Believers have privileged, intimate access to God’s presence and heart like courtiers to a king.
"It would be a great favour if a king should give leave to one of his meanest subjects to have the key of his privy chamber, to come to him and visit him, and be familiar with him when he pleaseth. How would such a favour be talked of in the world!" Yet this is but a faint image of what the believer is admitted to. He may come not merely to the palace of mercy, and the throne of grace, but to the very heart of God. Confidences such as ours surpass all the familiarities of friendship, and yet they are permitted, nay commanded, between the All-glorious Lord and our poor sinful selves. We may well copy the example of David when he went in and sat before the Lord, and said, "Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house? And is this the manner of man, O Lord God?" The intimate intercourse between the glorious sovereign of the Canticles and
his sunburnt bride is an inspired symbol of the near and dear communion between Christ and his people. What can be more honouring to the soul, and what can more wonderfully prove the boundless condescension of the Lord? He stoops like a God! There is as much of Deity in the favour which he displays to the undeserving as in the matchless splendours of his celestial courts. Happy are the people who have such a God; shall they not accept with rapture the goodness which he sets before them so benignly? O my most tender God and Father, I can never fully estimate the stoop of thy majesty in deigning to love me, nor the greatness of thy generosity in inviting me to have fellowship with thee. Give me, I pray thee, grace to value such priceless goodness, and every day to live in habitual fellowship with thee. Since thou makest me free of thy courts, teach me how to be a resident courtier, going no more out for ever.
