Have you ever heard a person referred to as “damaged goods”?
Merriam Webster Dictionary Definition of damaged goods
:a person considered to be flawed or spoiled in character, efficiency, or worth
It’s a derogatory term usually used when giving a warning to stay away from someone.
“Don’t have anything to do with him, he is damaged goods.”
It can also be used in the literal way, “I would like to return the item I purchased, because it is damaged goods.”
Either way, literal or figurative, it identifies the person/item as having little worth and undesirable.
In human thinking, that is very common. But thank God, He does not think as humans do.
Romans 5:8 – But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
As Romans 5:8 states, God knew we were broken, that at our core we were evil. Jeremiah 17: – The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
But God loves us and looks passed that. He sees what we can become if we turn to Jesus and allow Him to work in us. 1 John 1:9 – If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. He does not wait for us to clean up our act and then let us come to Him for forgiveness.
1 John 4:10 – In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. We did nothing to deserve this love, in fact we could not be more unworthy of His love. However, because of His great love for us He sees limitless value in us. Luke 12:6-7 – Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Because He sees that value, He perfects us in a way that the Old Testament could never do despite man’s continued efforts. Hebrews 10:11-14 – Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
All the work has been done for us, we need to accept that we can do nothing to add to the work of salvation. So brother, we need to accept Jesus as Savior (if we have not already done so), let Him be our Lord and turn from the life of sin that separated us from God.
by Be Free in Christ