There is no temporal relationship so close as that of husband and wife; they are “one flesh.” The husband chooses his wife from among all others; and the wife also makes choice of her husband, looking to his beauty to please, his strength to uphold, and his wealth to sustain. The church is the mystical spouse of Christ, and she here declares what her beloved has said to her. Jesus uses tender language, as an affectionate husband to an afflicted wife. He is united to his people in a spiritual marriage which is indissoluble. He chose his people in himself before the world was, and his people were made willing in time to choose him, and renounce all other lovers. “We forsook all and followed thee.” They forsook the works of the law, and followed the works of faith with Moses. They forsook the world, Satan, and the works of the flesh. Their minds became absorbed in Christ’s beauty: “We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” That glory was human and divine, created and uncreated. When His divine glory appeared, its effulgence darkened the glory of all created objects, because it was infinite and eternal, surpassing all created glories.
(1) When Christ addresses His church in the verse, she was under a spiritual winter.
Christ calls her his “love,” or “beloved.” He had loved her from all eternity. In the exercise of this love in the bosom of God, he had unspeakable joy. For he looked forward to the time when He would purchase, redeem, and deliver her. “My delights were with the sons of men.” Christ gave proof of His love to His people in His bodily and soul sufferings in the furnace of God’s wrath. That love was hotter than the furnace; along with the satisfaction He rendered to the law it quenched the fire of the furnace. He set them free from the curse.
Christ tells her to rise up, and it is clear from this that her soul had been “among the pots,” and was lying low. Her enemies had got the victory over her; sin awakened by temptation, had pulled her down from her elevated position in fellowship with the Lord. Sin was an old Cannanite, which, after the land of Canaan was reached, was still a thorn in the flesh. It was “the law in the members warring against the law of the mind.” (Romans 7) or Satan might be groundlessly accusing and tormenting her as in the case of Job. Or God Himself was permitting her to be cast down through worldly persecution, so that her faith would be glorifying Him in the fires. The church had a winter before now, when she was convinced of sin and its guilt, and the wrath of God, as storms, floods, and darkness went over her head, and her hope perished from the Lord. But Christ made Himself known to her as her Saviour, and restored her to His favour. Christ the Sun with His refreshing beams of life and light broke in upon her soul. The winter disappeared and the summer of consolation set in upon her soul, and she began to apprehend what God in Christ had done for her and in her. She began to be fruitful in the Lord. It was a time of love, enjoying communion with God, like the sweet moments our first parents had with Him before the fall.
But the severe winter sets in again upon her soul. God withdraws from the soul when sin gains the ascendancy. His blessed face was withdrawn, as the sun when he hides himself. Darkness sets in, and the soul now becomes dark with respect to his hope of safety, and Satan tempts the afflicted soul to believe that it was all delusion, its pretension to godliness. The storm and floods of God’s wrath prey heavily upon the imagination; the soul is tossed at the mercy of these tempests mixed with the thunder of the threatenings which conscience arouses for sin. The poor soul is like a vessel that has lost her anchor and moorings.
In winter one needs shelter, clothing and a friend. God’s people need friendship in the bosom of God. They need the shelter which Christ, as their tower, has secured for them in the covenant of grace. They are afraid they are not clothed with Christ’s righteousness. They need the favour of God renewed to their souls as they once enjoyed it. This sad winter took away everything they had from the Lord. The natural winter leaves nothing of the beauty and fruitfulness that preceded it, everything around looks dull, dark, and dreary. The birds that used to sing are dumb and shivering with cold. It is the same with the spiritual winter of the soul. The joy the soul had with God is gone. The ability to worship Him is at an end in her estimation. Prayer becomes empty of God. Instead of rejoicing she is mourning.
(2) Christ says to her, “Rise up.”
His heart is full of sympathy towards her. He comes through the promise, and anew infuses life and light into her soul. He declares that she is still his beloved. She could not be satisfied in His absence with any other. She loved Him and was looking through faith to Him to make up her wants. Like Job, though he should slay her, yet she would trust in Him. “Rise up,” he says, with me, your God, your Creator and husband, to take your journey to glory. “Rise up, my love, my fair one.” Christ uses the word, “My” twice to encourage her against unbelief, and to assure her she was his. “You are my love that got room in my thoughts and affections from eternity. Many sore thoughts I had about you when bearing you and your sins, when wrestling at Gethsemane and suffering at Calvary: Alas, you often let me out of your sight, and thoughts, which is ungrateful in you — for example, when you slept with the foolish virgins. But I have never let you out of my sight or thoughts; I have carried you all along to glory. I began then to intercede for you, and the floods of the Spirit’s supplies that came down to refresh you are the blessings that flowed from my death and intercession, which reminds you that your husband is your advocate within the veil.”
