half truth.

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The full truth is we are, we have

been guilty of many things, but the

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blood of Christ covers them all.

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Satan always deals with half truths, and

his goal is to make us feel condemned

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because when we feel condemned, we

are not spiritually alive towards God.

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If anything, we resent him or fear him.

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Mm.

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Instead of having a father who we draw

closer to, we view him as a judge that

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we try to hide from, like Adam and Eve.

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There's two places.

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in the first few chapters of Ephesians

where Paul describes how he prays

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for these Ephesians, and he prays

for them because he's heard of all

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the good things that God has done in

their lives, and he says in Ephesians

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one, for this reason, ever since I

heard about your faith in Jesus Christ

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and your love for all God people.

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I have not stopped giving.

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Thanks for you, remembering

you in my prayer.

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So what's motivating?

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This is the good things that God is doing.

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God has saved them.

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So how does he pray?

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I keep asking that the God of our

Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious

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father, may give you the spirit

of wisdom and revelation so

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that you may know him better.

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And I pray that the eyes of your heart

may be enlightened in order to know.

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So he wants us to have.

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Vision in our eyes, the eyes of

our heart to receive some truth.

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What?

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Well, three things.

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The hope to which he has called you, which

we talked a little bit about last episode.

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Okay.

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The riches of his glorious inheritance

in his holy people and his incomparably

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great power for those who believe.

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So three things, the hope that he's

called us to the riches of his glorious

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inheritance in his holy people and

his great power for those who believe.

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The second one.

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When we hear that phrase, the riches

of his glorious inheritance, we

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naturally think of it being applied

to us that it's our inheritance, the

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glorious inheritance that we receive.

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But I don't think that's the way it works.

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When you study the Greek very carefully,

the clear teaching seems to be that it

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is God's inheritance that he receives

through us, and it's a glorious thing.

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In other words.

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it's a description of this beautiful

thing that God feels when his

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people are perfected in glory.

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That's an amazing thought.

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Paul talks about the glory

of who we're gonna be.

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and he describes us as

being like, Jesus Christ.

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That's a glorious thing.

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We are going to be glorious and it's

gonna be a beautiful in God's eyes.

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So truly to make the wretch a treasure.

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Exactly.

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In God's treasure.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Here's the beautiful part, and if we

can get this in our mind, God does

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not love us because we are worthy.

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He makes us worthy because he loves us.

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that's the shift we have

to have in our mindset.

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So my unworthiness or my sin

or my failures don't negate

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God's love for me at all.

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Hmm.

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It seems like when you

talk about, love for self.

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There's maybe this continuum

where on one side of it, it's,

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it's total low self-esteem.

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I can't love myself.

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I'm, I'm broken.

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I've done this.

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I am this, this self narratives

that are unhealthy and destructive.

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And then on the other side

of this is I'm so great.

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I deserve everything.

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if I want it.

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but this, way in which I am in the

focal point and everything revolves

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around me and we all know that's right.

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Hey, the world doesn't revolve around

you, but then there is this place

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that's maybe not even on that same

continuum of you are loved because.

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You have been brought into the family

of God and therefore you are worthy.

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You are worthy because of God's love.

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And so the love that we have for ourselves

is out of this place of receiving

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God's great love for us, which he

demonstrated to us in the cross of Christ.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I was trying to think of a good analogy

for this, sometimes I've used before

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the idea of karma Town or Graceland.

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And in many ways, I think what you're

talking about here are two different

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coins of the two different kingdoms.

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And when you talked about the first

one, the coin of feeling either

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rejection and, depression and low

self-esteem or pride, to me those are

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two sides of the exact same coin, and

that's the currency of Karma Town.

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I love that.

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Tho, those are the two sides

of the, the spectrum there.

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Yeah.

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Low self-esteem or pride.

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Right?

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You're both wrong.

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Exactly.

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Because ultimately what I'm doing then is

I'm basing my evaluation of my worth on

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some combination of the world's values.

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And how I measure up to that, how

I think I'm measure up to that.

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And if I'm getting there and I'm

doing that well, at least compared

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to other people or more than

I was, then it leads to pride.

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If I'm not, then it leads to self despair

and self-condemnation and low self-esteem.

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Yeah, and I would take it one step

further to say that, that in the

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church, for those who are in Christ,

the evaluation that we have may not be

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the world's evaluation, but maybe some

internal church culture evaluation.

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Sure.

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So if we're talking about, Hey, as

Christians you should be reading your

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Bible or praying or doing this, or

that or that, that's the evaluation.

