(God’s grace and God’s glory are real in our lives according to the value we place on Christ.  To experience the extent of God’s grace is to know Jesus Christ.  To see God’s glory is to look diligently to Christ, His Son.  This article enabled me to see how precious Christ is to me.  I present it in four parts so as to give us time to meditate on these truths of the person of Christ, our Lord, our Life. In His Grace~ Fran)

“Unto you therefore which believe he is precious.”—1 Peter 2:7

A felt conviction of the preciousness of the Savior has ever been regarded by enlightened ministers of the gospel as constituting a scriptural and unmistakable evidence of the existence of divine life in the soul; and in moments when neither time nor circumstance would admit of the close scrutiny of a theological creed, or a nice analysis of spiritual feelings and emotions, the one and simple inquiry upon which the whole matter is made to hinge has been—“What is your experience of the worth of the Savior? Is Christ precious to your heart?” The answer to this question has been to the examiner the test and the measure of the soul’s spiritual and vital change. And how proper that it should be so! In proportion as the Holy Spirit imparts a real, intelligent sense of personal sinfulness, there will be the heart’s appreciation of the value, sufficiency, and preciousness of the Lord Jesus…

We commence with a consideration of Christ’s personal preciousness—His preciousness in Himself. It is the conviction of Christ’s personal dignity and worth that gives to faith such a substantial realization of the greatness and preciousness of His work. We have need, beloved, to be cautioned against an error into which some have fallen— of exalting the work of Christ above the person of Christ—in other words, not tracing the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice to the essential dignity of Christ’s person.

[If] the Godhead of the Savior is admitted, His atoning death becomes a fact of easy belief. Once concede that He Who died upon the cross was “God manifest in the flesh,” and the mind will experience no difficulty in admitting that that death was sacrificial and expiatory. The sufferings and death of a Being so illustrious must be in harmony with an object and in connection with a result of equal dignity and momentousness; and where will there be found such an object and such a result as the salvation of man?…There had been no glory in His achievements, no significance in His work, no efficacy in His blood, had there been no divine dignity and worth in His person. And, had He not taken a single step in working out the salvation of man—had He repaired no breach, wept no tear, endured no agony, shed no blood in the redemption of His Church—had He, in a word, conferred not a solitary blessing upon our race—He still had been the eternal Son of God—divine, peerless, glorious—the object of supreme love, adoration, and worship by all celestial beings and through all eternal ages. While, then, His sacrificial work illustrates His marvelous grace and love to sinners, that work owes all its acceptance and efficacy to the value imparted to it by the essential deity of His person. Thus, it is the personal preciousness of Christ that imparts an official preciousness to His work.

Who, then, is the Lord Jesus Christ? In common parlance (speech), men term Him, “our Savior.” But do the great body pause and reflect who Christ really is? Do they regard Him as the Creator of this world—of all worlds? of their being—of all beings? Do they consider that “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3)? If so, would they not give Him divine homage, since that which creates must be antecedent to and above the thing created, and therefore must be pre-existent and divine?

What a grand and glorious truth is this to the believing soul—the absolute deity of the Savior—the essential Godhead of Christ! How it endears Him to the heart as the Rock of Ages upon which its hope is built! How precious must be every evidence of the divine strength, stability, and durability of that basis upon which the believing sinner reposes his whole salvation. Precious, then, is Christ as God. Precious in His deity—precious as a distinct person in the adorable Godhead —precious as God over all, blessed for evermore (Rom. 9:5). But pause, Christian reader, for a moment, in wonder and praise before this august truth. If there is a spot where we should put off the shoes from our feet, surely it is this. With what profound reverence, with what silent awe, yet with what adoring love should we contemplate the Godhead of our Redeemer! But for that Godhead, we had been forever lost! His obedience to the Law, His satisfaction to the justice of Jehovah, had been of no efficacy or avail, save only as it partook of the authority, dignity, and virtue of His higher nature. Do not question the existence of the fact because of the mystery of its mode. How Jehovah could become incarnate is a wonder we shall never, in this state of limited knowledge, fully understand; enough that it is so.

Let reason reverently adore, and faith implicitly trust…Hesitate not, then, to give full credence to all the glorious truths of the gospel, and to place the entire weight of your soul upon the atonement of Jesus, and to believe that, sinner though you are, be it the very chief, such is the divine worth and sovereign efficacy of His sacrifice, you will, you must, you shall be saved to the uttermost because your Creator is your Savior, and your Judge is your Justifier.

(CHRIST IS PRECIOUS is a reprint from Free Grace Broadcaster published by Chapel Library.  You can download the whole article from page 21,  http://www.chapellibrary.org/broadcaster/The Person of Christ.  May you be blessed as many others and I have been blessed with these publications.  They are free in print simply by subscribing.)