03.02. The Lord's Triple Claim to Our Love

The Lord’s Triple Claim to Our Love

"Myrrh and aloes, cassia are all thy garments; out of the ivory palaces, stringed instruments have made thee glad." — Psalms 45:8 (J. N. Darby’s New Translation). The Grace that Meets our Need. — The Glory of His Person. — His Suffering Love.

"We love Him because He first loved us." Of old it was commanded, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might," and though our Lord’s claim upon us is now not one whit less than that, nor could He be satisfied with anything less, it is not by commandment that He secures the love of His church or of any heart in it. Love cannot be secured in that way, as man’s sad history, in every phase of it, since Sinai, declares. No, He has another way, and a way that cannot fail— He gains our love by disclosing His own; He gains His desire to have us for Himself by showing Himself to us, as brighter and better than the brightest and best that would be a rival to His claim. His claim to our love has a triple basis: He claims us because He can meet all our needs by His grace; He claims us because of what He is in His own glorious person; He claims us because of the love that He has for us, love that led Him into the deep suffering of death on our behalf. Psalms 45:1-17 declares these three great things, and though this Psalm may have the earthly bride in view in the coming glorious millennium, yet we believe we are fully justified in using it for our present purpose, for it is full of Christ. It is Himself — and He showed His disciples things concerning Himself out of the Psalms. The end in view is that the fair daughter of a distant land might be attracted to the great King, for His joy and glory. Hence He is spoken of to her in glowing words that can apply to none but Christ.

"Grace is poured into His lips" — He speaks in tender tones to the heart, as many proved when He was here upon earth, when He spoke words in season to them that were weary: the woman by the well of Sychar, for instance, and she who wept at His feet in Simon’s house, and the widow who mourned her only son, and the palsied man who groaned beneath a load of sin, and Zaccheus, and the children, and a host of others — all these found Him to be fairer than the children of men, because of the grace that was poured into His lips. And has our experience been less blessed? We have heard His voice speaking in words of pardon and peace to our once troubled and burdened hearts. Grace has poured out of His lips for us. Yes, we know from blessed experience what grace is His, we have heard His voice saying:
"Lay down, thou weary one,
Lay down, thy head upon My breast." THE GLORY OF HIS PERSON But He is glorious as well as gracious. His arrows are sharp in the heart of the King’s enemies. He stands out in His glory above every name that is named. He will be triumphant over all that hate Him, even as He is tender to all who hear His voice and love Him. This also must be declared of Him, that we may know that His grace to us is not weakness. In His majesty He will ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness— three great attributes that will show themselves when He comes forth to judge, but which were not wanting when He stooped to save us.

He is as great as He is gracious, for He is God, with an everlasting throne, and nothing could exceed the significance of this; for if He is God, His claim must be supreme. It stands before all other claims. The claims of father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife, children, and self also, must recede into the background when He puts in His claim. None other than God has a right to supersede these relationships which He has ordained, but He who would win our undivided hearts, is God, whose throne is for ever and ever, and to His claim we must yield. But the final appeal is more touching than all; verse 8 of our Psalm is given in J. N. Darby’s New Translation, as "Myrrh and aloes and cassia are all thy garments; out of the ivory palaces, stringed instruments have made thee glad." These fragrant spices which clothe our Saviour like a garment stir our memories; they carry us back to the time when instead of glory and honour, a life of sorrow was His. It is of this that the myrrh speaks. The wise men from the east were divinely guided when they gave their gifts to Him as He lay in His mother’s arms in the house— gold, frankincense and myrrh. The gold spoke of His divine glory; the frankincense of His holy, fragrant humanity; and the myrrh of His suffering even unto death. They represented the way that He took — three great steps, if you will: —
"From Godhead’s fullest glory,
Down to Calvary’s depth of woe."
We look back to it now and it is the fragrance of the myrrh that greets us and attracts us. We might remain unmoved in the presence of His majesty, but whose heart will not melt in the presence of His suffering? HIS SUFFERING LOVE The aloes, the central spice of the three, speaks of the love that lay behind all the suffering. It was more fragrant and prized than all other spices; nothing to be compared with it ever came out of the mysterious East. I found in an old dictionary the following account of it: "It was the inner wood, or heart, of a tree that grew in India, exceedingly fragrant, worth more than its weight in gold, and said to be a sovereign cordial for all fainting fits and nervous disorders." If the learned compiler of that dictionary had intended to give a description of the love of Christ he could not have succeeded better. The aloes tree had to be cleft to its heart if the fragrance of it was to be disclosed, and it was on the cross of Calvary, when cleft by the sword of God’s judgment against our sin, that the heart of Christ disclosed all the greatness of His love, and there is nothing in the universe more fragrant than that — the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. Further, His love is far more precious than gold. If the world could give all the gold it possesses and offer it to us in exchange for the knowledge of the love of Christ, would any of us exchange that knowledge for that great price? We would not, for His love is more precious than gold. It cannot be purchased, but it has poured out its priceless wealth without reserve for us. It is said to be a sovereign remedy for all fainting fits. Do we grow weary and faint in the pilgrim way that leads us to our glorious destiny — the marriage of the Lamb? There is a sovereign remedy for such a state, let us lean upon the arm and heart of our Beloved and taste afresh the cordial of His love.

Further, it is the sovereign remedy for all nervous disorders. It is the united love of His church that the Lord looks for, but these are difficult days in which the devil has succeeded in sadly dividing the hearts of His loved ones. There seems to be an epidemic of what might well be called spiritual neurasthenia. The symptoms scarcely need to be described — they are irritability, hypersensitiveness, fault-finding, and strife, and where these things are there may be sighing and crying in secret, but there is no united crying for the coming of the Lord. What is the remedy? The aloes was the cordial for nervous disorders. This is the remedy — the suffering love of Christ, one full draught of this love is enough to allay the fever, sooth the spirit, throw things into their true proportion and perspective, and heal every sore and breach. The meaning of the cassia is not so easy to determine, but it may set forth that same love that brought the Lord down from the glory into a life of suffering, and down into death and deep darkness, come forth now in resurrection, unchanged by all that it has suffered. This I believe it to be. "Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end," and will for ever more. He has come forth in resurrection and shows Himself to us now in the glory, yet fragrant with all the love that led Him to die.

What answer could there be to such a presentation of Himself? Only one. He must be made glad by the music of the stringed instruments out of the ivory palaces. Our hearts are such palaces in His reckoning — He desires to make them His dwelling-places. Do we welcome Him with gladness and praise, as Zacchaeus did when the Lord said to him, "To-day I must abide at thy house"? He looks for this, it is His due. "In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." But while our Lord and Saviour rightly expects that we should open our hearts to Him, this is not the end that He has in view. Nothing will satisfy Him but the marriage day. He has prepared a home for His bride; His heart is opened wide for her. So there comes the appeal, "Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear: forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house: so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for He is thy Lord; and worship thou Him."
"What needest thou with thy tribe’s black tents,
When thou hast the red pavilion of My heart." In the New Testament also it is the presentation of Himself that wins the desired response. In Revelation 22:1-21. He makes a direct and personal appeal to us all: "I Jesus . . . am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning Star." His name — His precious name — like ointment poured forth, revives our affections; His glory commands our admiration; His beauty as the morning Star awakens our hopes, and in unison with the Spirit we can answer this revelation of Himself by the one word He desires to hear: "Come" — "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."