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That I either measure up to and

feel really good about myself

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or I don't measure up to, and I

feel really ashamed of myself.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, that's a good point.

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So that's another way the currency works,

but it's still the same currency because

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it's a currency of karma town, what I earn

and what I deserve and how I measure up.

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But the currency of the kingdom is grace.

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It's a free gift.

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Right?

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And so here.

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It's not at all about how I measure up

either according to my standards or the

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worlds or the churches or anything else.

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It's all about what I receive

and my self-worth is a gift.

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It's not an achievement of any kind.

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Hmm.

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So it's not what I think about myself

or what you think about me, it's about

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what I think God thinks about me.

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Yeah.

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And what his word says.

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Right.

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And.

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If it's true, could it be true?

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Romans eight, one, there is

now no condemnation for those

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who are in Christ Jesus.

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I mean, my goodness, how does that

liberate me to live my life in

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love of God and others and to have

confidence and esteem in those kinds

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of things that not just affect the

way I view myself, but then others?

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Because you were saying earlier that,

the way that we measure ourselves.

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our evaluation of ourselves is oftentimes,

the way that we evaluate others.

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Oh, exactly.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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If I'm fixated on evaluating myself on my

physical appearance, I'm naturally gonna

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evaluate other people on that as well.

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If I'm fixated on evaluating myself

on career success, I'm gonna evaluate

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other people by, by that as well.

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Same thing with money, same thing with,

you know, family success or whatever.

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Or again, even in the church,

yes, I read my Bible every day.

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Do you failure?

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but, but that idea, if we want to love.

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God and love others.

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Then the way that we love ourselves

or accept ourselves in light of

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what God says is true about us

is a significant factor here.

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Oh, it's crucial.

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You cannot really love other people

unless you accept God's evaluation of

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you and you accept that he loves you

completely just as you are, and that you

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have nothing to prove and nothing to hide.

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Because if you don't, if we're

still evaluating ourselves on

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the currency of Karma Town.

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Then I'm going to evaluate other

people based on whether they increase

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my value in that coinage, as it were.

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Mm-hmm.

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Or decrease it.

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This is where I love in, in Romans

12, Paul says, don't conform to

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the patterns of this world Right.

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But be transformed by the

renewing of your mind.

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Having this vision of these,

these two different currencies.

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Uh, is really helpful because we

want to reject our self-evaluation or

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the cultural evaluation of ourselves

in order to receive and trust.

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I mean, this is a hard thing.

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Again, it's not just something

we can agree with in our minds.

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It's something that needs to seep

down into us so that we live from

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this place of being the beloved.

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Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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It's hard.

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Because it goes against what our

culture says and it goes against

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what our enemy wants us to believe.

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we're swimming against the current here.

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Yeah..

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I wanna conclude with this, quote, one

of my favorite authors, Andre now, and

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wrote a book called Life of the beloved

spiritual living in a secular world.

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And he has this thought

that's been helpful for me.

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He says this and and hear this, if you,

if you're struggling with low self-esteem

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or shame or guilt, not feeling worthy

or enough, receive this from Ma Re now.

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And he says that self-rejection is the

greatest enemy of the spiritual life.

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Because it contradicts the sacred

voice that calls us the beloved.

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Being the beloved expresses the

core truth of our existence.

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That's a great quote.

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Being the beloved expresses the

core truth of our existence.

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Isn't that great?

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It is, and it's true.

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Yeah, so true.

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What does it look like to live as

those who are no longer condemned?

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Hmm.

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Accepted, loved, had nothing

to fear, had nothing to prove,

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nothing to fear, nothing to prove.

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Yeah.

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It's amazing.

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So I think for application,

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I'm gonna do something a

little, a little different here.

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Okay.

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We go a little different here.

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This is kind of an act

of contemplation now.

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Contemplation is just, trying to

use our time and our energy and our

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faculties that God gives us in order to

experience and receive the love of Jesus.

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So over the next minute

or so, as we pause.

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I want you to close your

eyes, open up your hands, and

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imagine God smiling at you.

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Just imagine God enjoying your presence.

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If it's true that he has given his

son to make a wretch a treasure,

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then God loves you and God likes you.

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So just as a practice, close your

eyes and try to imagine whatever

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this looks like in your, in your

mind's eye, God enjoying you.

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Smile at God, smiling at you.

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Let's conclude now by

praying the Lord's Prayer.

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Our father in heaven,

hallow, be your name.

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Your kingdom come, your will be

done on earth as it is in heaven.

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And give us today our daily bread.

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And forgive us our debts as we

also have forgiven our debtors.

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And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

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Amen.

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Good.

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Mm.