What are you worth? Well, that might all depend on who you’re asking or what kind of relationships you’re in and under what circumstances. In the New Testament literature of the Bible this question is answered by one word: Grace. In this episode John M.G. Barclay, professor of New Testament studies at Durham University, England, connects our thoughts of human worth and God’s grace to the concept of gift and gift giving in the ancient world. As we’ll come to see, “grace” was a very common word in the ancient world, yet, it carried a lot of meaning for creating social bonds and establishing a persons worth in society. The system of gift as experienced by ancient cultures (and even in some today) differ greatly from how we perceive giving and receiving gifts in the world of modernity. And yet, the New Testament authors, like Paul the apostle, saw the Gift of God in Jesus as radically subversive to the gift system of his own day. Likewise, Paul's message of grace, when understood against this backdrop, also subverts modern notions of gift giving and human worth. The outcome of this message of God’s grace is the creation of new and powerful social identities where communities of people from different backgrounds derive their sense of worth in the world and among each other, not from any prior conditions such as achievements, ethnicity, gender, education or social class, but solely from God’s gift in Jesus.