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Christ’s Object Lessons
We are to seek for the pearl of great price, but not in worldly marts
or in worldly ways. The price we are required to pay is not gold or
silver, for this belongs to God. Abandon the idea that temporal or
spiritual advantages will win for you salvation. God calls for your
willing obedience. He asks you to give up your sins. “To him that
overcometh,” Christ declares, “will I grant to sit with Me in My throne,
even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His
throne.”
Revelation 3:21
.
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There are some who seem to be always seeking for the heavenly
pearl. But they do not make an entire surrender of their wrong habits.
They do not die to self that Christ may live in them. Therefore they do
not find the precious pearl. They have not overcome unholy ambition
and their love for worldly attractions. They do not take up the cross and
follow Christ in the path of self-denial and sacrifice. Almost Christians,
yet not fully Christians, they seem near the kingdom of heaven, but
they cannot enter there. Almost but not wholly saved, means to be not
almost but wholly lost.
The parable of the merchantman seeking goodly pearls has a dou-
ble significance: it applies not only to men as seeking the kingdom
of heaven, but to Christ as seeking His lost inheritance. Christ, the
heavenly merchantman seeking goodly pearls, saw in lost humanity
the pearl of price. In man, defiled and ruined by sin, He saw the
possibilities of redemption. Hearts that have been the battleground
of the conflict with Satan, and that have been rescued by the power
of love, are more precious to the Redeemer than are those who have
never fallen. God looked upon humanity, not as vile and worthless; He
looked upon it in Christ, saw it as it might become through redeeming
love. He collected all the riches of the universe, and laid them down in
order to buy the pearl. And Jesus, having found it, resets it in His own
diadem. “For they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an
ensign upon His land.”
Zechariah 9:16
. “They shall be Mine, saith the
Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels.”
Malachi 3:17
.
But Christ as the precious pearl, and our privilege of possessing
this heavenly treasure, is the theme on which we most need to dwell.
It is the Holy Spirit that reveals to men the preciousness of the goodly
pearl. The time of the Holy Spirit’s power is the time when in a special
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sense the heavenly gift is sought and found. In Christ’s day many