Values

If I give you five pounds of platinum, you can verify the weight of it. You cannot verify the value of it, though. You could verify that someone is willing to trade a certain amount of some other material for it, but someone else would offer a different amount of the same material for it, because its value is different to them. Suppose I offer you less than what its cost to you was. Values change.

Some values naturally increase, others decrease. Your relationship to Yahweh increases in value constantly. His guidance becoming more noticeable, your obedience becoming more quick, the relationships you have with other believers strengthening your value to the family of Yahweh, and its value to you; these are all increasing in value. The more the Lord invests in His ekklesia, the more your value increases by relationship.

But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.

 (Philippians 3:7-11 Holman Christian Standard Bible ©®)