The Precious Things of God

The Preciousness of Christ

"Unto you therefore which believe He is precious" (1 Pet 2:7).

A felt conviction of the Saviour's preciousness has always been recognized by discerning gospel ministers as a clear, scriptural sign that divine life exists in the soul. In moments when neither time nor circumstance allowed for careful theological examination or a precise analysis of spiritual feelings, the one simple question on which everything turned was this: "What is your experience of the worth of the Saviour? Is Christ precious to your heart?" The answer to that question served as both the test and the measure of the soul's spiritual transformation. And rightly so. In proportion to the genuine, intelligent sense of personal sinfulness that the Holy Spirit imparts, the heart will appreciate the value, sufficiency, and preciousness of the Lord Jesus. A thorough and enlightened understanding of a disease's nature and severity enables a physician to form an accurate judgment of the remedy needed to arrest and cure it. We measure the force of a driving power by the strength of the body it moves.

In the same way, as our conviction of being lost and undone deepens, as sin's "exceeding sinfulness" comes into view, as the purity and full extent of God's law opens before us, and as the utter helplessness of self is pressed upon the mind, the glory, the worth, the suitableness, and the preciousness of Jesus will, through the Spirit's teaching, present itself vividly to the mind and heart as the one and only foundation and hope of the soul. The Bible recognizes just two specific and defining characters: the SINNER and the SAVIOUR. All others are simply variations of these two. The saint is nothing more than the sinner converted, justified, pardoned, adopted, sanctified, saved, and glorified. And all the roles Christ fulfills in the plan of salvation are simply varied and beautiful expressions of the one Saviour, of whom it is written: "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). So then, as you feel your sinfulness, you will recognize the fitness and suitableness of the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour. There will be a perfect correspondence between your consciousness of guilt and your believing grasp of the excellence of the Atonement to meet your case. Your sinnership and Christ's Saviourship will harmonize and fit together with exact and beautiful proportion. What a divine and blessed arrangement this is! With what grandeur, yet with what simplicity, it clothes the plan of salvation! What solemnity, yet what hope, it casts over both the present and the future of the soul! It seems to reach down to the lowest depth of my sinfulness, while lifting me to the highest height of God's grace.

In a volume designed to place before its readers a few of the precious things of God's revealed word, we begin, as is most fitting, with the foundation and source of them all: the dignity, worth, suitability, and preciousness of Christ. The great truth we are about to explore is announced in the words placed at the head of this chapter: "Unto you therefore which believe He is precious." As we unfold this subject, may the writer and reader alike receive the fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit, even Him of whom Jesus said, "He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall shew it unto you" (John 16:14), so that while we speak of a precious Savior, His preciousness may be felt in our hearts, filling the whole soul with penitence, faith, and love. In this chapter, we propose to gather our thoughts around two specific aspects of the subject: the PRECIOUSNESS of CHRIST, and the CHARACTER of those to whom He is precious.

We begin with Christ's personal preciousness, His preciousness considered in Himself. It is a deep conviction of Christ's personal dignity and worth that gives faith such a solid grasp of the greatness and preciousness of His work. We need, beloved, to be warned against an error that some have fallen into: exalting the work of Christ above the person of Christ, or in other words, failing to trace the power of Christ's sacrifice back to the essential dignity of Christ's person. Once we accept the Godhead of the Savior, His atoning death becomes something easy to believe. Concede that the one who died on the cross was "GOD manifest in the flesh," and the mind will have no difficulty accepting that His death was sacrificial and redemptive. The sufferings and death of so glorious a Being must correspond to a purpose and produce a result of equal dignity and weight; and where could we find such a purpose and such a result as the SALVATION of humanity?

The brilliant achievements of a general rushing to rescue a besieged garrison may so magnify his personal genius and courage that his name becomes wrapped in a glory unmatched and immortal. But the reverse is true of Christ. There would have been no glory in His achievements, no significance in His work, no power in His blood, had there been no divine dignity and worth in His person. And had He not taken a single step toward working out the salvation of humanity, had He repaired no breach, wept no tear, endured no agony, shed no blood in the redemption of His Church, had He, in short, conferred not one blessing on our race, He would still have been the ETERNAL SON OF GOD: divine, peerless, glorious, the object of supreme love, adoration, and worship by all heavenly beings throughout all eternal ages. So while His sacrificial work displays His marvelous grace and love toward sinners, that work owes all its acceptance and power to the value given to it by the essential deity of His person. It is, therefore, the personal preciousness of Christ that gives an official preciousness to His work.

