03.03. Espoused to one Husband

Espoused to one Husband

"I am jealous over you with godly jealousy for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." — 2 Corinthians 11:2. The Espousals. — The Spring-time of Love. — The Answer of the Great Lover. — Christ Everything. THE ESPOUSALS

What a change it makes in a Christian’s outlook when he discovers the fact that he is loved by the Lord and that he is precious and desirable in His sight. When this knowledge comes to us — and it is true of everyone who has owned the Lord’s claims and trusted Him as Saviour — we are lifted on to a new plane in our thoughts of Him. We shall not think less of all that He has done for us, instead, we shall begin to understand the greatness of it better. We shall still be grateful for all His ways of grace with us, and shall often tell Him of them, but rest of heart in His love will be the dominant thing, and, what goes along with that, love to Him in response to it. We shall become conscious that we stand in a hitherto undreamt-of relationship to Him, a relationship in which mutual love has the chief place. This is a day of our espousals. Can we reverently contemplate the meaning of this? This is not mere poetic imagery, for we read in the Scriptures, and wonderful are the words, "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:2). What does this mean? It can only have one meaning. The redeemed of the Lord have been affianced to Him. He loves us and has chosen us for Himself. He has made the appeal of love to us, He has said, "I want you for myself." And we have said, "Yes," to Him. It was a happy day for us when our sins were washed away and our souls were saved and we got a sure hope of heaven, but greater than all, and the end that the Lord had in view in it all, we were then espoused to Christ, to be for Him alone, the joy and rejoicing of His heart. The marriage day has not yet come, but it is coming, and we may read about it in Ephesians 5:25-27 and Revelation 19:7-9.

These are the days of the espousals, and we have been espoused to a PERSON WHO LOVES US and has proved His love. It is on my heart to press this, for I fear that the Lord Jesus is not a living, bright reality to many Christians. "Christian Science" is spreading, and though no true child of God could follow the delusions of that cult, yet the spirit of it is abroad — an evil, seducing and anti-christian spirit, that would persuade us that Christ is only a divine principle in the lives of men, and not our living Saviour, Jesus our Lord, who can fill and satisfy the heart. "What matters it," say some, "whether Jesus rose from the dead or not, so long as His spirit permeates society?" And Satan beguiles many unwary souls by this sort of thing, and the very heart is taken out of their faith, and the Lord Jesus becomes to them intangible, vague, impersonal, shadowy, and distant. But we know that Christ is a living Person, who loves us, and delights in us and in our love to Him, and that He gave Himself for us that He might wholly possess us. He can be satisfied with nothing less than our love. The greatest joy we can give to Him is to love Him, and to yield up ourselves to Him in full surrender. The greatest work we can do is to keep ourselves for Him. This is what it means to be a chaste virgin for Christ.

It may be, that like many another, you have feared His imperious and exclusive claim. You may have felt, as Francis Thompson expressed it in his striking poem:
"For, though I knew His love who followed, Yet was I sore adread —
Lest having Him, I must have naught beside."
And so you fled from Him, but: —
"Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue."
You tried elsewhere for satisfaction, but nothing blest your thirsting mouth, and still He followed you: —
"With unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic majesty;
And passed those noised feet
A voice came yet more fleet —
Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me."
You could not evade Him and now you are His for ever. Blessed be the Lord for the persistency of His love. Now His joy in us and ours in Him lies in our being wholly for Him. The Spring-Time of Love "I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley." The joy and beauty of this relationship to Christ in which we stand is illustrated for us in the Song of Solomon. Every chapter is fragrant with love, and if we read it, and are taught by the Holy Spirit as we read it, we shall find that the language, though figurative, describes the Lord’s delight in us and ours in Him, when we know Him in this sweet relationship. Take the second chapter. There the bride-to-be has discovered that she is beloved, and that the one who loves her delights in her. She is precious to him; this she has learnt, and she exclaims: "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley." These were not high thoughts of herself. The rose of Sharon was not the queen of summer as is the gorgeous flower that we call the rose; more likely than not it was the narcissus, a flower of the field, a fragrant flower no doubt, but not obtrusive and gay; and the lily of the valley grew in lowly places and out of sight, and had to be sought for by the one who valued it. BUT THESE WERE SPRING FLOWERS, and the fragrant hope of spring was in them. As they bloomed in the valleys they told of a time when the summer’s glory would crown the hills. They figured forth the beginnings of love, but they were prophetic of the time when love would come to its fulness on the marriage day.

