My Dear Friend,

In this utterly materialistic world, we are evaluated and rated, consciously or unconsciously, by our monetary and material wealth. Our human worth is reduced to one thing: our "net worth" - the sum of our total assets less our total liabilities.

Net Worth is of No Worth!

By this "net worth" standard, Jesus of Nazareth was a shockingly worthless man. So far as we know, He didn't own a home. Or land. Or gold or silver. Or jewels. Or the typical means of transportation in His culture: a donkey! Or even a bed in a boarding house, "The Son of Man has no place to lay his head" (Luke 9:58, NIV). The one material possession He had of any worth, a seamless robe, was stripped from Him during His crucifixion, and gambled away by His Roman executioners. Thus, in the end, Jesus' net worth was no worth!

Yet He was, and still is, the worthiest, richest man to ever walk the earth! Jesus was filled with a different kind of wealth. His was spiritual wealth, heavenly riches, treasures of the eternal world which the materialistic children of this temporal world cannot see or understand. He was a walking, talking, bodily treasure chest overflowing with priceless divine stores of: truth, grace, Holy Spirit, wisdom, knowledge, insight, prophetic foresight, and spiritual power! Such wealth is so vast, so incomparable that it transcends our ability to quantify it. It cannot be measured, weighed, or numbered. Perhaps the Proverbs' description comes closest to describing Jesus' indescribable wealth:

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom [good judgment], and ... understanding [insight]; for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her (Proverbs 3:13-15).

Despite Jesus' massive spiritual affluence, He died penniless and possessionless, with a net worth of ... zero! Doesn't this show that our system of valuing people by the value of their material possessions is blindly inaccurate? Indeed, it is not Christ but this net-worth valuation that is of no worth!

Our Standard Should be Different

Spiritually minded Christians hold, and are subject to, a totally different standard of evaluation. Since the dead in Christ have already entered the eternal world, they have been fully enlightened as to our heavenly Father's system of assessing us. In brief, He does so by our "Christ worth" - the value of the life of Jesus deposited in us by New Birth, empowered by the Baptism with the Spirit, and gradually developed and matured as we live obediently in our daily trials the rest of our lives.

Knowing this, Satan tries to keep our Christ life under-fed, stunted, inactive, and thus never steadily actualized. Consequently, we never become like Jesus, thinking and living like Him, showing His grace, spreading His words, and doing His works. Thus, our potential Christ worth - or possible value to God's kingdom - is never realized and our actual Christ worth is reduced to little or nothing.

Rather than use the vast spiritual riches Christ has given us (His divine nature, Spirit, Word, and gifts) to change lives, make disciples, and build God's kingdom, we squander them, preferring to pursue our own self-serving ends in this life.

Sadly, though regenerated and biblically taught, too many of us still live by the world's worthless net-worth system. We are still living to stockpile cash and goods as if we were going to live forever in this fallen world and had never been told of eternal riches. If we don't recover ourselves, at life's end we will be spiritual paupers when we could be like our Lord - spiritually rich in eternal wealth!

To avoid this, after being saved and baptized with the Spirit, we should seriously commit ourselves to seek Christ daily, thank and praise Him often, feed richly on His Word, and refill our souls regularly with His Spirit. Once established in this spiritually rich lifestyle, we should reach out to minister in His great harvest field however and wherever He, the "Lord of the harvest," calls and gifts us to serve (Matthew 9:38). If so, our Christ worth will increase daily. And if we continue living this way, our Christ worth will eventually become great. Sometimes very great, bearing "thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted [in us]” (Mark 4:20, NLT)!

But remember this: none of us will fully know our actual Christ worth until we stand in His presence at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Not until we enter the eternal world will we see all Christ has done in and through us in this world.

Meanwhile, we should apply ourselves to learning how to build and increase our Christ worth.

