PART 1: THE PEARL, CONT.
THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST IN HIS ORIGIN
Here is a topic that no writer can fully script, no minister can fully expound, no mind can fully comprehend – the perfection of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ told His disciples that to see Him was to see the Father (John 14:9). Who can fully know the mind and ways of the infinite God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts? And yet, while the infinite God by His very nature is incomprehensible to His finite creatures, His creatures can know God truthfully and sufficiently for salvation. You can know Him not because of your wisdom or because you have ascended up into the heights and brought the knowledge of Him down to man but because He Himself, the infinite God, has condescended to His creatures to reveal Himself truthfully, sufficiently, and perfectly. He has revealed Himself in His creation showing the glory of God and He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures showing the only way of salvation through Jesus Christ.
In the Scriptures, you and I are brought face to face with the Triune God of Glory, Father Son and Holy Ghost. In the revelation of God to man this 2nd person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, takes upon Himself the nature of man and therefore has two distinct natures, fully God and fully Man. In the God Man Jesus Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:3). You and I see in Christ the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col 2:9). You see that it is the Father who has delivered His people into the kingdom of His dear Son, Jesus Christ in whom we have redemption from our sins (Col 1:13-14).
A pearl has greater value based on its origin. If it is harvested through man made techniques it is less valuable than natural pearls found in certain places in the ocean. The One Pearl of Great price is the perfect pearl. There is only one. There is none like it in its attributes, beauty, and origins. And this perfect pearl is a great picture, for Jesus Christ Himself is like none other because of His origins.
We confess that the Scripture teaches what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. What is it that man is to believe concerning God? Perhaps second only to the Triunity of the Godhead is that Jesus Christ is God! Jesus Christ has no beginning. Before Abraham was, Jesus Is. Before the foundations of the world, Christ was with God the Father and God the Spirit. Christ is like the order of Melchisedec, not like the order of Aaron for Jesus is a priest without beginning or end. Jesus Christ is from all eternity. To speak of His origin is something of a contradiction as God has no beginning and yet God Himself uses this anthropomorphism to help us understand the perfection of His origin. What else has no beginning? What other person or thing finds its beginning before Christ who has no beginning and who created all things by the Word of His Power? There is none else! He is the first and He is the last and before him there is no God!
Who hath measured the waters in the hallow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counselor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him , and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? To whom then will ye liken God?…Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I am the LORD; and beside me there is no Savior…I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.” (Excerpts from Isaiah 40-44)
Jesus Christ is God, the only God. He is before all else. He is the first, and He is the last. He created all things. Like the one pearl, the perfect pearl of great price, so Jesus Christ is perfect because of His origins. My friends, Jesus Christ is the one perfect treasure for His origins are unlike any other. To have Him is to have eternal life. Do you consider the perfection of Christ in His origins? Who else can you compare to Him? Do you have Christ as your own today because He has made you His own? If you are uncertain, do not rest, do not sleep, look to Him and be saved!
Ben Stahl, Elder