To every believer, the Lord Jesus is precious.
But why is He "precious"?
He is precious for what He is in Himself …The God/Man (Hebrews 2:14)
God became a member of the human race to fully identify with us. He could not in His absolute deity bear our sorrows and die for our sins but he could do so as a man. Octavius Winslow, a great preacher of another generation said it like this, “As God merely, He could not endure suffering, nor weep, nor die; as man only, He could not have sustained the weight of our sin, grief, nor sorrow. There must be a union of the two natures to accomplish the two objects in one person. The Godhead must be united to the manhood; the one to obey, the other to die; the one to satisfy Divine justice, the other to sympathize with the people in whose behalf the satisfaction was made.”
He became one of us.
He is precious.
He is precious for what He has done for us in the past (Romans 3:25-26)
The more we understand of the Finished Work the more precious Jesus will become to us. We should perhaps pause and ask ourselves, is Jesus precious? Is He precious to me?
‘Rabbi’ Duncan a great old teacher in New College, Edinburgh, in the 1800s knew something of the preciousness of Christ.
In one of his famous sidebars to his class, he moved from the Hebrew he was teaching, and threw out the following question:
“Do you know what Calvary was? What? What? What? Do you know what Calvary was?” Then, having waited for a little and having walked up and down in front of the students in silence, he looked at them again and said, “I’ll tell you what Calvary was. It was damnation, and he took it lovingly.”
The students in his class reported that there were tears on his face as he said this. And well there might be. “Damnation, and he took it lovingly.”
What a Saviour we have. He is precious!
He is also precious for what He is doing now (Romans 8:34)
He is interceding for us.
It is staggering to know that He identifies with us in this manner. His intercession consists of Him being in Heaven and appearing on our behalf (Hebrews 9:24). How can this Great High Priest lose any of His own? He is totally identified with us and we with Him. He is in the place of cosmic authority (The Right Hand). Who will, therefore, rob Him of his sheep? Furthermore, His intercession is steeped in blood, precious blood (1 Peter 1:18-19). He intervened for us at the cross and now intercedes for us at the Throne. He will ensure that all His purchased possession are brought to where He is.
He is precious!
He is Precious for what He will do in the Future
Philippians 3:21 tells us that at the future Resurrection, Jesus ‘shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.’
Jesus is the only one who has conquered death. No one has ever come back to authoritatively tell us about the life beyond the grave except the Lord Christ. Friends of Harry Houdini, the world- famous magician, used to gather around his grave, once a year because Mr Houdini had said that after he died he was going to make contact on his birthday. So, each year, on Houdini’s birthday they gathered around his grave, and called out, “Oh Houdini, speak to us, oh Houdini speak to us.” Alas, poor old Houdini, he couldn’t speak, for he was dead.
The only one who made an appointment beyond the grave and kept it was the Lord Jesus. He outlived all his pallbearers. And here’s more good news. He is coming back for us (John 14:3). He promised He would and He keeps His word.
He is precious.
“Jesus, the very thought of Thee With sweetness fills my breast, But sweeter far Thyself to see, And in Thy presence rest.".
And that’s the Gospel Truth!