Christ tells us these things so that we can reason from them. These are simple but profound truths that even a child can see and think about. The thinking of God is similar enough to our thinking for us to be able to draw reliable conclusions about. God has a scale of values in his mind just as we do. He has created lesser creature and greater creatures, and all that the Scripture says about man shows that he is the most significant of all creatures on earth. Let us observe ourselves and observer the other creatures and hear what God has said about the world and let us draw inferences from all of this. If the sparrow means so much to God, how much more does man, made in his image, mean to him! In case any are not clear on this, Christ tells us explicitly that we are of worth more than many sparrows. He compares the value of one form of life with another, and this should be no surprise to us. Man who was made to have dominion over all other creatures is worth far more than a sparrow. Man who has the gift of reason, and many other distinctions from the animals; man who worships God and is capable of obedience to his moral law, is high above other forms of life. If the little sparrow is cared for, how much more is man cared for!
But then we need to think what Christ is applying this lesson to. The subject is believers facing persecution and even martyrdom for the sake of their testimony to the Lord. How does it help us to know that the sparrow is cared for when we are facing the loss of life. Hasn’t God’s care for us failed if he has allowed us to go out of the world? We tend to set the limits of care within the confines of this life. If we die, then care has by definition failed us. No, says the Lord. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. God’s care continues for us beyond death and does not cease there. Lazarus was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. Our bodies are, as it were, watched over until the resurrection. It is with God’s continuing care after death in mind, that Christ has referred not only to the provision of our heavenly Father for the sparrow during its life, but also in its death. That does not mean that the sparrow has an afterlife, but it does mean that we who have eternal souls are cared for after death. How can we fail to have confidence in the Lord, even if he allows us to pass from this world, even if that happens at the hands of our persecutors?
God has much greater care for us, even than we have for ourselves. He knows more about us even than we know about ourselves. And when Christ says this, it is no doubt a vast understatement. He knows the precise number of the hairs of our head at any time. Who but one who had access to the mind of God could say such a thing, without any fear of contradiction? We who worry about our own lives, often make the mistake of thinking that no one cares more about our interests, and no one knows more about the details of our lives, than we do ourselves. But we are wrong. Our heavenly Father knows more about us than we do. He sees our needs, and he thinks of respects in which we need to be protected from harm which have not even crossed our minds. Can we not resign our welfare into the hands of our superior Protector? This is the Lord’s argument, and it is a great comfort to us.