Who, then, is the Lord Jesus Christ? In everyday speech, people call Him "our Saviour." But do most people ever stop and truly consider who Christ really is? Do they recognize Him as the CREATOR of this world, of all worlds, of their own existence, of all existence? Do they reflect on the truth that "all things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made"? If they did, wouldn't they offer Him divine worship? After all, whatever creates must precede and surpass what it creates, and must therefore be pre-existent and divine. Yet what a grand and glorious truth this is to the believing soul: the absolute deity of the Saviour, the essential Godhead of Christ! How it draws Him close to the heart as the Rock of Ages on which our hope is built! How precious must be every evidence of the divine strength, stability, and permanence of the foundation on which the believing sinner rests his entire salvation.

Precious, then, is Christ as God. Precious in His deity, precious as a distinct person in the adorable Godhead, precious as "God over all, blessed for evermore." But pause for a moment, Christian reader, in wonder and praise before this majestic truth. If there is any place where we should remove our shoes in reverence, surely it is here. With what profound reverence, with what silent awe, and yet with what adoring love should we contemplate the GODHEAD of our Redeemer! Were it not for that Godhead, we would have been lost forever. His obedience to the law, His satisfaction of the justice of Jehovah, would have carried no power or effect apart from the authority, dignity, and virtue of His higher nature. Don't question the reality of this truth simply because its manner is mysterious. How Jehovah could become incarnate is a wonder we will never, in this present state of limited knowledge, fully understand. It is enough that it is so. Let reason reverently adore, and let faith implicitly trust.

"The more of wonderful Is heard in Him, the more we should assent; Could we conceive Him, God He could not be, Or He not God, or we could not be men."

Don't hesitate, then, to give full credence to all the glorious truths of the gospel. Place the entire weight of your soul on the Atonement of Jesus, and believe that, sinner though you are, even the very worst of sinners, such is the divine worth and sovereign power of His sacrifice that you will, you must, you shall be saved completely, because your Creator is your Savior, and your Judge is your Justifier.

But this personal representation of the Lord Jesus also involves the preciousness of His manhood. His personal union with our nature, His condescending descent to our humanity, is not the least endearing quality to the hearts of His believing saints. We have claimed absolute deity for the Son of God; we now claim perfect humanity for Him as well. "Flesh," real and substantial, yet "harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners," was He "made." His humanity was identical to that of His people in every respect except original and actual sinfulness. "He knew no sin." And yet, what a sin-bearer He was! All the sins of His elect converged on Him. But He could only bear sin because He Himself was essentially free from its taint. Had even the faintest breath of pollution clung to Him, had a single drop of moral corruption circulated through His veins, it would have rendered Him utterly and permanently incapable of presenting to the justice of God an atonement for sin. He would then have needed, like the high priest of old, to have offered for sins "first for Himself, then for the people." How precious, then, beloved, is our Lord Jesus as "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh." Consider His perfect humanity: a humanity free from sin, and therefore capable of dying for the ungodly; a humanity laden with sorrow, and therefore capable of sympathizing with the afflicted. Precious to our hearts as God, precious as Man, precious as both united in one, He whose name is "Wonderful" is beyond all measure and eternally precious to His believing saints.

Tell, oh tell, how precious is that humanity of the Son of God, which partook by actual participation, and still bears by the most perfect sympathy, all the sinless weaknesses, infirmities, temptations, and sorrows of His people. Precious humanity! When other human friendships have changed, when other human love has grown cold, and when other human sympathy has run dry, you may turn to it and find it an evergreen, a perennial stream, a gushing fountain of unchanged affection, tenderness, and sympathy, meeting and satisfying, to their fullest capacity, your heart's deepest longings. Precious humanity! that dries each tear, bears each burden, is touched by each infirmity, soothes each sorrow, and comes to the aid of His people in each temptation. "In all things it was fitting for Him to be made like His brothers, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of His people. For in that He Himself has suffered being tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted." Love the Lord, then, all you His saints; praise Him, all you His people; and in all your deep griefs, your lonely sorrows, your severe trials, your fierce temptations, your pressing needs, your daily weaknesses, turn to the help, the sympathy, and the intercession of His humanity, and learn how precious Jesus can be to the hearts of His suffering and sorrowing ones. On this rock of Christ's composite person God has built His Church, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.

