The Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 13, verses 45 and 46.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls:
and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
Without taking time to establish what I feel is an accepted fact, we assume that this pearl of great price is the church; that the merchantman seeking goodly pearls is Christ; and that this is His own description of His church.
Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for it. Of course, at the time when the Lord Jesus said this, the church was not actually in existence on the earth. It was born on the Day of Pentecost.
Neither was it fully formed and perfected. It was not actually the pearl. But this is the Lord’s description of what He was seeking, and of what the church is in His own heavenly mind: a pearl of great price.
If, then, this is a true interpretation—that this represents the church—we can pass to the next conclusion, which I think is also beyond debate: what is true in the Lord’s mind of the whole should be true in every part.
That is, what the church in general, universally, is in the mind of the Lord should be in all its parts locally. If that again is a true interpretation, every local company, or part of the body of Christ, should correspond to this description: a pearl of great price.
Very briefly, let us look at some of the features and characteristics of this pearl as they are included in this description.
First of all, the principle of selectiveness is seen at work: seeking goodly pearls, and then, having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
The whole wonderful truth of divine choice—if you like, election—is here for us in this way: something that the Lord has selected, has chosen, has decided upon amongst many other things that He might have, of lesser value, as the thing that answers to His heart.
That great principle and truth of selectiveness, of course, is right at the heart of the revelation which has come to us in the New Testament.
He is a chosen vessel unto Me.
So said the Lord about Paul. And Paul transferred that very truth to the church: chosen in Him before the foundation. Ye are an elect race—something selected by the Lord to serve Him in the satisfaction of His own nature, His own heart; to fulfil a specific purpose in His eternal counsel. Chosen, selected for something.
The Lord’s selectiveness is not just that He prefers them, but it is related to something which only that can serve. It is something specific; only that can do that. He selects, as He would select—changing the metaphor—a tool by which alone He could do a certain piece of work. Just that. Anything else will not do. Anything other will not do. It is that.
And I entreat you, dear friends, to lay hold of these things, simple as they may sound. Believe, if that is true of the church as a whole, that it is to be true of any part of the church anywhere.
Something is not just coming to being willy-nilly, or by any other way than the Lord chose to have that. The Lord selected that. The Lord picked that out for something.
If that were true, what meaning it would give to everything, would it not? It would place everything upon a basis of meaning and significance, and it would exclude so much.
Then we go on. Not only selectiveness, but distinctiveness is inherent in this parable in two short clauses. Distinctiveness: this is different. This is different.
This is something particular, something peculiar, something in itself. It is distinguished amongst all the pearls that might be. This is different. It must be different, to satisfy Him and to fulfil His purpose.
You at once realise that that could be followed out along many lines and in many connections. But here again, as part of the great revelation of the church, it is something different—fundamentally different, characteristically different—not all of a piece with anything and everything else. It is distinguished.
His eyes, if we follow the parable, pass over many things, and He says, “This is different. This is different.”
We do need to ask the Lord what that means. We know that the church is different; the true church is different. But Paul, on one occasion, spoke about the things which differ—the things which differ, even in the realm of Christianity.
You and I need that faculty for discernment and discrimination, insight and perception, to see things that differ. Not just the great difference between the church and the world, of course; we do not have any difficulty over there. But there are differences in an inner circle, between things—this and that.
It is just that distinctiveness that the Lord really is after. This is something with a distinctive value and a distinctive character, and, if you like, a distinctive message.
This is something which is distinguished, clear-cut and clearly defined, and not mixed up in a jungle of all sorts of things. It stands out. There is no mistaking the character of this. It is different. It is just different.
You may not be able to explain or define the difference, but the verdict is: different. That is true about the church, is it not? We all agree as to the church according to God’s mind. There is something very distinct in God’s universe, outstanding; and it is to be like that in every part of its expression locally.
The next thing is so obvious: its preciousness in the sight of the Lord. A pearl—here is the description—of great price. Something very precious to the Lord.
We know what it cost Him, the price that He paid for it. Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for it. The church of God, which He purchased with His own blood—and so on and on. Very precious for the Lord.
