Just in case there is anyone in the civilized world who didn’t watch 
last night, Jack is interrogating a terrorist collaborator and testily says:
I’m not for sale!
to which she replies:
Everyone is for sale.
The immediate reference, of course, is to “selling out”, going against one’s conscience for gain. “Every man has his price” is something that has been addressed in many venues of literature and media over the centuries. One look at the Bible gives us Matthew 16:26– “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
But looking closer, you don’t have to go against conscience or ethics to “sell out”—to exchange something precious to you, or even your own autonomy.
We are always in the business of exchange, giving something of ourselves, whether it be money, time, love, autonomy, in exchange for something that we value greater, something we desire. People exchange their time to employers every day to be paid money, for instance.
Thus, “selling out” is not necessarily bad. In fact, it can be a powerful motivator for good. In Desiring God, John Piper develops this concept extensively, that God is “a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him”—that if we “sell ourselves” to His service it is not for some disconnected, passionless, rewardless, noble motivation, but precisely for the rewards of being obedient, of seeing the Kingdom realized, of abiding in His love and boundless joy.
Hebrews 12:2 specifically says that Jesus “had his price”— He endured the cross “for the joy that was set before Him.” Our problem, as Piper and Lewis and others have counseled us, is not that we are “not for sale”— it is that we sell ourselves short, that we sell ourselves for “mud pies” (as Lewis said), for trinkets like fame, power, money, sex, and success, when we can joyfully “sell all that we have” to buy the pearl of great price, the treasure of God’s love and joy. I rejoice in that I am for sale, and that I have sold myself to the highest bidder, and that I have been and will be richly rewarded for it.
“See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
“Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundred fold and inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:27,29 ESV)
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Interesting. Even I wouldn’t have thought to combine “24″ and a lesson like this.
I might argue that Jesus didn’t have His price. For Him, selling out would have been walking away from the cross. He did the Father’s will, to the end. He paid our price, but He never stopped being true to the Father and to Himself.
John’s response:
I heartily agree if you think of “selling out” in the conventional way—but being willing to pay a price can be positive as well as negative, as any self-sacrifice will attest.
[...] John Hollandsworth at Light along the Journey waxes way too philosophic for my 24-related tastes, commenting on the line “Everyone Is For Sale.” It’s interesting—just don’t expect to laugh at this one. [...]