R.C. Chapmans S.O.S. 2.4-5

By R.C. Chapman

 

“Let him lead me to the banquet hall, and let his banner over me be love.   Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love.” (Song of Solomon 2:4-5)

Have you been left, O my soul, to your own will, and the way of your own wisdom, could you ever have known Jesus or desired to know Him? It was the Spirit of God who led you, opening your eyes, convincing your conscience, drawing you to Christ, whose grace He showed you and caused you to believe.

Lord Jesus, Your grace is true grace.  In You, my soul makes her boast; and while You gird Yourself, and make me sit down in Your house of wine, a sweet sadness steals over my spirit.  I was at one time in darkness, one time an alien and enemy, before Your love was set on me and my name was in Your book.

These solemn memories do not mar my joys; they are needed so long as I live in this earthly house, to give me richer communion with Your love!

O Crowned King, Jesus of Nazereth, the mighty and glorious One, who made Yourself of no reputation, You rule me with Your Almighty love.  For if Your sceptor was not a sceptor of grace You could indeed, by a word destroy me; but You could not win my heart.

Now You show me Your wounds, and say: “Peace to you.” You hold me with the cords of Your love.  Lord, You open to me the gates of glory, bringing me into Your banqueting house, to sustain and cheer me on my way; and the wine of Your house fills me with longing for those things which are above.

My soul surveys Your glory, O King of Zion, Beloved One, and altogether lovely! I sit down with You on Your throne, sin, death, the law, hell, and the world under my feet.  Your fullness satisfies me.  In You I see the Father’s heart; He is Your God and my God; Your Father and my Father.  Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift.

Lord, You sit down with me at Your own table, delighting Yourself in my soul’s afffections to You and admirtion of You, and my song and triumph of faith.  Your love to me is my soul’s strength and joy; it engages You to take up spear and shield against my enemies, draw me to my hiding place, and lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.  In the light of Your love I see my foes, hate their baits, and avoid their snares.

To idols I say,”Depart, my soul is the temple of my Lord.”

Lord Jesus, You have said, “Behold I come quickly (Revelation 3:11; 22:7, 12, 20).  O keep Your word! Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly, and let my soul, with Your gathered saints, without enemies to frustrate us, rest in Your presence, and be filled with Your glory, and feast forever in Your love.

 

 

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Life of Faith 13: Finding Joy in Justification

By Richard Sibbes

 

One may ask:

“But what is the reason that many who are justified yet do not find daily comfort?”

Perhaps they smear up themselves, and do not search the bottom of their corruption: as Psalm 32:8, David, when he kept close his sin, his bones waxed old through his roaring all the day long, and God’s hand was heavy upon him day and night.  Then he shows how he found comfort: “I acknowledged my sin to you, and my iniquity I have not hid.  I said I will confess my transgressions to you; and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”  So it may be in this case.  We come not off with God freely, we do not ransack our sins, we do not search all the corners.  Sin is a marvelously subtle thing.  Again, because of this many times God will humble us for a former sin, and keep the oil of comfort, until we are more humbled, and stand in awe of sin.

Hence springs a vigorous life.  A life of cheerfulness, when a man has his pardon found out, then comes life and joy, strength of holy actions well rooted and grounded.  Who should joy, if a triumphant righteous person should not? Who have cause to rejoice more than kings?

By justification we are made kings and priests, are lifted above all sins and lusts, world and devil; have a right and title to heaven.  Shall a carnal man joy in his titles and privileges, and shall not we much more, being sons of God by adoption, and heirs of all things? So Romans 5:1—”Being justified by faith , we have peace with God, and joy in tribulation.” Being once justified, the sting of all troubles is taken away.  God is ours.  This is all in all.  The blood of Abel, that cries for vengeance; but the Spirit of God in this state tells me, that the blood of Christ speaks better things, mercy, mercy; in his blood is always comfort, though we be weak and unskillful to apply it.  The washing in this blood should make a Christian walk on cheerfully in the comforts of the Holy Spirit.

 

 

 

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Life of Faith 12: Our City of Refuge

By Richard Sibbes

When we have a zeal against all contrary doctrine, as St Paul shows to the Galatians, who would have joined works with faith: “Christ is become of none effect unto you; whoever of you are justified by the law, you are fallen from grace” Galatians 5:4 and in the third chapter he says , ” Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly portrayed among you as crucified?”  “I just want to learn this from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?”  Galatians 3:1,2  A man sound in the point of justification has a hatred to …(certain religions)¹ and all such doctrine which impairs the riches of the grace of Christ.  Death is in such a … Why are some of them then saved? Not because they die in that religion, but because they reverse their judgment in this point of justification.  So you see there is a hatred, a zeal in such, as St Paul had against contrary doctrines.

