Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1957
“A garden enclosed is My sister, My spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” Song of Solomon 4:12.
WE understand this sacred love song to be a Canticle of Communion between the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church. He 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.
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 forever and ever. 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 has 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 forever. 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 with which He loves the whole of His people, insomuch that if you, my Brothers and Sisters, are Christ’s beloved and if you were the only persons that 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 had to lay down His life and He loves each one with such a love that He 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; yes, drink abundantly, O beloved.”
I shall call your attention to four things, with as much brevity and earnestness as possible. Come, gracious Spirit, and lead us into the sweetness of them!
I. The first is, THE NEARNESS OF KIN OF THE CHURCH TO CHRIST AND CHRIST TO THE CHURCH. He calls her in the text, “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. I want you who love the Savior 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!
But first, try to realize the Person of Christ. I am not going to speak to you at this time of a doctrine, or a mere historical fact that has vanished into the dim past. No, we speak of a real Person. Jesus Christ is. 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 still more real. 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 12 at the last supper. Jesus is a real Man, a real Christ—remember that.
Then let this further Truth of God be equally realized, that He has so taken upon Himself our human nature that He may correctly call His Church His Sister. He has become so truly Man in His Incarnation, that He is not ashamed to call us Brothers and Sisters. 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!