How to Build and Increase Your Christ Worth

We begin our quest for Christ worth by laying aside all our dreams of having a great net worth by life's end. We cannot enthusiastically seek two ends - especially two polar opposites! - at the same time. Christ decreed Christians cannot serve God and "mammon," or deposited securities trusted in or loved more than God (Matthew 6:24). With some of us, having a significant net worth has been our conscious aim; with others it has been an unconscious driver, never spoken yet ever present in the back of our minds. Why? Everywhere we look in this world, we see people of all races and continents feverishly seeking monetary and material gain, and worshipfully admiring those who attain it. Daily, hourly, the sights and sounds of this Cult of Mammon woos us to join the mass worship. We are not ready to pursue what is truly valuable until we lay aside this false god and quest.

We may then commit our entire lives, all our remaining days, to seek spiritual riches, heavenly values, the things God places stock in, the eternal things. The richest Man in world history left us this memorable command to guide our personal ambition: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God [the King, and His biblically revealed values], and His righteousness [standard of what is right], and all these things [earthly needs] shall be added unto you [placed within your reach]" (Matthew 6:33). If we don't abandon our ambition for worldly values and commit to the eternal values, in the end we will be spiritually poor . . . eternally! So far as we know from the Scriptures, the way we live this life determines our rewards and status in the next . . . forever!

With these truths fresh in your mind, are you willing to make this radical shift in values? Ready to hunger for eternal riches only from this day forward?

Please don't misunderstand. We should still work diligently, earn money, buy material things, and manage our monetary and material affairs wisely as long as we are in this world. Without such resources we cannot support ourselves and our families, much less the kingdom works of our churches, ministries, charities, and missionaries. But once we make the great shift to seek Christ worth with our whole hearts, we no longer see things the same. No longer do we consider accumulating money and material wealth the measure of our personal worth, as determining who we are and how we should evaluate ourselves and others. Ready to begin your quest for Christ worth?

Pointers for Seeking Christ Worth - and Highest Joy!

Here are some pointers to guide your life journey for eternal values:

• Seek the humility of Christ, who lived obediently in complete obscurity for thirty years in Nazareth before entering full ministry.

• Seek the amazing devotion of Daniel, who prayed and thanked God three times daily and remained unwaveringly faithful to God in the face of deadly trials.

• Seek the spirituality of Joseph, who stayed very close to God and faithfully used his spiritual gifts during the lowest season of his life in Potiphar's prison (Genesis 40:1-19).

• Seek the determination of Nehemiah, who pursued God's will single-mindedly when surrounded by hostile Samaritans and tried by indolent nobles and disloyal Jews in his own company.

• Seek Timothy's humble willingness to be trained by your "Pauls," or wise, godly leaders whose call and commitment to Christ and His kingdom work is confirmed by their Christlike lives and fruitful ministries.

• Seek the loyalty Ruth exhibited to stay true to God and His suffering people when while doing so she had no prospects of earthly blessings or honors.

• Seek the commitment to biblical studies held by the scholar, Apollos, whose biblical knowledge and debating skills greatly helped the Corinthian church when under attack by the local Jewish synagogue (Acts 18:24-28).

• Seek the apostle Paul's sacrificial commitment to minister to God's people, go on God's missions, and take the gospel to the unreached, whatever it cost him.

• Seek to study and share End-Times Bible prophecies to bless others, just as the apostle John discovered and recorded the Revelation that has blessed the whole church for nearly twenty centuries.

• Prayerfully seek new gifts, works, and goals authorized by the Scriptures, so you can be more of a blessing to God's people than you have ever been.

• Adopt as your life goals the very things Jesus requested in His high priestly prayer (John 17), chiefly that you may live in sanctification and unity, and that Christ's very life and love may indwell you more fully every day.

If you live for these and other "things above" (Colossians 3:2), in the end, whatever your net worth at your death or the church's translation, your Christ worth will be great - enhancing Christ's glory and filling you with the highest possible joy: "These things we write unto you, that your joy may be full" (1 John 1:4). This supreme joy cannot ever be taken or diminished, since you will forever know that you let Christ do everything He wanted to do in and through you in this world.

