See if you recognize which game show used this line: “Come on down!” Yes, Johnny Olson made that his trademark, and other hosts continued to use it after he died. The original Price is Right show didn’t have it.
Contestants on The Price Is Right competed in guessing the retail price of various items; the one who came closest to the actual price w/o going over won that item. Appliances and electronics were common articles put up for bid. The nighttime version of the show had a larger TV audience, so it attracted more advertisers and could offer more valuable prizes. Among the more outlandish ones were these:
A 1926 Rolls-Royce with chauffeur
A Ferris wheel
An airplane
A submarine
I’ll take the Rolls. You can have the submarine!
What if you were a contestant on The Price Is Right, and the item put up for bid was the Lord’s church? Never mind all the wholesale/retail stuff. There is but one price to purchase the church, and it can’t be expressed in dollars and cents. As a Christian, you ought to know precisely what that price is. Do you?
I regret that most people today, including a majority of religious people, would undervalue the church. In the first place, most people (incl. religious people) really don’t understand what the church is. They equate it with a denomination, or a conglomeration of denominations, or with what they perceive to be a huge crowd of self-righteous hypocrites – so they place little or no value on it.
Jesus values His church highly. In fact, that’s an understatement. It would be impossible to over-value the church. If you were on The Price Is Right, whatever you said was the price of the church would be either too low or exactly right. You couldn’t say a price that would be higher than its actual value. Paul exhorted the elders of the church at Ephesus to take heed to themselves and to all the flock over wh/ the Holy Spirit had made them overseers, to shepherd the church of the Lord wh/ He purchased w/ His own blood (Acts 20:28).
The church is the spiritual body of Christ. It consists not of flawlessly righteous people, but of redeemed sinners, people who have been “delivered from the power of darkness, and conveyed . . . into the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). In Rev. 5:9 the heavenly creatures sang praise to Jesus: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for You were slain, & have redeemed us to God by Your blood, out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” You know that to redeem is to buy back – so here again we see the purchase price of the church: the blood of Christ. Peter affirms this truth as well: “Knowing that you were not redeemed w/ corruptible things like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct rec’d. by tradition from your fathers, but w/ the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb w/o blemish & w/o spot” (1 Peter 1:18f).
That Jesus valued the church enough to give His very blood to purchase it ought to get our attention! If I don’t value the church, I’m out of sync with the way Jesus thinks. And that means I need to change MY thinking (Jesus doesn’t need to change His).
The Price Is Right! The price for the church is the right price. No other price would be enough. Jesus values the church that highly. That means He values each and every one of us. I urge you to appreciate the price He paid for you, and to value the church as Christ does.
–Joe Slater
