“Now to you who believe, this stone is precious.”

My parents own this cabin in the North Carolina Mountains.  Well, we call it a cabin, but it isn’t like Abe Lincoln’s.  Two stories, four bedrooms on a three-acre lake, with its own beach and dock, accessible by a two-mile dirt road (originally), just a few miles off the famous Blue Ridge Parkway.  Tough place to vacation!  Over the years we would take the kids there almost every year in the summer.  The cabin is just outside the town limits of Spruce Pine, dubbed the “Mineral Capital of the World”.  They have a gem festival there every summer that looks like a two-bit flea market.  We’ve been several times.  I’m not into rocks…I mean, stones.  Gemstones is what they call them.  People really get into collecting them, finishing them, selling and trading them.  Some make jewelry with them, others table decorations or shelf souvenirs.  They have these turning drums called tumblers that take what looks like rough rocks and turns them into dazzling shiny precious stones.  It takes several steps using various grades of grit and finally polish over several days, tumbling them in a sort of grinding, sandpapery mud.  My older son had a couple of them turning stones for days on end.  Those grating things pumped steady black noise into the air!

This word precious is an interesting word, especially as God uses it.  First, it means essentially the same thing when it’s linked to metals and stones: “of high value and worth, costly, dear”.  Gold, silver, diamonds, rubies and emeralds are the decorations of the New Jerusalem, the holy city (Revelation 21:18-21).  It is, as John says, “prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband” (v. 2).  So God recognizes the inherent beauty and long-lasting quality such precious things possess.  But that’s talking about heaven, by and by.

What does God consider precious when we back up and consider real time in a fallen world?  The writer that uses this word the most is Peter, so let’s check out his 2 letters.  First and foremost, Peter says that Christ himself is precious: “As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him…” (1, 2:4).  Then he quotes Isaiah 28:16, “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone…” (2:6).  Christ is precious — of great value and worth, costly and dear — because, as the cornerstone of both Israel and the Church, he creates, secures and stabilizes both groups.  Obviously, the fulfillment of this description is found in us: “Now to you who believe, this stone is precious” (v. 7).

Earlier in chapter one Peter identified something else he called precious.  “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold [precious metals!] that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (vs. 18-19).  The Savior’s blood was the price of redemption, something valuable enough to satisfy God’s wrath for “the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).  As corrupting and degrading and innumerable (from man’s perspective) as our sins are against God, Christ’s blood, representing his very life, is infinitely above comparison and eternally more powerful.  It is the one and only antidote to the immoral dysfunctional rebellion brought on by mankind’s arrogance and foolishness.  Similarly emanating from God who calls Christ precious are his promises to us, likewise precious (2, 1:4).

But then we discover something else that is precious in God’s eyes.  In 2, 1:1 he calls our faith precious.  In the eternal scheme of things, this is more valuable than anything on earth, and, as we have seen, not just because things on earth are destined to fail and be replaced.  Our faith in him more than satisfies the “eternity in the hearts of men” because he reveals to us “what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).  He makes the same point in 1, 1:7, “These [kinds of trials] have come so that your faith—of greater worth [preciousness] than gold, which perishes even though refined with fire [the purest kind]—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  There you have it: the durability and value of our faith at Christ’s coming.  Great value indeed!

Perhaps the best and simplest example of the impact that a precious object has (or should have) on us is found in Matthew 13:45-46: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.  When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it”.  What we value and cherish moves us to action.  Is Christ precious enough to you that others see you move for him?