Such is the mystery at the foundation of our faith: “What’s in it for God? Why does He value us so highly?” The only honest answer we can give such questions is “No explanation is forthcoming. He just does.”

Of course, the way God assigns us this value is neither particularly fair nor economically shrewd, but that’s actually kind of the point our Messiah made in at least three parables he told us: Matthew 20:1-16, Matthew 25:14-30, and Luke 19:11-27. We’re valuable because of what God gave (and will give) for us, not because we’ve ever had any inherent value that made this a “fair” price God could ever be compelled to pay. The King (or the landowner in that first parable) rewards his laborers (and punishes the slackers) as he sees fit, not as some worldly notions of “justice” or “fairness” demand.

Oddly enough, your conclusion reminds me of the end of the animated movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, in which Bruce Wayne gently chides his successor Terry McGinniss for telling him (at the beginning of the movie) that he saw putting on the suit and taking up Batman’s crusade against crime as a way of redeeming himself for some of his earlier failings as a juvenile delinquent. “I’ve been thinking about something you once told me; and you were wrong. It’s not Batman that makes you worthwhile; it’s the other way around. Never tell yourself anything different.” Likewise, we don’t earn our value in God’s eyes by taking up various crusades and doing what is good and right, we take up those crusades and do what’s good and right because God loves and values us so much; getting this cause-and-effect relationship reversed in our doctrine is arguably the one easy heretical mistake to make that has brought more disaster to Christians down through the centuries than just about any other mistake we’ve ever made.