Precious is the Lord Jesus in His work. The superstructure built on so divine and perfect a foundation must itself be costly and substantial. No wise or experienced architect would spend vast resources laying a deep, broad foundation only to raise something flimsy and forgettable on top of it. Consider the groundwork of our salvation: "Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation" (Isa 28:16). On such a foundation, we rightly expect a superstructure worthy in every respect of its costliness and capacity. We find exactly that in the work of Jesus. What a superstructure it is: nothing less than the salvation of His Church. Such a work was worthy of God, and worthy of all the glory, wisdom, and power invested in its accomplishment. Nowhere do we get a clearer view of the divine glory than through the cross. That magnificent sky stretching above us, filled and blazing with countless worlds, grows pale before the quiet glory, the softened splendor, of the cross of Christ.

Nowhere does Jehovah-Jesus appear so exalted to the spiritual, believing mind as when He stoops; nowhere so glorious as when in eclipse; nowhere so holy as when bearing sin; nowhere so loving as when enduring its punishment; nowhere so triumphant as when vanquished on the cross. Do not seek to know God in the jeweled heavens, in the sublimity of the mountain, in the beauty of the valley, in the grandeur of the ocean, in the murmur of the stream, or in the music of the winds. God made all of this, but none of it is God. Study Him in the cross of Jesus. Look at Him through this wondrous telescope, and though you behold His glory as through a glass darkly, with the Godhead in awful eclipse and the Sun of His Deity setting in blood, that rough and crimson cross reveals the mind of God more fully, discloses the perfections of God more harmoniously, unveils the heart of God more completely, and exhibits the glory of God more powerfully than the combined force of ten thousand worlds like this one could, even if sin had never marred them and the curse had never blighted them. Study God in Christ, and Christ on the cross. Consider the marvels that converge there, the glory that gathers around it, the streams of blessing that flow from it, and the deep, refreshing shadow it casts over the experience of all who look to Jesus and live, who look to Jesus and love, who look to Jesus and obey, who look to Jesus and embrace that blessed "hope of eternal life which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began."

What a worthy structure to raise on so divine a foundation! What could be more fitting for God, whose very essence is "love," than the salvation of His people? In nothing else could He appear more fully Himself. On no other stage could He so honorably and completely draw back the veil from His perfections and stand forth in His full-orbed majesty, "mighty to save," as He does here. Humble believer in Christ, you are saved! Happy saint of God, you will be in heaven! Christ has paid your debt, opened your prison, broken your chains, and set you free from the law's curse, from sin's condemnation, and from death's penalty, and you will be forever with the Lord! Is this not enough to make your whole life, clouded and uneven as it may be, a sweet psalm of praise, teaching you the first notes of the song that will fill your tongue throughout eternity?

How precious is the righteousness of Christ, a righteousness that fully justifies our persons, completely covering all our deformity and presenting us to God "comely through His comeliness put upon us." And so the renown of the clothed and adorned Church goes forth through all the earth, and people ask, "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" Consider also the preciousness of His sacrifice, which rises to God as a "sweet-smelling savour," ascending continually from the golden altar before the throne in one unbroken cloud of incense, wreathing the persons, perfuming the prayers, accompanying the offerings, and presenting with acceptance every breath of devotion, every accent of praise, and every token of love that His people here below lay at His feet. "By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified."

That "one offering," offered once for all, was so divine, so holy, so complete, so fully satisfying, that it has forever perfected the pardon, perfected the justification, perfected the adoption, and will perfect the sanctification when it perfects the glory of all the elect of Jehovah. Beloved, is this not enough to silence every sigh, to quiet every fear, to dissolve every doubt, and to fill you with peace and joy in believing? What shouts of praise to Jesus should rise from every lip as each believer contemplates the sacrifice that has secured his eternal salvation! When the Roman general Titus Flamininus liberated the imprisoned Greeks, they clustered around his tent, chanting his praises and crying out with passionate intensity, "A saviour! A saviour!" How much more, then, may every child of God, freed from the chains of sin and death by the "liberty wherewith Christ hath made him free," extol the person and sing the praises of that glorious Saviour, exclaiming, "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! He hath saved His people from their sins!" Believer, show your sense of the preciousness of this great sacrifice by bringing to it your daily sins, by drawing from it your hourly comfort, and by laying yourself upon it, body, soul, and spirit, a "living sacrifice unto God."

How precious is Christ in all the offices and relationships He holds with His people. He is precious as the Head, the covenant-surety Head of His people: the source of life, the seat of power, the fountain of every blessing. Reader, hold fast to the Headship of Christ. Acknowledge no legislative head, no administrative head, no authoritative head, no reigning head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. There are undercurrents of priestly domination in the Church of God today that undermine this foundational truth, and we must be on our guard against them. Acknowledge no spiritual Head and King in Zion but the Lord Jesus; and demonstrate your recognition of, reverence for, and love for His government by defending His Headship, bowing to His authority, and obeying His laws. How blessed it is to live under the holy, gracious, and gentle government of Christ, whose scepter is a scepter of righteousness, so mild and loving in its rule that "He will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax."

