Our worth… God's glory

God says we alone are in his image (nothing else created in all the universe is LIKE God in the same way as we are!). Because of this, we are of tremendous value and worth to God, for only we can reflect God (who is of infinite, eternal, and absolute worth) back to him and out to others in a way no other creature or created thing can. Other than his eternal Son (begotten, not created), who is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, we have the greatest capacity for this. 

We were created to recognize and take part in God himself, the most valuable (most High) of all, and made to partake of infinite value/love in Him. Our worth and value are precisely because we can - have the capacity to - ¹show forth, bring attention to, and raise awareness of the greatest and most worthy of all beings, only second to Christ himself, our "big" brother - Hebrews 2:11,17;  Romans 8:29. As creatures, only we can receive God's love; appreciate and enjoy his glory in a manner equivalent to God's (Jesus) receiving and enjoying it. 

Incredible as all this is, we reject this because we prefer to be our own god (dumb, right?). We value our "independence" more than our true joy and highest good i.e. which is being in union with and partaking of the Highest, most significant of all beings. 

Being like God, in his image, is not something we can achieve. It has nothing to do with what ¹we do for God or provide him (doing some good work or performing some task such as covering our shame with fig leaves) but is based solely on who God has made us to be (like God himself!) i.e. what He has given us.

Our problem is we want our identity based on what we do, not who we actually are - who He has made us to be. 

Because we are in His image and made to be in a love filled relationship with God but have rebelled from this and are now disconnected from God - the ground and source of our being and value - we live with a subtle, buried, and deep sense of guilt, shame, worthlessness, and inadequacy. 

As a result, we are always seeking to do things to prove we are not worthless but important and valuable. We are constantly attempting to prove our worth by doing "important" things.

Our having a hard time accepting that we are worth God's love - because of who He created us to be as creatures in his image - is actually a subtle form of rebellious unbelief. God tells us we are designed in His image by Him, for life in Him. Why? In order for us to partake of and enjoy Him as much as possible, we must be like Him as much as possible without actually being Him. And since this is so, we can not function properly without a relationship-union with Him - our Creator. We are only an empty shell or "shadow" of our original design. But we still have the capacity to be fully restored to God and our original design and ultimately will be if we are in Christ.

Yet we refuse to recognize this and reject a new status (offered to us by God through Christ, not earned by us). We now attempt to be our own god; to hang on to the lie that we can operate fully without him and even do something to ¹prove our worth and earn God's love. But this is contrary to who God designed us to be i.e. who we actually are and who he tells us we are. And this is the very attitude (distrust/unbelief) that keeps us from reconnecting with God through the provision he has made for us in Christ.

For a discussion of our worth in relation to sin click here

For a discussion on the tension between being and doing click here
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Footnotes:

¹This is not saying our actions have no value. When we act for the glory of God and display him in a way that results in others seeing and pursuing Him, this has eternal significance for God, others, and ourselves. The point is this is not the ²basis of His accepting us. Christ efforts on our behalf is. 

Our value is being like God with the capacity to display Him to others. To be the means and conduits by which God reveals Himself to other image bearers, not unlike Christ Himself, who is the only perfectly faithful bearer of God's image. Once we are perfectly restored to our original design of being in an unobstructed relationship with God in Christ, we can again be the means by which He reveals Himself to others.

²though it is the basis by which he values us.