Malachi 3:17 And they shall be mine, said the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them… More closely rendered, the passage is "They shall be My peculiar treasure in the day I am preparing." For one, I like the familiar phraseology in our common version. Christians are Christ's jewels. They are purchased by atoning blood; at an infinite price was this Divine ownership secured. As the pearls are only won from the depths of the sea by the dangerous dive of the fishers, so were the pearls for Messiah's crown brought up from the miry depths of depravity by the descent of that Divine Sufferer who came "to seek and to save the lost." The most brilliant and precious gem known to us is of the same chemical substance as the black and opaque coal of the mine. Crystallisation turns the carbon into the diamond. The grace of the Lord Jesus transforms an opaque soul, as black by nature as the jet, into a jewel which reflects the glory of Christ's countenance. All the lustre that the ripest Christian character possesses is but the reflection of the Sun of Righteousness. He who lives nearest to Jesus shines the brightest. The tarnish which makes some Christians no more slightly than a common pebble of the mire, comes from contact with an evil world. A "pearl cast before swine" is not more out of place than is a professed follower of Jesus in the society of scoffers, or in the haunts of revelry. Not all precious jewels glitter in conspicuous positions. The Master has His hidden ones; there are costly sapphires beneath coarse raiment, and up in the dingy attic of poverty. That self-denying daughter who wears out her youthful years in nursing a poor infirm mother, is a ruby of whom the Master saith, "Thou art Mine in the day when I gather My jewels." (T. C. Cuyler.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. |
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