By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale, Skye.
“. . . Saw ye him whom my soul loveth”—Song iii. 3 (Last clause). This Song is referred to in the beginning of the book as “The Song of Songs,” and there are various reasons for that title. We read in I. Kings iv. 22 that Solomon “spake three thousand proverbs; and his songs were a thousand and five.” Of these thousand and five songs we have no record but what we have in this book, known as “The Song of Solomon.” One reason for this song being denominated “the Song of Songs” is that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and was intended for the edification of the Church of God in all ages to the end of time. Another reason is found in the persons brought before us in it, for we have here, on the one hand, the Lord Jesus Christ the heavenly bridegroom, and on the other hand the Church, or the gracious soul. A third reason may be found in the fact that here we have the gracious intercourse that takes place between Christ and His Church. In connection with this intercourse we find that Christ remains true to His character of being without “variableness, neither shadow of turning,” while the Church is brought before us in various conditions; sometimes on “the mountains of myrrh,” and on “the hill of frankincense,” while at other times she is afflicted with a sense of darkness and desertion, mourning after an absent Lord. It is in that condition that she is brought before us in the words of our text, yet proving that grace is in living exercise when she asks the question, “Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?”
From these words I would seek, as enabled at this time, to draw your attention to three things in particular. I—The One Speaking II—The One sought after. III—Where can He be found?
I.—The one speaking: It is the Church of God, or the gracious soul.
(1) As none of Adam’s race love the Lord Jesus as they are by nature it must be true that the speaker here is one who had no love to Christ by nature. This was true of all the Lord’s people for, as they are in Adam, “there is none righteous, no, not one . . . for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” All are by nature under the dominion and power of the carnal mind, of which we read that it “is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” This carnal mind is the very opposite of holiness, and can never suffer holiness as it appears as the stamp of true religion in the Lord’s people on earth. Let a child of God be as inoffensive as it is possible for one to be in this world, let him behave himself as wisely as Daniel of whom his enemies had to say, “We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God”; yea, let him be as public-spirited as Nehemiah showed himself to be in seeking the temporal and spiritual
good of Jerusalem, and yet he will feel the enmity of the carnal mind directed against him in his fellow-creatures, even such of them as he helped time and again in their temporal affairs. This enmity, being directed against the principle of holiness planted by the Spirit of God in the soul of the regenerate, breaks out in flagrant rebellion against the authority of God as we have that rebellion alluded to in the 2nd Psalm, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”
This enmity and rebellion leads the sinner astray to what will satisfy his lusts. Those who are, outwardly, most orderly in their lives, while they are still under the power of the carnal mind are led away by these lusts. Men and women who may pass for Christians in the estimation of their fellow-creatures, and who may think that they are on a higher scale than most of their neighbours give many a feast in the secret places of their hearts to these lusts, and, after all, think that they have done nothing amiss; as it is written of the adulterous woman, “She eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.” While this is true secretly concerning how sinners have no love to Christ, iniquity now walks abroad unashamedly. The drunkard, the adulterer, the thief and the murderer refuse to acknowledge the shame with which their sins brand them and imagine that they have a right to be recognised as respectable people.