Do we not need, dear friends, to redeem our mentality regarding the church, and that locally, from cheapness and commonplaceness, from regarding it too lightly?
I will put that the other way: do we not need a very much greater conception of how tremendously valuable a true expression of the church is to the Lord? It is priceless.
He puts its value like this: sold all that He had. You can measure that in the case of the Lord Jesus. You can measure that. You are approximating to the measure of the value of the church, universal and local, to the Lord when it corresponds to His mind: a pearl of great price, very precious.
And when we talk like that, we are talking about one another, are we not? About one another—that is all.
We can put it in many ways. Put it another way: the hand cannot say to the foot, “I have no need of you. We can dispense with you.” Nothing cheap in the body of Christ; nothing that can be discarded like that as without value. Great price.
Next, here is represented in this pearl everything: fullness and finality. For this divine Merchantman, it was everything. It was not one of a number of things. It was not just a bit better than others. It was not an alternative.
He had not something else, as we say, up His sleeve if that failed. For Him, it was everything. And if it is everything, that is final—nothing beyond it.
Now, you are familiar enough with all the New Testament teaching about the church to know that it is the fullness of Him. He has not something extra that, if it fails, He can say, “Well, it does not matter so much. It has failed; I have something else that I can draw upon and put in its place.” No. Nothing can take its place.
He has nothing else to take its place. If we fail Him locally, He has not something to put in there. Ah, please, He has not got a lot of things in reserve: “Very well, if that fails, I will do this.” No, no. It is everything at a time.
That gives the sense both of fullness and of permanence, does it not, to what is according to the Lord’s mind? He will look after that. That is permanent; that is final. If that were taken from Him, then everything is taken from Him, because He has put everything into it.
It represents the finality of the Lord’s interest there—the finality of the Lord’s interest there.
When Israel of old, in figure—Zion, or Jerusalem—did fail the Lord in the purpose of its election, the Lord had no alternative. The glory went up and was removed and went away, went right away. He had no second best. No second best. It was all or nothing.
Fullness, finality, with that which has come out of His heart: His church.
And lastly, again so evident: here, in all this—in its selectiveness, in its distinctiveness, in its preciousness, in its fullness and finality—it is the embodiment of His sufferings.
How is that? It is the very synonym of suffering. Its very being is the result of suffering, of wounding and bleeding: the alchemy of suffering, transmuting.
A thing like this, an expression like this in the church, general or local, has to embody His sufferings—not only His sufferings substitutionally, that is fundamental, but His sufferings constitutionally.
Paul said:
I fill up that which remaineth of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the church.
The sufferings of Christ for His church. Christ loved and gave. The church is the embodiment of His suffering; but then, on that side, not substitutionally, but constitutionally and vocationally. The church’s very life is one of suffering. It is a costly thing in that way.
This is not something that just happens, not just some easy life. This—that is, to serve the Lord in this way, in character and power—is something realised through suffering in fellowship with Him.
There is the agony of pearl formation—nothing short of agony. In order to have something like this, I think the Lord of necessity has, from time to time, to baptise us afresh into His sufferings, bring back the agony.
It is a good thing—a good thing. A painful thing, a distressing thing; but it is a good thing if we are brought to the place where that which is of the Lord, where we are concerned, is so precious that it causes us an agony if we see it in any way in danger of loss. It is an agony.
The Lord precipitates that in order to have a pearl. You see, then, no pearl without suffering in itself.
While the sufferings of Christ are, in one sense, His peculiar and unique sufferings in the redemptive sense, there are the sufferings of Christ which are passed to us, into which we are called: the agony for the church.
Have you got any agony for the church? Surely you have. Real bleeding for the church, local as well as universal. I think perhaps it comes nearer home to us when it is local. But may the Lord give us more of this anguish for His church as a whole, as well as for our part of it: suffering for His body.
So that everything is kept on this very practical basis: no mere theory and doctrine and teaching; truth that is an agony, a real travail. And then it will be precious to Him.
Merchantman, seeking goodly pearls. See what it says: the kingdom of heaven is like—the kingdom of heaven. This is a heavenly quest for a heavenly thing.
And these are the characteristics of a heavenly thing in the eyes and mind of the Lord.