Is a Gold Medal Really Gold?
Imagine for a minute that you are an Olympic athlete and you have just won your first gold medal. Years and years of training and sacrifice have finally paid off. Congratulations! But, upon further review, you really just won yourself a silver medal with gold plating. Both gold and silver medals awarded to the first and second place finishers at the Olympic Games are made of 92.5% silver, with the gold medal being plated with at least 6 grams of gold, thus making the gold medal less than 2% gold. (The last gold medals actually made of gold were awarded at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.) So then, what about the third-place bronze medal? Is it really bronze? You be the judge – bronze is an alloy, meaning it is made by melting copper and tin together.
Maybe you are wondering, why gold, silver, and bronze? The three metals used in Olympic medals are in the same column of the periodic table. This means they share many of the same characteristics with each other. The most important property these metals share is that they can be found naturally in their elemental native (pure) form. Most other metals are only found in their mineral form, comprised of several elements. Copper (Cu) is at the top of the column, thus the least rare, so it is used for third place. Silver (Ag) is one level down, rarer than copper, so it represents second place. And gold (Au) is found one level below silver in the column, thus the rarest of the three, so naturally, first place.
We can agree that gold – whether coins, some sort of medal awarded, or a wedding ring – is of great value. The Bible tells us that maintaining our faith in the face of difficulties and trials is worth far more than gold. In the first few verses of 1 Peter (1:3-9) we are told God’s plan of redemption and restoration meets our every need, and this blessing is so great that we can pass through times of trouble by holding onto a faith in a living Jesus that we have not yet seen.
Today I want to highlight vv. 6-7 – “Be glad about this, even though it may now be necessary for you to be sad for a while because of the many kinds of trials you suffer. Their purpose is to prove that your faith is genuine. Even gold, which can be destroyed, is tested by fire; and so your faith, which is much more precious than gold, must also be tested, so that it may endure. Then you will receive praise and glory and honor on the Day when Jesus Christ is revealed” (GNT).
The purest form of gold is 24-karat and it comes through refining by fire. Gold ore is put to heat so the impurities, known as dross, can be burned away. Like gold, God refines us the same way. The trials we all face from time to time, some that truly shake us to our very core, help to sift out that which is pure and genuine in our faith from that which is impure.
Right now, ask God for a faith that is of greater value that gold.
If you are encouraged by this or any of my writings, you can subscribe to be notified by email when I post something new. To subscribe, click here. Once you put in your email address you will then get an email confirming that you wish to subscribe. Thank you.