Meditations in Matthew Thirteen: the Treasure and the Pearl — Part 2

Our last post (here) discussed Jesus’s parables of the “treasure” and the “pearl of great price” (Matt 13:44–46). Our view of them agrees with the majority view on a key point. In these stories, “Jesus is comparing the kingdom of God to the treasure and to the pearl.”¹

We disagree, however, on the identity of the man in these parables. Most commentators say he represents us. We should, like him, place great value the kingdom and sell all we have to get it.

This interpretation is problematic. The Lord asked a group of people, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” The obvious answer was nothing. 

Jesus said the kingdom would arrive before some of them died (Matt 16:26–28). Were they to “sell all they had” and buy it (Matt 13:44)? The answer is again obvious. They could not make such a transaction.

The man in the “treasure” and “pearl” parables represents the Son of Man (cp. Matt 13:37). He alone could purchase the “treasure” and “pearl of great price.” As Jesus said, “the Son of man came . . . to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28).

One commentator says our “approach interprets the metaphor too woodenly.”² He warns we “must not interpret the buying of the treasure as an allegory for the atonement, as if Jesus were the treasure hunter purchasing our redemption.”³ He offers no reasons to support this conclusion.

In personal conversations, people have raised a reasonable objection to our view. They say our interpretation places too much value on us. Scripture describes us as sinners, aliens from God. We are not like “treasure” or a “pearl of great price.”

This objection contains an element of truth, but it obscures the whole truth. This post will encourage us to think of ourselves as Christ’s “peculiar treasure” (Ps 135:4). He “gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people” (Titus 2:14). The term “peculiar people” here means “‘His treasured people,’ the same as the ‘purchased people’ referred to in 1 Pet. 2:9. (See Sept.: Ex. 19:5; Deut. 7:6; 14:2; 26:18).”⁴

We will proceed in two steps. First, we will mention a few passages that describe us in negative ways. A few brief comments will show they do not negate our view of the treasure and pearl parables. Second, we will provide a list of positive symbolic terms. These show how God views saints in the messianic-age “church kingdom.”⁵

Negative Symbols for God’s People

Many Scriptures describe us unflatteringly. Some Christians think this means we are not the “treasure” or “pearl” of Jesus’s parables.

But these passages conceive of us as outside the kingdom. In them, we have not yet entered the kingdom through the new birth (John 3:5). We have no faith, repentance, confession, or baptism (Matt 3:1–5). They do not define our kingdom identity.

Let us consider two examples of negative descriptions. First, Isaiah says, “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isa 64:6). 

This prophet also foresaw the kingdom. In it, God’s people would say, “in the LORD have I righteousness and strength” (Isa 45:24). They would not see themselves as “an unclean thing” in God’s sight.

The apostles lived in the early days of the kingdom Isaiah described. They told us how to think about ourselves. Christ is “made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Co 1:30). And, God “hath made him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor 5:21).

Kingdom saints have a glorious righteousness, not one like “filthy rags.”

Our second example of negative descriptions comes from David. He spoke of the sin we have inherited from our parents. “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:5). This is a “confession of depravity.”⁶

The apostles of Christ also show our depravity. Paul, for example, says through Adam “sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom 5:12).

But these sad expressions are not the final description of God’s people. We have entered the kingdom by being “born again” (John 3:3). Paul says to us, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). He commands us to consider ourselves “alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” and “alive from the dead” (Rom 6:11, 13). This manner of thinking opens the door for our interpretation of Jesus’s two parables.

Someone may recall that Paul describes himself as the chief of sinners. Yes, but he based this evaluation on what he did before his conversion. After he entered the kingdom, he saw himself as a “pattern” for others to follow (1 Tim 1:12–16; cp. Phil 3:17).

Other examples of negative symbols for God’s people are like these. They do not describe the status of the saints in God’s kingdom.

Positive Symbols for God’s People

God uses a host of glorious terms to describe his thoughts toward us. We can list only a few here. But these will show “treasure” and “a pearl of great price” are fitting symbols of the saints. These two images fit well in the Lord’s vocabulary of love.

Apple of God’s Eye

God describes us as the “apple of his eye” (Deut 32:10; cp. Ps 17:8; Lam 2:18; Zech 2:8). He applied this term to Israel when she was in the “waste howling wilderness” of the Exodus. Gill says this wilderness is “an emblem of the world, in which the spiritual Israel are, when called by grace out of it.”⁷

This explanation fits the pattern we saw above. We were wanderers in the wilderness, but are so no longer. “The ‘apple of his eye’ [Deut 32:10] is an English idiom for ‘anything held extremely dear’ or ‘much cherished’ and is a fitting translation for the Hebrew ‘the little man of his eye,’ that is, the pupil.”⁸

Now, God sees us as precious. 

