Jesus did not just pay for a mass of humanity. He paid that price for individual people. If you had been the only person to ever receive His sacrifice, He would have paid the same price just for you. Can you imagine that? You are His treasure! He was willing to go to any length to enable you to fellowship with Him.
When you see the price that was paid from that perspective, you begin to get the impact of the value God places upon you. Value is determined by the price that is paid. Your value is revealed when you see the price God paid to make you His own.
What is it about you that would cause God to go to such extreme measures on your behalf? His plan for you was fellowship with Him. When He sees you. He sees all you can be in Jesus Christ. When He sees the world, He sees all each person in it could be.
When you see this, you see as God sees. It will lift you into intimate fellowship with Him. This will change the way you see other people. It will lift your personal dignity and self-esteem. You begin to see the worth of people everywhere, because you see what they could be. You have a new view of your worth because you see yourself lifted.
In Titus 2:14, Paul expresses it this way under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: "Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."
This redemption brings a purity with it. This terminology—"to purify for Himself a peculiar people"—has been largely misunderstood, but when examined, it reinforces exactly what we have been looking at.
The word peculiar does not describe people who are ridiculous or strange but, rather, people who belong to God, who are His possession: "Â…then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people" (Ex. 19:5).
God was saying that His people, Israel, would be a treasure to Him above all other nations. This places us into the same pure fellowship that God intended when He placed man in the Garden.
Excerpt permission granted by Dennis Burke Ministries