His Worth . . . Seen in Us!

Today, please give Christ the reins to your life ... and never take them back. Let Him have unhindered permission to guide your path and life-works by His Holy Spirit, "for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are [living as] the children of God" (Romans 8:14). With each new day, gladly yield your preferred path to His, knowing there is no way better than His way.

As you humbly trust and obey Him, may He manifest His truth through your lips; demonstrate His love through your sacrifices; reveal His holiness through your purity; show His compassion through your forgiveness; showcase His righteousness through your unbiased fairness; show His submission to His Father through your submission to Him; and give others a glimpse of His secret devotional fellowship with His Father (Luke 5:16) through your habitual seeking of Him in the secret place (Matthew 6:6-7).

May He also demonstrate His deep respect for His Father through your works and worship rendered in the fear (awe) of God; remind others of His cross-carrying as they see you carry your cross for His Name's sake; and reveal His overcoming power in you by carrying you through fiery trials of hateful opposition in peace, joy, grace toward your adversaries, and unwavering steadfastness in your labors.

As you live this way, Christ's potential is fully released, made increasingly actual in you, and placed on open display for all to see, even in today's distracted church and sin-blinded world. And they will wonder at the wonder they behold in you: Christ living again in one of His born-again ones! As they ponder your overcoming life, they will glorify your Father who is in heaven: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). Said Paul, when Christ's life was actualized in his life, "They glorified God in me" (Galatians 1:24).

"But," you may say, "this is not possible for us today! It is too much to ask of our sin-drenched, strife-filled, self-serving generation. It's too incredible of a reversal for today's lukewarm, 'Laodicean' Christians to make." If so, my friend, Christianity is a monumental lie, a spiritually impotent, empty religious facade! You see, both of these claims cannot be correct. One or the other is wrong. And you must choose which it is.

Christianity is either the most supernaturally transformative thing to ever visit this desperately sick, sin-twisted, fatally fallen world, or it is what God's Word says it is: the very awesome "power of God" (Romans 1:16) working through the redemption of Christ to smash the power of sin and change sinners into saints, rebels into worshipers, and Christ-resisters into Christ-revealers. This, and nothing less, is the true gospel.

When Peter and John stood before the Sanhedrin, even its spiritually blind jurists, who had only days earlier sent Jesus to the cross, immediately recognized their Christ worth: "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned [rabbinically untaught] and ignorant men [not schooled in Pharisaic or Sadducean dogma], they marveled, and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13). This text tells us Christ's holy boldness and willingness to suffer death, if necessary, to do His Father's will, was now actualized in Peter's and John's defiance of the Sanhedrin's arrogant gag order and their willingness to suffer their own executions, if necessary, for Christ's sake.

The rich character traits, spirit, and courageous faith of the Nazarene was shining brightly through His closely abiding, utterly loyal, Spirit-filled disciples. Earlier the same day Peter famously acknowledged he and John had no net worth. "Silver and gold have we none" (Acts 3:6). They had something far better now: Christ worth!

This Spiritually Rich Life is Yours For the Taking!

Oh, what spiritually rich lives Peter, John, Paul, and countless others since have lived! Lives filled with Christ worth. And the same fabulously rich spiritual life is yours for the taking.

Jesus is personally calling you at this moment to seek not earthly wealth in this passing world but heavenly riches in the eternal world: "I counsel thee to buy of me [by persevering obedience in fiery trials] gold tried in the fire [proven, purified, permanentized faith, and deep, experiential knowledge of God], that thou mayest be rich [spiritually rich, eternally wealthy in God, or in Christ worth]" (Revelation 3:18).

So answer His call. Abandon the quest for mammon and launch a new trek for Christ worth. And share the wealth! Endeavor daily to reveal the riches of His grace, truth, and power to this spiritually poor world. Until He comes!

Maranatha,

Dr. Greg Hinnant

GREG HINNANT MINISTRIES