There may well be many of them, but perhaps not as many as you might think. Most of the knowledge I was blessed to receive from my Father became melded together with the rest of it. I was blessed to be a son, a student, an employee and a parishioner of my father. I have read more than a hundred of his books, edited more than a thousand of his articles and listened to thousands of his sermons/lectures. Yet only a few tidbits stand out as “unforgettable” on their own. This is one of them.
“What if,” my father asked the crowd within which I sat, “Jesus were to come to you, look you in the eye, cup your chin in His hand and say to you, ‘I promise you that everything that will ever happen to you will be for your good.’ “How much peace would you have?” I confessed that all I would have is peace. It was a beautiful picture, a glorious dream. Then he told us, “He already has, through His servant Paul. He wrote, “And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
We worry about the wrong things, the very things that do not matter. The only real problem I have, Jesus has already solved. When He spoke the parable of the Pearl of Great Price His goal wasn’t to persuade us to give up all that we had, to pay for what He was offering us. Rather He was reminding us that everything He calls us to give up as we follow Him is the very stuff we would have sold just to be with Him. Whatever He takes from me in His providence is what I would gladly give up to have Him.
The engine that drove the Reformation wasn’t Luther’s brilliant mind, but his valiant heart. And what drove that was his acute knowledge of his own need for the grace of God. When we realize that we already have the One thing that matters we are suddenly set free. The threat of the loss of our reputation means nothing if we’ve already given it up. The threat of the loss of our standing means nothing if we’ve already embraced our kneeling. The threat of the loss of our lives leaves us unmoved if we have already died to ourselves. We are, when we have the Pearl of Great Price, when the Pearl of Great Price has us, invulnerable.
The Reformation did not happen because we needed to learn how we could be saved. It happened because we needed to know that we had been saved, and that nothing, including all the worldly power of the Pope of Rome could ever take it away. The same is true of the Pope today, of the mainstream media, of the powers in Washington DC, of the progressive lobby, of every enemy of the gospel. We are safe, secure. Better still, we have every reason to live in joy, content and confident.