There is peace and joy settled in the heart: as Romans 5:1,2, “Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;  through whom we also have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ”

Questions: To add one thing more before I leave this point, In the case of relapse and falling, what shall we do then? Aren’t we then cut off?  We must then have a new incision?

I answer, every man who fall does not fall on all-four, fall away totally.  There are degrees of falling; as in a sick man, though ill, he is brought to death.  Some life and some strength remains, which works toward health again.  There is so much grace and life in justification left, as to recover him again.  But as in other cases, so in relapses also, a man must live by faith.  We see, 2nd Corinthians 5:20, even such as were in the state of grace, are entrusted to be reconciled.

Though we fall, we must not therefore fall off, but stir up grace, and recover ourselves again.  So Isaiah 55:7, there it is said, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous his thoughts: and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” And then he adds the reason, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” So Jeremiah 3:1, “They say if a man puts away his wife, and she from him and become another man’s should he return to her again?  Wouldn’t the land be greatly polluted?  But you have played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me says the Lord.  Thus we must live by faith, for all our slips and falls, yet not to let go of our hold, but still run to the horns of this alter, still fly to this city of refuge, and so we shall be safe.

 

 

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R.C. Chapman’s S.O.S. 1:16

By R.C. Chapman

“Behold, You are fair my beloved; yes, pleasant: also our bed is green.” Song of Solomon 1:16

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It moves my joy, sobered with sadness and grief for sin, to hear You, My Lord, commending what You see in me.  Your work and Your resemblance within me, I know, is lovely.  Oh give me wisdom to hear Your word of praise! Let me test my way with Yours, and I will be yet more depraved in my own sight, and yet more sweetly occupied with You!

You, Lord Jesus! Do fix Your eyes on me, that mine may ever be set on You, who gave Yourself for me, and also to me, and are my light and my salvation, my portion and my joy.  You see Yourself in me.  If You were not Jehovah my Righteousness, justifying and washing me in Your blood, I would have for ever dwelt in the shadow of death, and loved my filthiness:  therefore there is only one reason You should call me fair and pleasant, since in me You see Your own image.

You are my assurance; I was crucified with you, and made to sit together with my Lord in heavenly places. (Ephesians 2:6) This earth was your field to labor; in heaven you rest, having finished the work the Father gave you to do. Having suffered first You have entered into Your glory, which is ever new, and cannot fade—Your bed of green!  You are full of joy with the Father’s countenance, and at His right hand are pleasures for evermore.

I rejoice because all things the Father has are Yours, and I am joint heir with You. Therefore You say “Our” bed; the glory given You, You have given me!  I follow on to know the power of your resurrection and the fellowship of Your sufferings.  In you and with You my soul rests, ceasing from my own works; and dead to the law, I live; yet not I, but my Lord lives in me; so then to die daily is my work.

In this I exercise myself, knowing that sin uses that old husband, which held me in bonds; and I could bring no fruit forth except only the wild grape and dead works of the flesh, unless I had been dead to the law by the body of my Lord.

Oh teach me, then, to watch, and stand fast in You! Sprinkle me with Your blood! Let me ever abide at Your cross and triumph in the power of Your resurrection, sitting down and resting with You in heavenly places! So I will set foot on the neck of all enemies; so I will keep myself pleasant to You, and that wicked one will not touch me. I will be for my Lord—my Beloved—and nothing will divide my heart with Him!

 

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[Language modernized in places by this site.]

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Christian Love 18: His Love and Our Love?

That Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, who was the Father’s delight, yet, not withstanding, could rejoice in the habitable places of the earth, and so love poor, bad and miserable men, yet enemies, that he gave himself for them, that God so loved that he gave his Son, and Christ so loved that he gave himself a sacrifice for sin, both for me and others, O! who should not or will not be compelled, in beholding this mirror of incomparable and spotless love to love others?

1st John 4:9-11

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“In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.  Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”  

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Ephesians  5:2

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“And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us, and has given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor,”

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especially when he seems to require no other thing, and imposes no more grievous command upon us for recompense of all his labor of love.

John 8:34-35

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“A new commandment I give you, That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another.”

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If all that was in me did not alienate his love from me, how should any thing in others estrange our love to them? If God be so kind to his enemies, and Christ so loving that he gives his life for his enemies to make them friends, what should we do our enemies, what to our friends? This one example may make all created love to blush and be ashamed.  How narrow, how limited, how selfish is it?

