A merchant looking out for fine pearls found one of very special value; so he went and sold everything he had, and bought it. Matt. 13:0.5, 46, N.E.B.

Christ, the Pearl of Great Price, is the one unique and supreme value in contrast with all the other treasures we have. The parable recognizes that we can have in this life many pearls of value: fine clothes, fine houses, fine food, fine positions. By nature many people desire the pearls in every area of life and are often satisfied with nothing less than the best.

But Christ is saying that there is one Supreme Pearl or Treasure that transcends everything that a man can have. Christ offers to us His stainless purity, His boundless love, His eternal sweetness and patience, His unbroken communion with our heavenly Father, His loftiness of mind, His wonderful peace, and His eternal righteousness. All this is the best answer to our hunger for life's values. If we are defeated it is by our failure to live by eternal values.

It is not the engrossment with the world but the grip of this Supreme Personality that sets our values straight. In Him alone can the world be put right. Christ gives to life a value and a wealth that saves and never destroys, that uplifts and never degrades.

Because we have found Christ we refuse to have materialism as a front for security. Take the gold of Fort Knox, strip men and women of all their pearls, take the gems of Asia's palaces, the rubies of the Orient; take everything of material value in the world—place on the scales of the Almighty all that men count treasure. Christ categorically affirms that one human being far outweighs it all in value. There is one Treasure, one Pearl, that outvalues them all.

Other things can be very desirable. But Christ outranks them all. When it comes to Jesus Christ, there really is no other treasure of importance. He stands unique in that every person in the world needs this Pearl.