One of the most common words circulating around Christian rhetoric and the verbiage within our own local congregations is the word “worthy.”
I can’t recall the number of church lessons I’ve had centered around the idea of worthiness. But it wasn’t until recently I realized we have been missing the mark in all those lessons.
For centuries of Christianity, faithful and unfaithful followers of Christ have had their own concerns with whether they are deserving of the love, blessings, or judgment of God. This idea of worthiness as a moral compass and a determinant for God’s love and blessings has driven the actions of hundreds of thousands of men and women over centuries of devotion.
It’s woven into the cultures of the world today – worthiness seems to always be dependent on one’s ability to follow through with certain expectations and rules. It’s based on a standard of perfection (and we live in a world obsessed with the idea of perfection). The better you are at following all the rules and standards and expectations and norms, the more righteous of a disciple you must be. In our modern-day rhetoric and in the English language, “worthy” comes from the root word “worth.” We tie our own value and identity to our ability to keep up with standards, often measured in terms of perfection or completeness.
Worth is something we think we have to earn.
The English language inherits a deeply Latinized, legal, and economic worldview. In this system, worth is a transaction. You are an employee, and God is the boss. If you clock in, follow the rules, and perform flawlessly, you receive the wage of “worthiness.” Under this lens, if you sin or struggle, your worth plummets. You are left constantly trying to perform your way back into God’s good graces.
No wonder we can find it so exhausting to keep the commandments and do all the things He has asked us to do. It can feel impossible and discouraging.
While I don’t dismiss the reality of our worthiness before God as being tied to the proper use of our agency, I do think we often miss God’s grace in our endeavors to feel worthy according to the standards we improperly impose on ourselves.
Worthiness, as Christ and scriptures define it, is not necessarily the worthiness I learned growing up.
I love looking up the definitions of words I read in the scripture in Hebrew. Hebrew is such a beautifully complex language, and I have found that the definitions of Hebrew words greatly expand my capacity to understand the richness and depth of certain principles that in English sound rather simple and plain. So, here’s one of my favorite findings.
When I researched the word “worthy” in Hebrew, I found that the primary definition is “ra’uy,” meaning “to see.”
Worthiness then, according to the scriptures, is actually our willingness to be seen by God.
This turns the whole idea of worthiness on its head.
This creates a vital distinction: in English, you have to prove you deserve love; in Hebrew, God simply sees you and asks you to allow yourself to be seen by Him. The English definition states, “You Are What You Do.” The Hebrew definition declares, “You Are Whose You Are”
One is performance-based and transactional. The other is relationship-based and declarative.
Something is worthy because God sees it, acknowledges it, and deems it fit or appropriate for His purpose, not because it earned its value. That’s it.
While the English mind views worth as a wage you earn through performance, the Hebrew mind views worth as a status you inherit through Hesed.
In Hebrew, because worthiness (ra’uy) means “to be seen” and love (hesed) means “loyal commitment to the weak,” your worth is instantly decoupled from your production.
You do not, and cannot, perform to gain worth. Instead, you try to perform good deeds out of the security of already being deemed worthy. God’s hesed means He looked at your inability to save yourself, chose to love you anyway, and obligated Himself to your good.
The Hebrew ra’uy says that we are called worthy because of what Jesus did, not because of who we are in our own strength. His love does not wait for us to counterbalance the scale through good behavior. Instead, God looks past our flaws and failings, sees us through the lens of His grace, and declares us seen, fit, and worthy.
When you read scriptures about grace through this Hebrew lens, you realize that you are free from the exhausting treadmill of performance. You are seen (ra’uy), you are fiercely protected by a loyal covenant (hesed), and you are secure.
So, God does not ask me to prove myself with perfectionist standards. Actually, He asks me to exercise faith in Him and prove Him capable and perfect. We got it all mixed up.
If you try to earn your worth from God, you are accidentally insulting His character. You are trying to pay for something that is not for sale. It is a debt already paid. Understanding this then, our obedience and our willingness to follow His commandments then becomes active worship out of gratitude. Knowing this and understanding who I am to God, I will want to do my best to follow His teachings and be worthy in that way. And when anything is done out of love rather than obligation, it becomes infinitely easier (don’t you think that’s why the Savior did what He did too?).
When the Hebrew scriptures speak of God’s love, they describe a love that precedes your existence. He only asks us to allow ourselves to be seen by Him. Why wouldn’t we, when we have this understanding of His goodness and grace? There’s nothing to be afraid of there.
Worthiness is vulnerability on display before a loving Creator.
Think about any relationship you have that you value and feel closeness with – it could be a family member or a friend or a loved one. I can almost guarantee that the reason you feel close with them is because you have been vulnerable with them. You have revealed to them perhaps not the prettiest parts of yourself (but who said those parts weren’t beautiful anyways?).
They know the things you fear and the things you struggle with and the thoughts that maybe don’t escape your lips to the average acquaintance. Parts of yourself you’d maybe rather keep hidden. There is a level of trust and exposure with them. And not only that, there is a level of love and respect and acceptance reciprocated in those relationships. The love they have for you is not based on your perfection but based on your ability to be vulnerable and human. God asks us to do the same.
The best relationships are hallmarked by the individual’s ability to be seen by the other, which takes active vulnerability.
Love is active vulnerability.
It’s a choice to be allow yourself to be seen in that way. It requires you to put yourself in a position to be hurt.
I wonder if maybe that’s what we fear most?
Do we worry that our vulnerability before God will be met with harshness? With rebuke? With, heaven forbid, His disappointment in us? Do we worry that being seen by God will somehow mean that we leave feeling more hurt than when we first came to His feet?
Who put that fear in our minds? Does that come from God? Surely, it cannot come from Him who is named Emmanuel or “God with us.” Whose name is Prince of Peace. Redeemer. Light of the world. The Good Shepherd. Savior. There must be an adversary and that must be his key message to us: that God is someone to be afraid of, not someone we can be loved by. And certainly not safe to be seen by. What a good lie.
But you try to name one story in all of scriptural cannon where vulnerability before God is not met with abundant compassion and mercy. I’m not saying God does not also correct and invite His children to be better when necessary, but name one story where at the end of it all, the humble seeker was turned away by God and rejected by Him after a vulnerable encounter.
I cannot think of a single one.
God does not ever walk away from vulnerability.
The story of the prodigal son. A son in the depths of humility and despair. Met with open arms and a celebration. The story of the woman taken in adultery. Met with compassion and forgiveness. The story of Peter. Met with understanding and encouragement. The story of Adam and Eve. Met with abundance and promise. My story. Met with love and grace.
You see, the real story of worthiness and the real story about the character of God is that He requires our participation, not our perfection.
I believe perhaps the Savior’s most beautiful invitation to us as His children is the invitation to be seen.
To be seen just as we are. In all our glorious, imperfect, beautiful human nakedness and frailty.
Isn’t that what we’re all yearning for?
To be able to come out of hiding?
To be seen.
And to be loved despite it?
Or maybe even because of it?