The Worth of a Man's Soul

This morning, as my dad drove Mr. Squire and me to the airport, the word "legion" popped into my mind for no apparent reason.

"Is that phrase, 'We are legion' from the Bible?" I asked.  Together, my dad, Mr. Squire, and I pieced together our collective memory of the Bible story recounted in Mark 5, in which Jesus encountered a man possessed by a legion of demons (hence the phrase tucked in my distant memory).  When Jesus ordered the demons to depart from the man, the demons begged Jesus not to send them out of the area, but to let them take over pigs grazing nearby instead.  Jesus consented, and the demons rushed out of the man and into two thousand pigs, who promptly rushed down a steep bank and drowned in the neighboring lake.  

Mr. Squire commented that as a result of this event, the people in the town begged Jesus to leave the area.  I recalled that they did so because they were afraid of Jesus's power.  Mr. Squire noted that it was also because the pigs comprised the wealth of the town, all of which had been lost due to Jesus's miracle.  This begs the question:  "Is one man's soul worth the whole town's wealth?"

The people of the village obviously thought the answer was no.  Jesus obviously thought the answer was yes.  He proved His position by causing that exchange, at the cost of the livelihood of more than a few people.  But that was just a foretaste of what was to come.  Later, Jesus proved that a man's soul was worth far more than an entire town's wealth; it was worth the giving of Jesus's own life as well.  By dying on the cross and taking on both the accumulated and not-yet-accrued guilt and shame of every soul to ever walk the earth and breathe its air, Jesus spoke to each of us through His sacrifice, saying, "My life is for your life, and you are worth it to me."  

This is astounding to me.  This thought causes me at once to swell with pride, and to bow my soul in humility before so great a God as this.  

It also causes me to reflect on what kind of story I'm telling about my Lord in my life.  In performing a miracle by driving out the legion of demons, Jesus foreshadowed in a small way what His ultimate message would be.  In my daily life, I'm supposed to be reflecting Jesus.  Am I, though?  Do people see through my actions, thoughts, and words, that my Lord loves people and that YES, their souls are worth the wealth of a town, the lifeblood of a perfect Savior?  These are the thoughts that consume me today.