Branch of his planting

Wealthy persons sometimes create beautiful gardens to display their eminence. They import exotic flowers and magnificent trees at great cost.

David draws a beautiful image from this practice. In the kingdom, we are like such plants. 

The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing; To shew that the LORD is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. (Ps 92:12–15)

This is a beautiful description of the Messiah and “his exaltation at the right hand of God, and the strength and glory of his kingdom.”⁹

Isaiah records God speaking to Israel: “Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified” (Isa 60:21). He is speaking about the kingdom Jesus has now established. We live in that kingdom. We are expensive plants, planted by the hand of God.

Engravings

Sometimes we think God places little value on us. We can say, “The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.” We are not a “treasure” or a “pearl of great price.”

Let us believe the words God speaks to us. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands” (Isa 49:14–17).

We are divine engravings—by the hand of God, on the hand of God!

How can we not see ourselves as the precious objects in Jesus’s parables?

Grapes in a wilderness

“I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness” (Hosea 9:10).

This image resembles Jesus’s two parables. It places something of value in a larger, less-valuable context. Like “treasure” in a field and a “pearl of great price” among others, so are “grapes in the wilderness.”

John Gill says, 

the simile may serve to express the great and unmerited love of God to his people, who are as agreeable to him as grapes in the wilderness to a thirsty traveller; and in whom he takes great delight and complacency, notwithstanding all their sinfulness and unworthiness; and bestows abundance of grace upon them, and makes them like clusters of grapes indeed.¹⁰

Let us rejoice that we refresh God like “wine that maketh glad the heart of man” (Ps 104:15).

Other Terms

We will borrow Paul’s words: “And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of”¹¹ other symbols of the value God places on us.

We are his begotten children (Deut 32:18; Isa 49:21; 1 Pet 1:3). 

God calls us his beloved like he called Jesus his beloved (Eph 5:1; Luke 3:22).

The intimacy between God and us is surprising. We are Christ’s body (1 Cor 12:27; Eph 4:12). His bride (Eph 5:25; Rev 21:2, 9). Isaiah used this imagery to describe the future (to him) kingdom. “For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” (Isa 62:5; emphasis added).

God seeks us out. “And they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of the LORD: and thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken” (Isa 62:12; emphasis added; cp. Matt 18:11–14; Luke 19:10). 

We are the called. City of God. City of truth. New creation. Elect. Holy nation. House of God. God’s inheritance. Kings and priests. Temple. Ransomed. Redeemed. Righteous. . . .

God uses such terms to describe his saints. In the kingdom, Christ is 

the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. (Col 1:18–20)

God “raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph 1:20). There he reigns in his kingdom. We are seated with him (Eph 2:6), and we reign with him (e.g., Rom 5:17).

Conclusion

Paul teaches the same lesson as the “treasure” and “pearl” parables. He says the Holy Spirit “is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory” (Eph 1:14). Christ saw us as treasured objects. He purchased us at a great price. 

Peter describes the cost. “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet 1:18–19).

As we saw last week, we are God’s “treasure” (Exod 19:5; Deut 7:6 NKJV; Deut 26:18 ESV; Ps 135:4). We are his “jewels” (Mal 3:17).

When we read these two parables, let us govern our self-talk. God describes us as “treasure” and a “pearl of great price.” Let us not imitate the wife in the Canticles. She said, “Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me” (Song 1:6). Let us hear what our husband thinks of us. He addresses us as the “fairest among women” (Song 1:8).

Let us believe we are his “treasure” and “pearl of great price.” Yes, let us glory in this.

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil 4:8).

Thinking of ourselves this way is not arrogance. It is pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy.

1. Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 279.
2. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, 279.
3. Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22 of The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1992), 223.
4. Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000), s.v. periousios.
5. We will shorten this term to “the kingdom” in the remainder of this post. We discussed kingdom terminology here, here, and here.
6. Willem A. VanGemeren, “Psalms,” in Psalms-Song of Songs, vol. 5 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 380.
7. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1809–1810; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 2:149.
8. Earl S. Kalland, “Deuteronomy,” in Deuteronomy–2 Samuel, vol. 3 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 204.
9. Gill, Exposition, 4:99.
10. Gill, Exposition, 6:423.
11. Heb 11:32.