Christ Precious to Believers

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1 Peter 2:7-8

To you therefore which believe he is precious: but to them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed…

I. THAT JESUS CHRIST IS NOW PRECIOUS TO BELIEVERS. Notice attentively how personally precious Jesus is. There are two persons in the text: "Unto you that believe He is precious." You are a real person, and you feel that you are such. You have realised yourself; you are quite clear about your own existence; now in the same way strive to realise the other Person. "Unto you that believe He is precious." You believe in Him, He loves you; you love Him in return, and He sheds abroad in your heart a sense of His love. Notice, too, that while the text gleams with this vividness of personality, to which the most of professors are blind, it is weighted with a most solid positiveness: "Unto you that believe He is precious." It does not speak as though He might be or might not be; but "He is precious." If the new life be in thee, thou art as sure to love the Saviour as fish love the stream, or the birds the air, or as brave men love liberty, or as all men love their lives. Tolerate no peradventures here. Mark, further, the absoluteness of the text, "Unto you that believe He is precious. It is not written how precious. The text does not attempt by any form of computation to measure the price which the regenerate soul sets upon her Lord. The thought which I desire to bring out into fullest relief is this, that Jesus Christ is continually precious to His people. Unto you that believe, though you have believed to the saving of your soul, He is still precious; for your guilt will return upon your conscience, and you will yet sin, being still in the body, and thus unto you experimentally the cleansing atonement is as precious as when you first relied upon its expiating power. Nay, Jesus is more precious to you now, for you know your own needs more fully, have proved more often the adaptation of His saving grace, and have received a thousand more gifts at His blessed hands.

II. LET US THINK HOW CHRIST IS TODAY PRECIOUS TO YOU. To many of you there is as much in Christ undiscovered as you have already enjoyed. As surely as your faith grasps more, and becomes more capacious and appropriating, Christ will grow in preciousness to you. Ask, then, for more faith.

III. BECAUSE JESUS IS PRECIOUS TO BELIEVERS HE EFFICACIOUSLY OPERATES UPON THEM. The preciousness of Christ is, as it were, the leverage of Christ lifting up His saints to holiness. Let me show you this.

1. The man who trusts Christ values Christ; that which I value I hold fast; hence our valuing Christ helps us to abide steadfast in times of temptation.

2. Notice further: this valuing of Christ helps the believer to make sacrifices. Sacrifice making constitutes a large part of any high character. He who never makes a sacrifice in his religion may shrewdly suspect that it is not worth more than his own practical valuation of it.

3. Moreover, this valuing of Christ makes us jealous against sin. He who loves the Redeemer best purifies himself most, even as his Lord is pure.

4. High valuing of Christ helps the Christian in the selection of his associates in life. If I hold my Divine Lord to be precious, how can I have fellowship with those who do not esteem Him? You will not find a man of refined habits and cultured spirits happy amongst the lowest and most illiterate. Birds of a feather flock together. Workers and traders unite in companies according to their occupations. Lovers of Christ rejoice in lovers of Christ, and they delight to meet together; for they can talk to each other of things in which they are agreed.

IV. CHRIST BEING THUS PRECIOUS, HIS PRECIOUSNESS BECOMES THE TEST OF OUR CHRISTIANITY.

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