Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3014
“Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious.” 1 Peter 2:7.
[Not only was this the first text from which Mr. Spurgeon preached, but it was his theme on many subsequent occasions. Two of these discourses bear the same title— CHRIST PRECIOUS TO BELIEVERS although one of them is No. 242, Volume 5 in the New Park Street Pulpit and the other is No. 2137, Volume 36]
MY Brothers and Sisters, I am quite out of order for addressing you tonight. I feel extremely unwell, excessively heavy and exceedingly depressed, and yet I could not deny myself the pleasure of trying to say a few words to you. I have taken a text upon which I think I could preach in my sleep and I believe that if I were dying, and were graciously led into the old track, I could, with my last expiring breath, pour out a heartfelt of utterance upon the delightful verse which I have selected. It happens to be the passage from which I first essayed to speak in public when I was but a boy of sixteen years of age and I am sure it contains the marrow of what I have always taught in the pulpit from that day until now. The words are in the Second Chapter of the First Epistle of Peter, and the seventh verse—” Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious.”
We might find “ample room and verge enough” if we were to enlarge upon the preciousness of Christ in His Person as God and perfect Man, His preciousness to His Father, His preciousness to the Holy Spirit, His preciousness to angels and glorified men. We might next speak of Him in the preciousness of His work, showing His preciousness as the Mediator of the New Covenant and at the Incarnate Messenger of that Covenant on earth, His preciseness as working out a perfect righteousness and as rendering a complete expiation. We might dwell upon His preciousness in all His offices, whether as Prophet, Priest, or King, and in all His relationships as Friend, Brother, as Bridegroom. Indeed, we have before us a subject as inexhaustible as the river of God, and as bright as the sapphire Throne! If we should endeavor to show how precious the Well-Beloved is in all respects, we would need eternity in which to complete the task—
“Precious is the name of Jesus,
Who can half its worth unfold?
Far beyond angelic praises
Sweetly sung to harps of gold.
Precious when to Calvary groaning,
He sustained the cursed tree.
Precious when His death atoning
Made an end of sin for me.
Precious when the bloody scourges
Caused the sacred drops to roll.
Precious when of wrath the surges
Overwhelmed His holy soul!
Precious in His death victorious,
He the host of Hell overthrows,
In His Resurrection glorious,
Victor crowned over all His foes.
Precious, Lord! Beyond expressing,
Are Your beauties all Divine! Glory, honor, power and blessing Be henceforth forever Thine.”
The wording of the text binds our thoughts to one point. “Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious.” It is not so much how precious He is, as how precious He is to you! If you are a Believer, the text affirms that Jesus Christ is, without any adverb to limit the extent of the descriptive word, precious to you!
I. We shall, first, talk awhile upon the Truth of God that JESUS CHRIST IS NOW PRECIOUS TO BELIEVERS.
Notice, attentively, how personally precious Jesus is. There are two persons in the text. “Therefore, to you who believe, HE is precious.” “You” and “He.” You are a real person and you feel that you are such. To yourself, you must always be the most real of existences. You do not think of yourself as a person of whom you have read in history, or heard of in discourse, or seen from a window years ago. You have, (to use an ugly word, since I do not know any substitute for it), realized yourself—you are quite clear about your own existence. Now, in the same way, I pray you strive to realize the other Person! “Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious.” Jesus exists just as really as you do and you must not regard Him as a personage who was here 1,869 years ago, or one of whom you have heard, and whom you like to think of as a poetical conception—but there is a real Christ now existing in spirit, existing here—in real flesh and blood now standing at the right hand of the Father! And between Him and you, if you are a Believer, there exists a bond of unity which, though invisible, is nevertheless most matter-of-fact and positive. You believe in Him. He loves you. You love Him in return and He sheds abroad in your heart a sense of His love. You two are bound together tightly and firmly. There is neither myth, nor dream either in Him or in your union to Him. He is and you are—and He is in very deed most precious to you.
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—“Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious.” It does not speak as though He might be or might not be, but “He is precious.” There are some things about myself as a Christian which are frequently matters of question. I may gravely question whether I am growing in Grace and under such a doubt I may search my heart to see whether I love my Lord better, or whether I have more fully conquered my sins. But one thing I do not question, namely, that being a Believer in Him, Jesus Christ is unutterably precious to my soul! If you doubt your faith, you may doubt whether Christ is precious to you, but if your faith is certain, the preciousness of Christ to your heart is quite as certain. “He is precious.” If the new life is in you, you are as sure to love the Savior 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 questions here! Allow no debate upon this vital point of your religion! Jesus must be precious to you. Cleanse your eyes if any dust has dimmed your sight of Jesus’ preciousness and be not satisfied till, in the language of the spouse, you can say, “My Beloved is the chief among ten thousand.” “Yes, He is altogether lovely.”