Going Once? Going Twice? Gone!

What price tag would you put on a Chinese vase? It’s only good for holding flowers at best right? What about a postage stamp? Not exactly a staple product. In this day and age, you can live without one. What are you willing to pay for a painting? Art is very tricky but how much would you actually cough up? What do you think you are worth?

‘For you were bought with a price…’ (1 Cor 6:20a)

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods by offering them up for bids and taking bids. The person who values a specific item the most (the highest bidder) receives it. All the participants would have assessed the item on sale and would decide how much they are willing to pay for it beforehand. The man who manages bids coming in is known as the auctioneer. Some interesting auction records include an 18^th Century Chinese vase sold for £53.1 million, a Ten Rupee Mahatma Gandhi postage stamp went for a minor $205 000 and a Picasso was sold for just $106.5 million. Picture the auctioneer, after the final bid comes in, saying ‘Going once? Going twice? Gone! Sold; to the gentleman in the electric pink shirt with lime green poker dots! Congratulations sir.’ 

With every experience in your life; every interaction; every event; you are involved in an auction. The item on sale is your life. Ironically, you are the auctioneer and every participant in your life is bidding after having evaluated how much you are worth. You have the hammer and decide each time who wins the sale. People might tell you that you are not worth much. They might say that you will never do anything significant with your life. Maybe some guy put a price tag written ‘sex’ for a girl. Your boss might have tagged you, ‘slave’. You may have been told you are ugly. Oddly, we accept most tags, slam the hammer and sell ourselves for the cheapest bids.

The highest bidder knows more about you than anyone else. He has carefully assessed your worth. He has already proved you are worth so much that He paid the price before you were born and before you even considered His bid. That bidder is God. He is Jesus Christ. He found you worthy of His life. He put in a bid that makes the ridiculous records above look less than pocket change. He did not have to, but he took your well-earned punishment.

Every day, people compete against His bid. It is up to you to decide who you will listen to in that moment. Will you value yourself as Christ values you or the man/woman with the sweet smile? Will you consider yourself worth the life of the Son of God or drunkard? Is your price tag written ‘Perfectly loved by God’ or ‘Good for nothing’? ‘Sinner saved by grace’ or ‘nobody’. If the former is true, then your only response is to “…Honour God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor 6:20b). You are not your own. You either belong to people and their perceptions of your value or you are God’s. Remember, when you slam the hammer on yourself, it will be too late. Going once? Going twice?

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Yours in the service of the King,

Yunam