Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 471
A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 21, 1862, BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. “He has made us accepted in the Beloved.” Ephesians 1:6. “THE Beloved!” This was a golden name which the ancient Church in her most joyous moments was likely to give to the Anointed of the Lord. When the time of the singing of birds was come, and the voice of the turtle was heard in her land, her love note was sweeter than either bird or turtle, as she sung, “My Beloved is mine and I am His. He feeds among the lilies.” Ever in her song of songs does she call Him by that delightful name, “My Beloved!”
Even in the long winter when idolatry had withered the garden of the Lord, her Prophets found space to cease from uttering the thunders of judgment, to lay aside the burden of the Lord for a little season and to say, as Isaiah did, “Now will I sing to my Well-Beloved a song of my Beloved touching His vineyard.” Though the saints had never seen His face, though as yet He was not made flesh, nor had dwelt among us, nor had man beheld His glory—the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father, full of Divine Grace and truth, yet He was the consolation of Israel, the hope and joy of all the chosen, the Beloved of all those who were upright before the Most High.
Brethren, in the summer days of the Church, let us not fail to call Christ our Beloved. Both in our prayers, and public songs, and in those nearer and dearer approaches which we make to Him in private—when we may use more tender epithets than we would venture to do in a mixed assembly, we are likely to speak of Christ as the best Beloved of our soul—and to feel that He is to us very precious, the “chief among ten thousand and the altogether lovely.”
So true is it that the Church loves Christ, and claims Him as her Beloved, that the Apostle dares to defy the whole universe to separate her from the love of Christ, and declares that neither persecutions, distress, affliction, peril, or the sword, have been able to do it. No, he joyously boasts, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that has loved us.” And he concludes his bold utterance by declaring that he is persuaded that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We think we should not be trespassing into the realms of imagination if we ventured to say that Christ is also the Beloved of the angels. To Him cherubim and seraphim continually cry. For in that thrice-repeated strain, there is a word for the second Person of the Trinity, as well as for the first and the third—“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.” And, certainly, the blood-bought call Him their Beloved, for their incessant strain is, “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His blood, unto Him be glory forever and ever.”
Yet, my dear Friends, the main reason why Christ is thus styled by the Holy Spirit, “the Beloved,” doubtless is because He is the Beloved of the Father’s heart. “This,” said the mysterious voice from Heaven in the midst of the waters of Jordan, “this is my Beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.” And again, at the resurrection of Lazarus, there came the same voice from Heaven, announcing the perpetuity of the Father’s love. None of us can tell how dear Jesus must be to His Father. We have, however, abundant proofs of the fact that He is very near unto Him, for He is privy to all His Father’s counsels.
From the counsels of the Most High, Christ was never absent. “When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth. While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there. When he set a compass upon the face of the depth. When He established the clouds above. When He strengthened the fountains of the deep. When He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His command. When He appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him. And I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.”
“Let us make man,” said God. “in Our own image”—calling Christ into creation’s work. “Without Him was not anything made that was made,” is the declaration of John the Divine. Beside this, we know that everything which is done of the Father by His Divine decree is that He may glorify His Son. While, on the other hand, the Son lived and died, and lives again that He may glorify the Father. Such is their mutual interest in one another, that we cannot suppose a relationship closer, nor a love more intense than that which exists between the Father and the Son. It were foolish and ridiculous in me to attempt to dive into the awful depths of the Divine unity. We know that the Father is One with the Son, and that Jesus is one with Jehovah.