Christ declares that she was his fair one, beautiful as she was shining with His own image, and increasing in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. She was fair in Christ’s sight, when she appeared to herself to be very ugly. The more sense one has of a filthy heart and the more one abhors it and pants after a new heart, the more dependant is the soul upon Christ for cleansing in His blood. The less confidence one has in oneself, the more one is beloved and admired of God. The soul has no love for those that brought it into spiritual bondage, no more than the Israelites had to the Egyptians that brought them into natural bondage. The more progress holiness is making in any soul, the more that soul hates sin, and the more vehement is its desire to get rid of it. Christ says, “My fair one, you call yourself black, and you mourn over your blackness. Satan and the world also say you are black. But you are not black in my estimation, considering the time is short until you shall be white all over. You are fair through my blood, my righteousness and my sanctification (Song 4: 7). You are fair with tears of repentance, you are fair, longing to be perfectly white. I see you very fair. I do not like always to be putting you in remembrance of your blackness, for you are tired remembering it yourself; and it is not worth my while to find fault with your defects, seeing you shall soon be with me in heaven; without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. It encourages you greatly when I declare you are fair. Faith infers from this declaration that you will soon be white.
(3) “Lo, the winter is past.”
It has been the winter of God’s wrath. There never was a winter in nature like it. People are weary of the severity of winter. Oh, how weary is a child of God of the winter of God’s chastisements!
How did the winter of God’s judicial wrath go away at first when he dealt with the sins of His people? His wrath did not return to Himself. Christ met the severity of it, and it exhausted itself upon Him. Otherwise it would have annihilated the whole elect in a minute. Oh, what glorious news it was to the church when she heard that His anger was turned away! Although all the saints in heaven and earth should tell the church that God’s wrath was removed, she could not have peace till God Himself would speak to her. The people of God shall have winters and summers all the way to heaven. On the meadows of glory they shall have an eternal summer. Their winters here shall make their happiness in glory more precious to them. Their winters here shall not destroy them, no more than the fire destroyed the three children in the fiery furnace.
But you, that are out of Christ, you have no sense that God is angry with you for your sins that are not pardoned. Your winter is not past. If you go with your sins to God’s bar, you shall endure an eternity of God’s wrath. When millions of years are past in hell, you shall be saying, “Alas, when shall my winter be past.” But Christ shall never say to you, “Arise from eternal torments; your winter is past.”
Christ says to His spouse, “Rise up; the winter that laid you low is past.” She replies, “I am so weak; I cannot rise; for strangers have eaten up my strength.” He answers, “My grace is sufficient for thee; roll all your burdens on me and my finished work; my strength is made perfect in weakness. I shall be life and light unto thee. Rise; you cannot do without me, and I cannot do without you. The honour of my name is in danger, if I would not implement my promise relative to you. Arise from sorrows, doubts, and fears to partake of the full blessings that you can realise at the throne of grace. Come to the rivers of blessings to drink thy fill out of them. Come to the means of grace, to prayer, to reading, to hearing the word preached. Come with an enlightened mind to dive into the mysteries of my death and resurrection, that you may see what I have done for you, that I have purchased and redeemed you from the curse of the law, from sin and its various evils, that I have overcome all your enemies that would have delighted to destroy you eternally. Come to Mount Pisgah to see a view of the land of Canaan above. When you shall come, I shall put you in the Spirit and you shall see more clearly, and there shall be less dimness upon your eyes, yet it shall be through a glass darkly. A view of the glory of Immanuel, and the sweet odour of honey off the land, and its riches shall be a strength to you going down to the chambers of death.” Faith is the telescope which shows the rich fruit of the land to the souls of God’s people. Their hope revives as a man whose bands are broken and dances with joy, the heart, thoughts, and affections joining in the dance. “Come, the flowers appear on the earth; they are breaking forth upon the ground.” The promises are coming with power and conveying all needed comforts. As apples are pretty and sweet, so are God’s promises.
“Come with Me through a frowning providence. I shall be with thee, as I was with Job and David. Come with me through pain and sickness. I shall bless you and make everything work for your good at last. Come with me from Lebanon, which is sometimes termed a pleasant and glorious place, at other times a barren wilderness, abounding with wild beasts.” Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon; look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lion’s dens, from the mountains of the leopards! Come with me, because where you are is barren and dangerous, exposed to privations and ill-treatment from tyrants and persecutors as savage and bloody as wild beasts. Come with me to Mount Zion to consider your glorious and exalted position, as also the heavenly society to which you belong (Heb. 12, 22-24). Come with me to death and then to glory, to perfect your happiness and to drink eternally out of the wells of living waters, and where my presence shall put you in possession of an eternal summer.”