The Pearl of Great Price

The point of the Pearl of Great Price is that the Kingdom is so precious that we would be willing to give up everything we have – our very lives, even – to be a part of it. This can be distinguished from what we have been led to believe all our lives – that Christ is the solution to our problems. Indeed he is – but that is not the point, and if we focus on Christ as a solution, we fail to see how the Kingdom benefits us. We all have problems in varying degrees, for that is the human condition, and in addition to Christ there are various solutions to at least some of our difficulties. Some of the solutions, though not directly attributable to the work of the Cross, are legitimate and beneficial and we would not depart from virtue to pursue them. Of course Christ is the ultimate solution to everything in the sense that by his death and resurrection he defeated death and made all things new, but the ultimate reason for entering the Kingdom of God is that it presents benefits so compelling that we would give up everything to enter it, even if we had no problems to solve. Even if our lives were otherwise perfect in every respect. We tend to attempt to “sell” the Kingdom as a solution because it is often only at the point of our need that it makes sense to us as a panacea for our troubles, but that is because we are so limited in our ability to recognize our own best interests that we cannot easily see the greater benefits of the Kingdom unless they are contrasted with some trouble in our lives.