Precious is He as the Husband of His Church, united to her by the closest and most unbreakable bonds, pledged to bear all her burdens, meet all her needs, comfort every sorrow with His sympathy, and multiply every joy through His presence. Precious is He as a Friend: the Friend whose love is infinite and without limit, unchanged by circumstance, undimmed by indifference, and unwearied by the passing of years. He is a Friend who proves himself friendly, who loves at all times, and who holds closer than a brother. Precious as a Brother, our Goel, our nearest of kin, who claims and exercises the right of redemption, and who shows himself, through His help and rescue in every calamity His brothers face, to be a "Brother born for adversity." We could travel through every role and relationship the Lord Jesus holds toward His saints and find in each one something that draws Him deeper into their hearts, enthroning Him there as the "chief among ten thousand" and revealing Him as "the altogether lovely."

But to whom is Christ precious? This is the most important question. He is not precious to everyone. It is a privileged class, a peculiar people, a small and scattered flock, hidden and largely unknown to the world, who truly feel the Savior's preciousness. Christ is precious only to the believer. The declaration of the Holy Spirit is plain: "Unto you therefore which BELIEVE He is precious." This is as philosophically sound as it is scripturally true. There can be no felt conviction of the worth of something we have not clearly and intelligently perceived. Something must first create interest, awaken admiration, and inspire love; the object must be seen, known, and tested.

Now, the only spiritual faculty that can perceive Christ, and in perceiving Him recognize His preciousness, is faith. Faith is the optical faculty of the regenerate soul; it is the spiritual eye through which we see. Faith sees Christ, and as Christ comes into view, His excellence becomes visible. As that excellence unfolds, He becomes an object of deep affection to the heart. How lovely and how glorious Jesus is to the clear, far-seeing eye of faith! Faith beholds Him as the matchless, peerless One, whose beauty eclipses and whose glory outshines every other being. Faith sees majesty in His lowliness, dignity in His condescension, honor in His humiliation, beauty in His tears, and a transcendent, surpassing glory in His cross. In the natural world, as the beauty of an object reveals itself to the eye, it stirs a corresponding sense of wonder in the mind. Think of the grey mist of morning slowly lifting from the face of the landscape, gradually revealing a scene of rich and varied beauty: the blending of mountain and valley, the green meadows and winding streams. In every mind capable of appreciating the sublime and the beautiful, such a sight inspires admiration and delight. In the same way, beloved, as the personal dignity, beauty, and excellence of the Lord Jesus unfolds to the believing eye, He becomes more deeply and more sensibly enshrined in the heart's warmest love. We must know the Lord Jesus to admire Him, must admire Him to love Him, and must love Him to serve Him.

The believer also recognizes a suitability in Christ, seeing Him as precisely the Savior his soul requires, and this is what makes Christ so uniquely precious. "I see Him," the believer exclaims, "as exactly the Christ I need. His fullness meets my emptiness; His blood cleanses my guilt; His grace subdues my sin; His patience bears with my failings; His gentleness supports my weakness; His love stirs my obedience; His sympathy soothes my sorrows; His beauty captivates my eye. He is just the Savior, just the Christ I need, and no words can capture how precious He is to my soul."

There is, then, a personal claiming of Christ in the inner life of every believer, and this is precisely what makes Him so dear to the heart. A Christ who is never personally claimed is a Christ whose worth goes unrecognized and whose preciousness is never truly felt. The believer can say, "Christ is mine, and in Him I have everything, for He is my all in all." This simple, trembling faith, sublime in its simplicity and powerful in its very uncertainty, gathers into its arms all the treasures of the everlasting covenant of grace and the full sufficiency of the covenant's Guarantor, and cries out, "Everything is mine, because Christ is mine, and I am His." Do not shrink back, beloved reader, from what the earnest theologians of earlier generations, who perhaps had both deeper experience and sounder doctrine than we do, used to call a "Christ-appropriating faith." If you have fled to Jesus as a poor, empty, believing sinner, then there is not a single pulse of love in His loving heart, nor a drop of blood in His veins, nor a particle of grace in His mediatorial fullness, nor a thought of peace in His divine mind, that does not belong to you: wholly yours, irrevocably yours, as fully yours as if you were its only possessor. And the more you engage with Christ in this way, coming to Him personally, living on Him, drawing everything from Him, relating to Him as personally as He relates to you, the more He will work His way into your affections and become increasingly precious to your soul.

