Precious

1 Peter 2: 7  “To you who believe, Jesus Christ is precious”.

Recently, I was reading about a man who decided to personalize this scripture and write down three reasons why Christ was precious to him.

What a great idea and assignment!   It inspired me to do the same.  Christ is indeed precious, but the challenge was harder than I imagined; consolidating thoughts and translating musings into coherent words, ideas and doing so, with transparency and authenticity, so much so, it has taken me all week and yet, here I am revising….and revising; and rightly so.   This is important task.  Why is Christ is precious?  If someone were to ask me or say, “You talk a lot about God and Christ, so why is He so important?”

I want to have an answer.   Followers of Christ should have an answer.   It should be an answer that doesn’t  sound rote, is current with your present situation, but is extremely meaningful.

As I was working this out, I also wanted to include in my answer some emotions.  (Yes, yes emotions need to be tempered but since God has emotions and He created us in His image, some emotions are okay.)   I wanted my answer to specifically reflect my love and gratitude for Him, as if I am bragging on Christ, if that makes sense.  I don’t know… it might sound silly, but I did want to answer as if I was telling you about my best friend…so, here goes…

Christ is precious to me because as God, He is the epitome of goodness.  When we say the word ‘good’, we should think of God, because good is synonymous with Christ’s character and innate nature.   Dictionaries should be revised.  It is true, God is good.  And the coolest thing ever, is that we can have His goodness manifested in us.  Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col 1: 27).   Christ-Anointed One, Savior-Rescuer, Messiah-the Promised Deliverer, Emanuel-God with us, literally the ‘with us’ God can live, dwell, tabernacle within us (Ephesians 3: 17).   This is so outrageous to imagine, God’s goodness within us.  When we repent, turn to Christ and commit to a lifestyle of dying to self, we are given God’s Spirit.  Galatians 3:14 says, “Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith”  And when the God’s Spirit enters us at the time of faith, the gifts of the Spirit are also given (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control).

Goodness is one of the gifts of the Spirit.  Goodness means beneficence or doing good.  As a caregiver and health professional, I know this word well as it is the platform for our work.  Goodness-beneficence is the quality of being kind, charitable, or beneficial; the act of doing good; giving kindness or a charitable act.

When we fall in love with Christ, we can feel, see and experience His goodness, which is one of the fruits of His Spirit.  It is through Christ’s holy and sacred goodness, that we love others.

Moreover, Philemon 1: 6 tells us, “As you share your faith with others, I pray that they may come to know all the blessings Christ has given us”.  This is such an exciting verse for Followers and one that gives me great hope for myself and for others.  In this verse, it tells us how Christ transforms us into His likeness by giving us His holy and sacred qualities such as goodness (2 Corinthians 3: 18).

As we share our faith (via acts of love and deeds of goodness Heb 13: 6), Paul is praying that we may become effectual (energetic, active in proving our love for Christ by said acts of kindness) by the acknowledging (recognizing; discerning due to or discovered by experimenting through practical experience) every good thing (benefit from Christ, the goodness of Christ, the tenderness, gentleness, and grace of Christ; every benevolent trait of Christ) which is in us through Christ Jesus.

In other words, the more good we do for others, the more we will feel the goodness of Christ working in us.  We will feel His tenderness, His gentleness and His goodness, which makes us want more and more of Him.  Goodness is addictive.   We crave goodness, especially when we realize we don’t deserve His goodness, His forgiveness, His grace or His love.  We had nothing to offer God.  We brought nothing to the relationship.  Christ initiated it and sought us out even when we hated Him.   We couldn’t hear or even feel His love.  We didn’t even want it.  But Christ, holy and pure reached out to us.  Christ’s love and His goodness is unlike anything we have ever known and because it is, it makes us love Him all the more and crave His character.   Nothing satisfies like God.  The more we receive of Christ, the more we want and the more we want, the more we receive and are satisfied.   We need more and more of Christ.  He is precious to us.