The Pearl

The Lord tells of a merchant, a man who knew pearls, who had spent his life seeking goodly ones, handling the fine and the finer, a connoisseur of worth. And one day he found a single pearl of great price, a pearl beyond any he had ever seen or hoped to see, and he did a startling thing. He went and sold all that he had, everything, his whole stock and his whole estate, and bought that one pearl. It is a small parable, two verses, and it holds the whole cost and the whole joy of the kingdom of heaven, which is worth everything a man has, and worth it gladly.

Notice first that the merchant was already a seeker. He was not a careless man stumbling by accident onto treasure. He sought goodly pearls; he knew value; he had trained his eye on many good things. And yet when he found the one pearl, all the others he had gathered became, in an instant, sellable, dispensable, worth letting go for the sake of the one. This is how the kingdom comes to a soul. It does not merely add one more good thing to our collection of good things. It appears as the one thing beside which all the others, even the genuinely good ones, are worth selling, and the soul that has truly seen it counts them cheap by comparison and lets them go.

THE ONE PEARL

For this is the whole point of the pearl, that it is one, and that it surpasses. The kingdom, and the King who is its heart, is not one treasure among many that a wise man will want to secure alongside his others. It is the pearl of great price, the single surpassing worth for which the many are gladly given. And note the gladness, for it is easy to miss and it changes everything. In the twin parable just before, the man who finds treasure hid in a field, for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. For joy thereof. The selling of all is not a grim and grudging sacrifice, the reluctant surrender of a miser forced to pay a great price. It is the glad, even eager act of a man who has seen what he is buying and knows the bargain is all in his favor.

We badly misread the cost of the kingdom when we read it as pure loss. The merchant did not go home lamenting all he had sold. He went home with the pearl, and a man who has traded a shopful of ordinary stones for a single matchless one has not lost; he has gained beyond all his hopes, and he knows it. So the apostle, looking back on all he had surrendered for Christ, his standing, his religion, his very self, did not sigh over it as a great deprivation. What things were gain to me, he said, those I counted loss for Christ, and I count all things but loss, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. Dung. That is the merchant’s verdict on everything he sold, once he held the pearl.

SELLING ALL

Yet we must not soften the word all, for the Lord did not. He sold all that he had. Not most, not the surplus, not what he could spare without pain, but all. The pearl of great price cannot be bought with a portion. It demands the whole, and it is honest about demanding it. So likewise, the Lord said elsewhere, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. This is the hard edge of the glad parable, that the pearl will not be had for a down payment, that the divided purchase is no purchase at all. The kingdom takes everything, because a King who is worthy of anything is worthy of all, and a heart that keeps back a portion has not yet valued the pearl aright.

There was a man who came to Jesus who could not do it. He was rich, and earnest, and had kept the commandments from his youth, and the Lord looking on him loved him and said, one thing thou lackest, go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And the man went away grieved, for he had great possessions. He stood at the very counter with the pearl before him, and he could not sell all, and so he went home with his money and without the pearl, sorrowful. He is the warning that hangs over this parable. It is not that he was wicked. It is that he would not let go, and the pearl is not sold by halves.

THE MERCHANT’S EYE

Why could the merchant sell all with joy, while the rich man could not sell at all without grief? The difference is in the eye. The merchant had truly seen the pearl. He had valued it rightly, and once a man has seen the worth of the one pearl, the selling of all becomes not a sacrifice but the most sensible transaction of his life. The rich man had not seen it. He still weighed the pearl against his possessions as though they were comparable, still measured Christ by the scale of his estate, and on that false scale his possessions won. Everything turns on the seeing. The soul that clutches its trinkets and cannot let them go has not yet truly seen the pearl, for no one who has seen it clutches anything else.

HE SOLD ALL FOR YOU

There is a turn in this parable that we almost never make, and it is the sweetest thing in it. We read it always as ourselves the merchant and Christ the pearl, and so it is. But hear it once the other way. There is another Merchant in the story of the world, who came seeking, and who found a treasure, and who sold all that he had to buy it, and the treasure he bought at that unimaginable price was us. He who was rich, the apostle says, for our sakes became poor. He emptied himself of glory, laid down his life, poured out his blood, sold quite literally all that he had, and with that price he bought a people for himself. Ye are bought with a price, the Scripture says, and the price was the whole wealth of heaven, spent without reserve on a pearl the world would have passed by.

This is the ground of our whole confidence, that before ever we sold anything to buy him, he sold everything to buy us. The song of heaven is not that we valued him rightly but that he valued us beyond all reason, thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. We were the pearl he saw and would not leave in the field, the treasure for which he counted his own life a fair exchange. And if he sold all to buy us while we were yet unlovely, then the selling of our all to buy him is no reckless leap but the only reasonable answer of a soul that has been so bought.

So the two sellings meet, and the parable turns full circle. He sold all for us before we knew him; we, seeing that love, sell all for him. And when the cost of following him seems too high, when the pearl asks for the last thing we are clutching, remember what he paid for you, and the price you are asked to pay will look small in the light of his. He did not buy you with a portion. He bought you with all. It is a poor lover who answers such a purchase by keeping something back.

THE UNDIVIDED HEART

For the pearl cannot be bought by a divided heart, and this is the last and most searching word of the parable. The merchant sold all, because a portion would not have purchased the pearl, and a heart that would keep back a portion for other masters cannot hold the one pearl at all. No man can serve two masters, the Lord said, ye cannot serve God and mammon. The pearl demands the whole heart not out of jealousy but out of its very nature, for it is the pearl of great price and will not share its throne with the trinkets. The soul that tries to have Christ and to hold back something else has understood neither Christ nor the something else.

This is why the eye must be single and the heart made one. If therefore thine eye be single, the Lord said, thy whole body shall be full of light, and the divided eye, looking two ways, fills the whole man with confusion and darkness. Unite my heart, the psalmist prayed, to fear thy name, for he knew his heart was prone to divide, to want God and to want the world, and to be torn in half by the wanting. The prayer for a united heart is the prayer to be able to sell all, to have the one clear valuation that lets a man let go of everything for the pearl without a backward glance.

So the real question this parable puts to us is not first whether we are willing to sell all, but whether we have seen the pearl. Have you seen it? Have you looked long enough at Christ and his kingdom to know their worth, to feel the surpassing value that makes the selling of all not a loss but a joy? For wisdom, the proverb says, is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her, and this is truer still of the One in whom all the treasures of wisdom are hid. Look at the pearl until you see it. And when you have seen it, do not go away sorrowful, clutching what you cannot keep anyway, but sell all, gladly, and buy the one pearl of great price, and go home rich forever.