I don’t think anyone who has faced being ridiculed or slandered has found it to be a pleasant experience. An attack on our worth or enduring a heated or unkind statement meant to hurt our feelings can be painful and crushing.
Dignity! That is a very important word. It is important because everyone has it within their possession and it is a gift to be
honored and guarded, but not thrown away. Dignity is defined as “the
state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect.” This is a quality
that should be found within all Christians as they see all others as equal in
worth and value in the sight of God.
God created us in His image which makes us all
equal in worth and value. When we evaluate ourselves, we know we are not greater or less than any other person. We can be assured of being
unconditionally loved by God. Psalm 139:13-14,
“For you created my inmost being; you
knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise
you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.”
Have
you ever thought to consider that you can actually strip yourself of your own
dignity? That is, be victim of the self-inflicted, do-it-to-yourself, willful choice
of lowering your own dignity? It is possible! How?
We
surrender our dignity when: we live below God’s standards. We don’t try very hard
or make much effort to resist the world or to live according to the commands of
God. We do the exact opposite of Romans 12:1-2 and actually become conformed to
the world because we are not cognitively working on ‘renewing our minds.’
Living
by the justifications of the world and lowering to its standards strips us of
our dignity as Christians who are called to live far and above such standards.
Succumbing to the twisted norms of what is accepted in behavior, doctrine,
conduct and lifestyle are not only unbecoming of a Christian, but the lowering
of one’s dignity.
Peter
even addressed this issue. 2 Peter 2:20-22,
“And when people escape from the
wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then
get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before. It
would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know
it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. They prove
the truth of this proverb: ‘A dog returns to its vomit.’ And another says, ‘A
washed pig returns to the mud.’”
We were
created to know, love, and serve God, and we should live our lives in such a
way as to reflect that pursuit. We must maintain our dignity by producing the “fruit
of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23) that comes through a personal, loving, and
intimate relationship with Jesus (John 15:1-11).
Don’t
live beneath your own dignity as a Christian. Comprehend not only your worth
and value, but the fact that you have been bought at the extremely high price
of Jesus’ own blood. 1 Corinthians 6:20,
“for God bought you with a high price. So
you must honor God with your body.”
Don’t compromise your human and
Christian dignity in order to maximize your pursuit of worldly treasure,
success, or pleasure. No “quick fix” or “easy way out” that the world may offer
is ever worth the price of your dignity.
You
are saved, holy, royal, priestly, and precious to God who created you. Live in
the dignity of an adopted child of God, sharing in the divine nature (2 Peter
1:4) by living holy, sanctified, and righteous.
Christians,
let us recognize our dignity, worth and value as a son and daughter of God our
Father. Let us commit never to cave into the pressures of the world or succumb
to the temptations of the flesh. Living any other way other than sanctified and
holy is beneath our spiritual dignity.