Christ’s preciousness – A Retro-post by C.H. Spurgeon

“To every sinner who feels his sin, Christ is precious; to every child of God who is saved, the Saviour must forever be fairest among the fair; to every heir of heaven who has experienced the sweetness of his saving grace, Christ must appear to be ‘the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.’ A world destroyed I see if it had not been for a Saviour born; a world for ever cast into hell I see if it had not been for a Saviour dying on the cross. As a Saviour, O earth, thou as yet knowest not his preciousness; as a Saviour, O heaven, thou canst not reach the full merit of his praise. He is precious, then, if you think of him as he is, as God and man, and as a Saviour, in which office the two natures are combined in one.

Brethren, Christ is so precious that he cannot be bought. If a man should give all the substance of his house to purchase an interest in Christ, it would be utterly contemned. Rich men might gather together all their goodly things, yea, India might be exhausted of its wealth, Peru drained of its silver, and California of its gold, but no part nor lot in Christ could be bought, even with sapphires and diamonds. He gives himself away right freely, according to the riches of his grace, but he is utterly unpurchasable, for he is so precious that he cannot even be priced. A whole world can never weigh against him any more than a single grain of dust would weigh against the universe. There is no measuring line with which to form a unit for calculation, with which to measure him; he is infinite, and finite judgments will never be able to comprehend his unutterable value. He is God’s unspeakable gift. Heaven itself is nothing as compared with him, and if a man had to wade breast deep through a thousand hells to come at Christ, it were well worth the venture, if at the last he might but say, ‘My Beloved is mine, and I am his.’

Jesus is so precious that he cannot be matched. There is none like him. The fairest of the fair are uncomely and deformed when compared with him. As Rutherford would say, ‘Black sun, black moon, black stars, but, O bright, infinitely bright Lord Jesus.’ ‘He is the express image of his Father’s person, and the brightness of his Father’s glory.’ Ye shall find none that can be likened unto him, if ye ransack time and space. Miss him as your Saviour, and you have lost the only salvation possible; gain him, and you will want no other, for he is made of God unto you ‘wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption,’ and all your souls can want; yea, he himself is all. If heaven and earth were sold, ye could not match Christ in any market if ye gave the price of heaven and earth for his like. If you search eternity, and ransack immensity, there shall ne’er be found one fit to be second to him, he is so precious.

Precious, brethren, he is to us, because he cannot be lost. All the precious things in this world are loseable. The jewels may be stolen, the house may be broken into by the thief, and the casket may be taken away, but Christ is such a jewel that even Satan himself can never rob the soul of him when once it hath him. My heart evermore rejoices in that precious truth. Let Jesus Christ be once mine as the gift of God, I am safe, for ‘the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.’ The Lord never repents of what he has done, he never plays fast and loose, or takes back a boon which he has once bestowed. Is not Jesus a priceless, precious jewel, since he cannot be lost!

And what is equally as delightful to remember, he cannot be destroyed. Even the diamond can be dissolved; bring but sufficient heat to bear upon it, focus upon it the full rays of the sun, and the sparkling crystal dissolves into a little gas; but though men have tried to focus all the heat of persecution upon the Christian, they have never been able to separate him from the love of Christ; and though earth and hell have stirred up their malice, and the furnace has been heated seven times hotter, and the child of God has been tossed into it, and apparently deserted to the fury of his enemies, yet never in a single case has the precious gem of Christ Jesus in the heart been destroyed, nor the believer’s interest in it; for Jesus and his servants have lived together, according to the glorious promise, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also.’ See the preciousness, then, of Christ, the intrinsic preciousness, the essential preciousness of Christ, because he cannot be bought, he cannot be priced, he cannot be matched, he cannot be lost, he cannot be destroyed. Happy and rich beyond expression are they who can truly say, ‘Unto us Christ is precious.’” C.H. Spurgeon, “Three Precious Things,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. 16. Originally preached on May 8, 1870. (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1870), 278-280. [Italics original.]