 

 

 

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Life of Faith 8: He Justifies Us Daily

By Richard Sibbes

As we sin daily, so Zech.13.1, “There is a fountain daily running, to wash away sin and uncleanness.” Therefore for our daily sinning, we must continually run and bathe our souls in this blood, apply the comforts of his sufferings, intercession, and obedience unto us.  St. John teaches us this much; He says, “If any man sin, we have as advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world,”  1st John 2.1.  If we sin daily, he justifies the sinner daily:  He came to save sinners: therefore, when sin stirs us up to run from God, we should run to him.  Faith says, “There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8.1.  Why?

My sin was condemned in Christ, and a condemned person has no voice.  Christ came to destroy sin, and condemned sin in the flesh.  Our sins were crucified with him, and are now all condemned sins, if we will go to Christ, who has borne all our iniquities, as the prophet Isaiah excellently shows.  Therefore St. Paul triumphantly demands the question, “Who will lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?  It is God who justifies, who is he that condemns?  “It is Christ who died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.  Who shall then separate us from the love of Christ?  Romans 8.38,31. 

So in our daily sins you see we have use of these things, to have, upon our confession, a daily pardon of course taken out everyday.  Thus God would not have us sink.  So long as there is matter of guilt in us, God will have a way to cleanse our souls, and renew our comforts.  Everyday we run into new debts, and everyday in the Lord’s prayer we are taught to ask pardon, and to run to God, to have the book crossed out with his blood.

Every day a Christian must eye the brazen serpent, I mean the Lord Jesus, signified thereby; he must sprinkle his heart with the blood if Christ, that the destroying angel may pass him in the day of wrath, as the Israelites then did.

This is it to live by faith; every day to sue out our pardon; to look to our advocate and surety, who has paid our debts, and cancelled that obligation against us, contrary to us, as the apostle speaks, daily to wash in that ever-running fountain. “Christ is a priest forever, after the order of Melchisedec,” Ps.  110.4.  Though the act be past, he remains the same still.  What puts down our courage, strikes us with terror and fear, but our sins?  Oh but why is this brazen serpent lifted, but to wash away our daily frailties and failings,so as whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life? John 3.14-15. 

Christian Love 17: If God so Loved Us

By Hugh Binning

I may briefly reduce the chief persuading motive to this so needed an so yearned for grace into three or four heads.  All things within and without persuade to it, but especially the right consideration of the love of God in Christ, the wise and the impartial reflection on ourselves, the consideration of our brethren whom we are commanded to love, and the thorough inspection into the nature and use of the grace itself.

In consideration of the first, as soul might argue itself into a complacency with it and thus persuade itself, “He who doesn’t love, doesn’t know God, for God is love,” 1st John 4:8.  And since he who has known and believed the love that God has for us, must certainly dwell in love, since these two have such a strait unbreakable connection, then, as I would not declare to all my atheism and my ignorance of God, I will study to love my brethren.  And that I may love them, I will give myself to the search of God’s love, which is the place, locus inventionis, then I may find out the strongest and most effective way to persuade my mind, and to compel my heart to Christian affection.

First then, when I consider that so glorious and great a Majesty, so high and holy an One, self sufficient and all sufficient, who needs not go abroad to seek delight, because all happiness and delight is enclosed within his own bosom, can yet love a creature, yes and even be reconciled to so sinful a creature, which he might crush as easily as speak a word, that he can place his delight on so unworthy and base an object, O! how much more should I a poor and very bad creature, love my fellow creature, often times better than myself, and for the most part, not much worse?

There is an infinite distance and disproportion between God and man, yet he came over all to love man.  What difficulty should I have then to place my affection on my equal at worst, and often better?  There cannot be any proportional distance between the highest and lowest, between the richest and poorest, between the most wise and the most ignorant, between the most gracious and the most ungodly, as there is between the infinite God and a finite angel.  Should the mutual infirmities and failings of Christians, be an insuperable and impassable gulf, as between heaven and hell, that none can pass over by a bridge of love to either? “If God so loved us,” should not we love one another?  1st John 4:11.  And besides, when I consider that God has not loved me only, but my brethren who were worthy of hatred, with an everlasting love, and passed over all that was in them, and has spread his robe over their nakedness, and made it a time of love, which was a time of hating, how can I withhold my affection where God has bestowed his?  Are they not infinitely more unworthy of his than mine?  That my love come together with God’s on the same persons, is it not enough?

 

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This common domain work modernized in few places by this site.

