THE “He” of this text stands for Jesus. If we remove it and put “Jesus” in its place the text will read thus, “Unto you therefore which believe Jesus is precious,” or if the words were transposed it would read in this way, “Jesus is precious therefore to you which believe.”
The word precious is used in connection with things of great price. Thus rubies, pearls, emeralds, diamonds, &c., are called precious stones, and gold and silver are precious metals. Anything, however, to which we attach much value is precious to us though it may be of little worth in the eyes of others. A letter written by a dear friend now dead may be regarded as very precious for his sake, or the Bible that was dear mamma’s before she went to be with the Lord is precious to you because it was hers.
Will you pause for a moment and consider whether Jesus is precious to you. Do you love Him, and is His name dear to your heart?
“Why should not an angel be as precious to you as Jesus?” I asked yesterday a number of Sunday school children.
“Because,” said one little fellow, “an angel never died for us.” Just so. But Jesus did die for us, and that is one great reason why He should be precious.
If you were in the top story of a house on fire and likely to perish in the flames, and a man scaled the ladder and saved you, but in doing so received such injuries as soon ended in his death, would you not always love him, and, if you could, would you not sometimes visit his grave, and say, “There lies the man who lost his life in saving mine?”
When the shepherd left the ninety-and-nine sheep in a safe place, and went forth to seek the straying one, was it not that it was precious to him? If he had cared nothing for it, he might have said, “Poor silly thing, it has thought fit to stray from the fold, and it must now pay for its folly; I shall not trouble to seek it.” But the shepherd sought it over hill and dale until he found it, and then laid it on his shoulders rejoicing, and carried it safely home. Why was this? Because he loved and valued it.
The Lord Jesus left His home on high, and came into this world of sin and suffering to seek and save the last.
“He might have left us to endure
The wrath we seem’d to brave;
Our case would then admit no cure,
For who but He could save?
But though resisted long, He strove;
His purpose was to save:
He show’d the greatness of His love,
And though provoked, forgave.”
He loved His lambs and sheep so much that He laid down His life to rescue them from sin and death. He calls His own sheep by name, and gives them eternal life; and tells them they can never perish, for His Father holds them in His hand, and none can pluck from Him. They may well say Jesus is precious to them, yea the chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely.
W. B.