(2) The one speaking in our text represents a people who have tasted of Christ’s love. The Apostle, in writing to the Corinthians, draws out a long list of sins which preclude men from inheriting the kingdom of God, and then adds, “And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (I. Cor. vi, 11). Thus he describes the all-important change which takes place when a sinner is delivered from the power, enmity, and rebellion of the carnal mind into that state where Christ is the object of the soul’s love. In this transition there is given to the soul a taste of the love of God, through Christ, to sinners, in such a way that the soul is constrained to exclaim, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” It is a sweet time which the renewed soul would wish others to share in and thus he adopts the language of the Psalmist, “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”
(3) When a sinner gets a view of this wonderful love it exercises a constraining power over him. He is now constrained to hate the very things which he formerly loved, “For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries.” He realises that it is such sins as he is guilty of which, when imputed to Christ, nailed Him to the Cross on Calvary, made Him the object of the cruel mockings of the Jews, and brought
Him to the dust of death. In this humiliation to which Christ descended he sees a wonderful love, a love which caused the Lord of Glory in our nature to stand in the place of the guilty, and to suffer “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” In the light of this revelation he is constrained to say, “How can I give a place to sin when it was sin that brought Christ so low?” It was in the blaze of this love, shining upon his soul, that godly Joseph in Egypt was enabled to resist the solicitations of the adulteress, Potiphar’s wife, and say, “How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”
A taste of this love constrains the gracious soul to follow Christ through good report and through evil report. In doing so many of the Lord’s people had to endure “trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented.” Every one of them will have his and her share of these trials, for “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution,” and some of them will have a greater measure of it than others, causing them to say with Jeremiah, “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention in the whole earth. I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.” By these troubles and trials their sanctification goes on for He makes Moab His wash-pot, and it is a view of His wonderful love which constrains them to go through these trials without turning back. This revelation of His wonderful love, which acts as the magnet upon the needle, will have its constraining influence upon them as long as they are in this world, and will not be forgotten by them in glory, for this love will be the theme of their song of praise in heaven. “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
(4) Those represented by the speaker in our text cannot do without the One who is sought after. In delivering them from the power of sin He has so captivated all the faculties of their souls, and has become their life to such an extent, that they are dead to the world and the things of it and have all their well-springs in Christ. “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” When we say that, we do not mean that earthly ties and earthly affections are obliterated. We believe that the reverse is the case, and that where a person is made a new creature in Christ Jesus the fire of his earthly affections kindle with a purer flame, ardently hoping and praying for the conversion of his nearest and dearest. In the case of the Apostle Paul his affection for his fellow-Jews never shined so brightly as it did after he came into a state of grace, for it was then he said, “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren,
my kinsmen, according to the flesh.” What we mean is that love to Christ in such is incomparably greater than love to one’s nearest and dearest on earth. The true Christian knows that the dearest and most comforting earthly ties must sooner or later be severed; the husband must part with his wife, and the wife with her husband; parents must part with their children and children with their parents; brothers and sisters must part, but where a soul has been brought to love Christ that soul must and will bear the thought of such partings, but he cannot bear the thought of parting with Christ. Neither will he be called upon to bear such a parting, for Christ says, “The mountains shall depart, and the hills shall be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.”
(5) Those who enquire after Christ must also be actively seeking Him. They are poor and needy and their poverty and need cause them to be in the path of duty seeking Him. In doing so they meet with much to hold them back. They live in a world that is hostile to Christ, and which has never been a help, but a hindrance, to a seeking soul. In their association with professors of religion they meet with much which tends to give them a chill spiritually and take them far astray. The wise virgins were never the better of the company of the foolish ones for both the wise and the foolish slumbered and slept. Dr. Kennedy, Dingwall, gave it as his opinion that the wise would never have slumbered and slept were it not that they were so often in the company of the foolish virgins. We remember the late Rev. Neil Cameron, Glasgow, once referring to this note of Dr. Kennedy and he enlarged on it by saying, “It is our opinion that if the wise virgins had been in the company of people who were cursing and swearing the uncomfortableness of their situation would have kept them awake, but they were deceived by the cloak of profession and the outwardly orderly life of the foolish virgins.”
It is not merely outside themselves that they meet with things which retard their progress in seeking Christ; they meet with much of this nature within themselves. The Apostle, when seeking to do the will of Christ, found another law in his members, warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin which was in his members, wringing from him the cry, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The love of carnal ease will keep the creature from duties. Carnal reason will diligently point to the line of least resistance, and commend that path where persecution is least likely to be met with, and ere the seeker is aware of it, he has almost altogether left off seeking Christ, to awaken suddenly to the fact that he is under the power of the spirit of backsliding, from which nothing but the power of the Spirit of God can bring him back.
(To be continued.)