Everyone is Important to God

For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Gal 6:3 NKJV

This verse is difficult to understand. How can a son or daughter of God be nothing?

 When I was a new Christian, a pastor tried to correct my tendency to pride. He told me I was “nothing”.. Of course, he exercised so much power to judge and control me, that he seemed to be saying he was super important, but I was quite literally “nothing”. This is not Christlike ministry at all. It was spiritual abuse.

Paul was a Jews, as was Jesus. In Hebrew thinking we often find extreme black and white statements which are really shocking if we take them literally.

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. Lk 14:26 NKJV

Jesus also tells us to love on another. Paul tells husbands to love their wives. Parents who hate their children are the worst sinners on earth. So Jesus is not telling us to hate people, but rather to love God more then we love our families.

Likewise, in Galatians, Paul is telling us not to be self important but to consider other people to be at least as important as ourselves.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Php 2:3 NRSVue

Here again, Paul is not telling me I should go around feeling inferior to everyone. That is sick.

No. I see an insane man pulling faces and talking to himself. He is just as important to God as I am.

Years ago I was a language teacher. A young woman in my class was dressing and acting like a prostitute and I think she was. She was as important to God as myself.

So many churches teach women that their husbands are more important than they are, because men as supposedly wiser than women. The bible talks about doctrines of demons and I am convinced this is one of them.

I look around church meetings and I almost always see more women than men. Women who love God often find it hard to find a husband who is spiritually strong enough to be their married partner, and yet people rip bible texts out of context and tell us that the husband should always be the spiritual leader.

Clear eyed observation tells me this is dangerous nonsense.

Jesus tells you that you are dearly loved by the Heavenly Father. If you believe that Jesus suffered the punishment for your sins on the cross, if you accept the forgiveness that Jesus offers, you have eternal life.

You are a son or daughter of God for ever and ever. You cannot be a nobody. You are a very important somebody in God’s eyes, but you are not more important than anyone else. Why? Because God loves everyone without exception.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Jn 3:16 NRSVue