Upon this maiden the king’s choice had fallen, she was to share his crown and kingdom; but not of this does she think and sing, for she is inwardly conscious of something greater than all the display of glory that was to come to her; the king loved her, this was her joy; she was precious to him, this filled her with a glad surprise; and without fear or reserve, she tells out to him what she knows she is to him. Have we reached this point in our secret experience of soul with the Lord? We can only learn it as we are near to Him, for who could teach us this but Himself? This is the beginning of love, it is "first love." It is more than what He has done for us, it is Himself who has done it. We do not lose the benefaction, but we have the Benefactor. We are one with the Lord, for "he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:17). The freshness and the hope of the spring flowers are in this experience, and in it there is the pledge that the day will surely come when He will present the church to Himself, "a glorious church not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." THE ANSWER OF THE GREAT LOVER "As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the daughters." But hear the answer that this great lover gives to his chosen bride. He takes up her own words, but he adds to them. He adorns them and makes them glow with his love. He makes them the opportunity of showing her the great manifestation of his great love for her, and so increases her confidence in him and enlarges her affection for him. "As the lily among the thorns, so is my love among the daughters," he says.

Let us get at the heart of this, and understand what it means for us in our relationship with the Lord. Dr. Thompson in his well-known book, The Land and the Book, says of this lily: "Our flower delights most in the valleys; but it is found also on the mountains. It grows among thorns, and I have sadly lacerated my hands in extricating it from them." Does the fact that the lily grew among the thorns need any interpretation? If we can say, "I am the lily of the valley," if we know that we are this to Christ, His answer is, "Yes, but the lily among thorns." He would have us remember that it cost Him something to secure us for Himself. How lacerated was He in extricating us from the tangled thorns in which we grew! He showed to His disciples His hands and side, when He came to them in resurrection. Nothing could drive the cold unbelief from the soul of Thomas, but a sight of His wounds. And He would not that we should forget them. It is as though He said to us: —
"Behold with what labour I won thee,
Behold in My hands and My feet,
The tale of My measureless sorrow,
The love that made suffering sweet." His body was lacerated, but His soul was lacerated, too, for before He could have His lilies for Himself and extricate them from the thorns, His soul had to be made an offering for sin. Can anything move the hard heart like this? We do not love Him and adore Him because the brightest crowns of heaven shine upon His worthy brow; we are glad that He is crowned with glory, but it is not that that won our hearts. We love Him because that same brow was crowned with thorns, and because He was put to shame upon a cross when He came forth in His great love to tread the thorny way to save us for Himself. To the utmost His love was tried, and it stood the test. It passeth knowledge. When we realize this, and the wonder of it fills our souls, we do not say, "Thank God WE are saved!" setting the "we" in the centre of our sentence and thoughts; but we say, "Oh, what it cost HIM to make us His." He is the centre of our sentence, and relief and thanksgiving deepen into wonder and worship. The suffering is all past but His love abides, and the suffering will not be forgotten, for when the great marriage day comes, and all heaven rejoices in the gladness of it, it is the marriage of the LAMB that is celebrated (Revelation 19:1-21), and the bride is the LAMB’S WIFE (Revelation 21:1-27). Thus the sorrows of the cross and the joys of love’s consummation are joined the one to the other; the Lamb who suffered will see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied on that great day. But while we wait for that day, the love of Christ is a present reality, and we who are espoused to Him may have the joy of communion with Him now, and constrained by His love, live not unto ourselves, but unto Him who died for us and rose again; and for this He yearns.

If any heart has been indifferent to His yearnings and has been closed against Him, let His own words move and melt it now" Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me."

CHRIST EVERYTHING "He brought me into his banqueting house and his banner over me was love." In this communion of love the maiden responds to the king, not now to speak of herself, but of him who fills her thoughts. Her words are great words, and the music of pure love swells in them. "As the apple tree among the trees of the wood," she says, "so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me into his banqueting house, and his banner over me was love." Have we so learnt Christ? If so our vagrant desires, our restlessness of spirit have ceased and we have found satisfaction and a great hope. It was thus with Mary of Bethany at the feet of Jesus, when she heard His word, and when she poured out her precious ointment upon Him; it was thus with John, the beloved, when he leaned his head upon Jesus’ breast at supper; and with Thomas, of the doubtful mind, when he cried, "My Lord and my God"; and with Paul the Apostle when he exclaimed, "The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." What a blessed experience this is, and the more deeply it is known in its present joy, the more will the heart long for the day of presentation, for the marriage day. Then there will be no more need for watchfulness; faithfulness to Christ in a hostile and seductive world will be called for no more. We shall have reached eternal rest.

We shall be beyond the reach of Satan’s beguilings then, but now there is nothing he hates more than this personal intimacy with and joy in Christ. Hence the fear expressed by the apostle in those words of warning: "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from simplicity as to Christ." His purpose is to draw us away from this "first love." How often he succeeds to our shame, and we have to sing sadly: —
"Yet, Lord, alas what weakness,
Within myself I find;
No infant’s changing pleasure
Is like my wandering mind."
If the backsliding is not quickly arrested how soon we become neither "cold nor hot," a state of heart that is obnoxious to the Lord.

We would not willingly be untrue to Christ; but Satan is subtle, and if we are to be kept from his snares we must depend upon and commune with our Lord. "He brought me into his banqueting house, and his banner over me is love." To abide there is to abide in a safe place, and to be satisfied with Him.
"There all His gracious favour
May to our souls be known;
And versed in this His goodness,
Our hopes HIMSELF shall crown."