“A Garden Enclosed”
“A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse.”
HE understand this sacred love-song to be a
Canticle of Communion between the Lord
Jesus Christ and His church. His is the Bridegroom,
and she the bride. Solomon furnishes the figure, as
some think, and his Solyma is with him; but the type
is dimly seen, it is the antitype which shines forth as the sun to the view of all spiritual minds.
A church is a congregation of faithful men who are believers in the Lord Jesus, men in whom the Holy Spirit has created faith in Christ, and the new nature of which faith is the sure index. The one church of Jesus Christ is made up of all believers throughout all time. Just as any one church is made up of faithful men, so is the one church of Christ made up of all faithful churches in all lands, and of all faithful men in all ages.
The church was viewed as one in the purpose of God before the world was. The Eternal Father chose to Himself a people, and gave them over to His Son, that they might be His portion for ever and ever.
* Canticles iv. I2.
This is the church of which we read — ‘ Christ loved the church, and gave Himself for it.” This is “the church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood.” This is the church with which the marriage supper shall be celebrated when the Well-beloved shall come to take His own unto Himself for ever. While we at this time speak of the church as a whole, it will be quite correct for each individual believer to take home to himself any truth, whether doctrinal, experimental, or practical, which we treat of as the heritage of the church. Each saint may say, “This belongs to me.” That which belongs to the redeemed family belongs to each member of that family. That which is true of light is true of each beam; that which is true of water is true of each drop; and that which is true of the church as a whole is true of each member of that mystical body.
The love of the Lord Jesus is to His church as a body, and it is the same to each believer as a member of that body. That which is true of the whole number is true of the units which make it up. He who invites a company to a feast virtually invites each person of the company. Jesus loves each one of His people with that same love wherewith He loves the whole of His people; insomuch that if you are Christ’s beloved, and if you were the only persons who were ever born into the world, and all His love were yours, He would not then love you one atom more than He loves you now. The love of Jesus is dispersed, but not divided; it flows to all with the same force with which it flows to one. To redeem a single soul our Ransom must have laid down His life, and He loves each one with such a love that He “A Garden Enclosed.” ian
did lay down His life for each one, as much as if there had not been another to redeem. We shall not be presumptuous if we enjoy all the love of Jesus of which we are capable, enjoying and appropriating the words of love to ourselves as if they were meant for us alone. The invitation of the Bridegroom in this Song gives a permit to the largest faith and to the most daring enjoyment. “Eat, O friends; yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.”
He calls the church, “My sister, My spouse.” As if He could not express His near and dear relationship to her by any one term, He employs the two. “My sister” — that is, one by birth, partaker of the same nature. ‘My spouse” — that is, one in love, joined by sacred ties of affection that never can be snapped. “My sister” by birth, “My spouse” by choice. “My sister” in communion, “My spouse” in absolute union with myself. JI want you who love the Saviour to get a full hold of this thought of near and dear kinship. under this head. Oh, how near akin Christ is to all His people!
Try to realize the person of Christ. 1 am not going to speak of a doctrine, or a mere historical fact that has vanished into the dim past. No, we speak of a real Person. Jesus Christ zs. As man and as God in the perfection of His nature He still exists. He dwells at the right hand of God at this moment, and though He cannot be here in His corporeal person, yet He is everywhere by His spiritual presence, which is more real still. Do not spirit Him away. Believe that He truly is, and that He truly is here — as much here and as really here as He was at Jerusalem, when He sat at the head of the table, and entertained the twelve at the last supper. Jesus is a real Man, a real Christ — recollect that.
Then let this further truth be equally well realized, that He has so taken upon Himself our human nature that He may correctly call His church His sister. Ue has become so truly man in His incarnation, that He is not ashamed to call us brethren. He calls us so because we are so. No: He is not a deified man any more than He is a humanized God. He is perfectly God, but He is also perfectly man; and man such as we are, touched with the feeling, not only of our attainments, but of our infirmities; not only trusting in all points as we do, but tempted in all points like as we are, though without sin. He was, when He was here, evidently man and eminently man; and He now so remembers all that He passed through while here below that He remains in perfect sympathy with us at this very moment. Change of place has made no change of heart in Him. He in His glory is the same Jesus as in His humiliation.
No man is so fully a man as Jesus Christ. If you speak of any other man, something or other narrows his manhood. You think of Milton as of a poet and an Englishman, rather than as a man. You think of Cromwell rather as of a warrior, than as a man. Either his office, his work, his nationality, or his. peculiar character, strikes you in many a man rather than his manhood; but Jesus is ¢4e Man, the model Man: in all His deeds and words man to the fulness of manhood, in its purest and truest state. The second Adam is, par excellence, man.
We may not think of Him as one amongst a vast number who may be distantly akin to us, as all men are akin to one another by descent; but the Lord comes near to each individual. He takes each one of His believing people by the hand, and says, “My brother.” He salutes the whole church as “My sister.” He says this with tender emphasis. The love between brothers, if those brothers are what they should be, is very strong, and peculiarly disinterested and admirable. A brother is born for adversity. A true brother is one upon whom you can rely in time of need. One heart in two bodies is the realization of true brotherhood. Such is, emphatically, the relationship of the Redeeming Lord to each believer. He is your brother. “The man is next of kin unto us.” You may have the joy of saying, “I know that my near Kinsman liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”
The second term, “My spouse,” indicates another kinship, dearer, and, in some respects, nearer: a kinship undertaken of choice, but, once undertaken, irrevocable and everlasting. This kinship amounts to unity, insomuch that the spouse loses her name, loses her identity, and, to a high degree, is merged in the greater personality to which she is united. Such is our union to Christ, if indeed we be His, that nothing can so well set it forth as marriage union. He loves us so much that He has taken us up into Himself by the absorption of love. We may henceforth forego our name, for “this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The Lord our righteousness.” Wonderful that the very name which belongs to our Lord Jesus, and one of the most majestic of His names, should yet be used as the name of His church. The Lord Jesus Christ’s name is now named upon her, and she is permitted to make use of His name whenever she draws near to the throne of the heavenly grace in prayer. “In His name” — this is to be her great plea whenever she intercedes with heaven. She speaks in the name which is above every name, the name at which angels bow.