Psalm 45

Psalm xlv. The object is evidently the celebration of Messiah the Bang. The heart feels it is inditing a good matter. When Christ is before the soul, it is enlivened and roused. Here, doubtless, as king, and in His victories, BO that there is more of human triumph than in the Christian’s estimate of Him. The power of evil will then be put down, and the heart exult in it. Now the joy is deeper and more divine. Collectively, we expect the Bridegroom; individually, the Saviour, who is not ashamed to call us brethren. “When we think of Him as a divine Person, we feel the depth of that divine work in which God met sin, and in which it has been put away for us — a work which none can fathom; and dwell on that glory into which He is entered, and of which He is worthy, both in His person and by His work. Still, we can understand the exultation of the delivered Jew, or, at least, one anticipating deliverance thus by Messiah. But there is, besides this joy, a principle of deep importance contained in this psalm: the call to the daughter to forget her own people and her father’s house — so shall the king desire her beauty. Si i, as to blessing, instead of father’s she shall have children’s. Association with Christ breaks off previous associations which nature has hail, and forms wholly new ones. This is, of course and evidently, a principle which is of an absolute and decisive character. But this is put in the strongest way here: “so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty.” For the Christian, then, that he may walk so that the Lord may have delight in him, there is an entire breaking with all that nature is linked up with. The doctrines on which this is founded are not laid down here: that would not suit the Psalms. It is the state of the soul. It was to forget all that had a claim on it according to nature. It is the coming in of Christ which calls for this. He has Himself done it — broken with the world by death, and entered on a new world in resurrection. His claim is absolute, and in contrast with all others. According to nature, there was no link, no association with the blessings He brings into. It was another order of relationships. These claimed the heart naturally in their place; but Christ takes to Himself, founds new ones, of which He is the centre, and has a divine claim. The old ones are left, and the new ones entered on by redemption out of them. He must have the whole heart, as a divine claimant, who, by giving Himself for and to us, brings us into a new scene of relationship with Himself. No counter claim can be allowed. It is not owning his. It is giving up our nature and place, and going back into the old things. Being His is all our being. As Scripture expresses it, “Christ is all.” This is denied if concurrent claims are allowed. This is true as to religious claims. The Jew, when Christ reigns, must give up his glorying in his fathers to glory in Christ. So we; whatever legal or fleshly religion may have been indulged in, is all given up. All that was gain is loss. The past is gone — we are taken out of it. Christ, and the future He gives, are all. Christ may place in present duties connected with human relationships, and He does; but he who looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. All was failure before: Christ is joy and gladness, and that stably and in power. See the full doctrinal and experimental statement of this as to the Christian in 2 Cor. v.:

“Yea, if I have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth know I him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, lie is a new creature: old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.”