R.C. Chapman’s S.O.S. 1:13

“A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me: He shall lie all night betwixt my breast.” —Song of Solomon 1:13

My Soul! Is the night season wearisome! Art thou like a sick man, full of tossings to and fro, because of sin that dwelleth in thee, and because of longing to behold thy Lord face to face?

Thou art not of the night nor of darkness, but of the children of light and of the day; and made meet to be partaker of their inheritance. Be content awhile, my soul—let thy longing be tempered with patience—remember that wert thou this moment with Jesus thou wouldest still be longing for His glorious appearing and the gathering of the Church, His brethren and thine unto Him! The darkness of guilt would indeed be utterly removed from thee didst thou quit thou house of clay; but the mystery of God would not be finished—thou wouldest still be looking for the manifestation of the sons of God, their appearing with the Lord in glory.

He knoweth the thoughts of His heart towards thee, and means thee nothing but kindness—the kindness of eternal love and wisdom infinite! Trust Him, then—fight the good fight of faith, and count not thy life dear to thee, if only Thou mayest finish thy course with joy—be jealous of thy Lord’s good name—grieve not His Spirit—keep thy heart and conscience clean and pure by the blood of sprinkling, and as thou dost daily listen to the voice of thy beloved Lord, and do His will, He will surely make thy heart glad with His words.

He will abide in thee and cause thee to abide in His love; if He prove thee with manifold temptations for a season, as thou needest, He will cause thee to rejoice and glory in infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon thee. Nor shall thy joy be carnal, of thy boasting presumptuous! For thy shout of triumph shall proceed from a humble, contrite spirit, and the steadfastness of faith.  Thou shalt worship within the vail with Jesus, thy Forerunner and Royal High Priest; and, holding the balances of faith, shalt call afflictions light, because thou dost weigh them against things eternal and unseen: so shall thou cheer thy heart and beguile the night watches, thy Lord giving thee songs in the darkness.

And these things thou knowest, not by hearing of the ear alone; thou hast tasted and handled them; but count not thyself to have already attained anything, nor esteem thyself already perfect—it shall be thy wisdom and perfection, if forgetting the things that are behind, thou reach after things before thee, and press toward the mark for the prize; that thou mayest know thy Lord Jesus, whose love passeth knowledge and whose riches are unsearchable.

 

 

 

Christian Love 16: Love Never Fails

By Hugh Binning

“Love never fails.”  This is the last note of commendation.  Things have their excellency from their use and from their continuance; both are here.  Nothing so useful, no such friend of human or Christian society as love, the benefits of it reaches all things.  And then, it is most permanent and durable.  When all will go, it will remain.  When ordinances, and knowledge attained by means of ordinances, vanish, love will abide, and then receive its completion.  Faith of things not evident and obscure will be drowned in the vision of seeing God’s face clearly.  Hope of things to come will be exhausted in the possession and fruition of them.  But love only remains in its own nature and notion, only it is perfected by the addition of so many degrees as may suit that blessed state.

Therefore I think it should be the study of all saints who believe immortality, and hope for eternal life, to put on that garment of charity, which is the clothing of all the inhabitants above.  We might have heaven on earth as far as it is possible if we dwelt in love, and love dwelt in and possessed our hearts.  What an unsuitable thing might a believer think it, to hate him in this world whom he must love eternally, and to contend and strive with these, even over small matters, with bitterness and rigidity, with whom he shall have an eternal, uninterrupted unity and fellowship?  Should we not be testing here how that glorious garment suits us?  And truly there is nothing that makes a man so heaven-like or God like as this, much love and charity.

Now there is one consideration that might persuade us more to it, that here we know but darkly in part, and therefore our knowledge, at best, is but obscure and not evident, often subject to many mistake and misunderstandings of truth, according as means of communication present them.  And therefore there must be some latitude of love allowed one to another in this state of imperfection, else it is impossible to keep unity, and we must conflict often with our own shadows, and bite and devour one another for some deceiving appearances.

The imperfection and obscurity of knowledge should make all men suspicious of themselves, especially in matters of a doubtful nature, and not so clearly determined by scripture.  Because our knowledge is weak, shall our love be so?  No, rather let charity grow stronger, and aspire to perfection, because knowledge is imperfect.  What is wanting in knowledge let us make up in affection, and let the gap of difference in judgment be swallowed up with the bowels of mercies and love, and humbleness of mind.  And then we shall have hid our weakness of understanding as much as may be.  Thus we may go hand in hand together to our Father’s house, where, at length, we must be together.

 

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This common domain work has been modernized in few places.

 

This is the End of Christian Love, chapter 2.