There are particular circumstances in the believer's experience when Christ becomes especially precious to the soul. Consider, for instance, the deeper plowing of the heart's hidden sinfulness. When the Holy Spirit reveals more of the innate corruption of our nature and gives us a more spiritual perception of sin's overwhelming sinfulness, how precious the finished work of Christ becomes in that moment! How precious the blood that cleanses from all sin! If God is leading you through this stage of Christian experience, beloved, do not be alarmed. It is only to build up His dear Son upon the wreck and ruin of your own merit, strength, and self-sufficiency. He will have us love His Son with a love like His own: a love of divine, supreme, and inexpressible affection. And this can only be felt in the region of our own nothingness.

In circumstances of spiritual relapse, how precious Christ becomes as the Restorer of His saints, as the Shepherd who goes in search of His straying sheep and brings it back to the fold with rejoicing! How unspeakably dear is the Savior to the wandering yet restored heart! Our backslidings are constant and serious, our affections fickle and restless, our faith unsteady, our love fading, our zeal faltering, our walk often weak and uncertain. Yet Jesus never withdraws His eye from His own work in the soul, and never for a moment loses sight of His straying sheep. Few aspects of Christ's work are more precious in the experience of God's saints than His gracious restorations. "He restoreth my soul" (Ps 23:3) is a declaration of David that finds its echo in every believer. Precious, then, is that Savior who breaks the heart, checks its waywardness, restores its wanderings, heals its backslidings, rekindles its love, and once more wakes its languid, silent chords to their sweetest harmony.

How precious is Christ in the season of fiery temptation! When the arch-enemy comes disguised as an angel of light, moving with quiet steps and a smooth tongue, using soft persuasion to trap and deceive the unsuspecting and unwary, leveling his attacks at the very foundations of our faith, whispering doubts about the truth of the Bible, the existence of God, the sufficiency of the Savior, and the reality of a world to come, all in an effort to shake our confidence, cloud our hope, and strip away the comfort of God's people, oh, how precious then is Christ as the Conqueror and Spoiler of Satan! He is the one who enables the trembling believer to quench the fiery dart in His own blood and to take refuge beneath His outstretched, all-sheltering wing. How doubly precious the Savior must have been to the tempted Peter, when Christ assured him that through an intercession made in advance, He had already blunted the sharp edge of the sword with which the subtle enemy sought to bring His disciple down. Tempted believer, the Tempted One, He who alone and unaided wrestled with Satan through those forty days and nights in the solitary wilderness, is the very one who was "in all points tempted like as we are," and who "knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation," and who will soon bruise Satan, crushed and conquered, beneath your feet.

In the hour of adversity, of trial, of sorrow, how precious Christ becomes in the experience of the believer! It seems, beloved, as though we had never truly known Him until that moment. Certainly, we never knew from experience how much that was human, tender, and compassionate lived in His heart until sorrow touched our own. We had no conception what a fountain of sympathy was there. A new turn in your path, a new chapter in your story, or a new stage in your journey has blanketed with snow and swept with the storm-blast of winter the entire landscape of life; fortune gone, friends removed, health failing, poverty threatening, want pressing: how dreary and lonely the path you walk seems now! But pause. It is not all winter. Jesus draws near. He unveils a chest once pierced, shows a heart once broken, and drawing you within its blessed shelter, hides you from the wind and covers you from the storm.

You never imagined Jesus had a heart of such exquisite tenderness until now. I am only giving voice to the experience of many a timid believer, many an afflicted Christian, when I say that, looking back on all the ways the Lord our God has led us, we can thank Him for the swelling surge, bless Him for the winter blast, and praise Him for the crushing blow that darkened the sky, draped the landscape, and struck down the idol, since that was the very occasion that made the Savior better known to you and endeared Him beyond all words to your heart. "Thou hast known my soul in adversities" (Ps 31:7). And that adversity was the season in which you were more fully brought to know Him. Seasons of discipline are seasons of learning; times of suffering are times when Christ becomes more dear; difficult trials are purifying processes in the life of the godly. The whirlwind that swept over you has only cleared your sky and made it brighter, deepened your roots and made them firmer. Earth may have lost a bond, but heaven has gained an attraction. A creature has left a void, but Christ has come and filled it. Loss has made you poor, but the treasures of divine love have made you rich. In the Lord Jesus you have more than found the loved one you have lost; and if in the world you have encountered tribulation, in Him you have found peace. O sweet sorrow! O sacred grief, that enthroned and enshrined my Savior more deeply and more fully in my soul!