Read Song of Songs 1:15
Questions from the Scripture text: What double command does Christ give in v15? What double compliment does He pay His bride? What does He call her/how does He identify her? What specific beauty does He commend in her?
What makes the church beautiful? Song of Songs 1:15 looks forward to the opening portion of the holy assembly on the coming Lord’s Day. In this verse of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that Christ’s making His church lovely, with love for Him, is what makes her beautiful.
The Bridegroom, the Beloved, the King, the Shepherd, responds to her love. Notice that He responds with more love: not just loving her, but giving her the title of His love, expressing a general admiration, and paying her a specific compliment.
He begins by saying “Behold.” It is a command. From this, we take His insistence that she would know His love. This is a sweet thing for the church. This is one of the things the Lord Jesus does for her in her worship. This is a sweet thing for the Christian. One of the things that the Lord Jesus constantly does for you. He reaffirms unto you His love, and He insists that you would see it: Behold!
Jesus’s insistence implies that we have difficulty receiving His love. There is at least a creaturely sluggishness in us. And there is also a sinful resistance to knowing, perceiving, feeling, appropriating, applying to ourselves how much the Lord Jesus loves us.
In response to our difficulty, the Beloved says, “Behold!” He doesn't just say, “you are fair, my love.” He says, “behold.”
And not only does he say behold, but he doubles it. “Behold, you are fair…” (Song of Songs 1:15a). “Behold, you are fair” (verse 15b).
And so we have His insistence upon communicating His love to us, and His insistence upon overcoming our resistance to knowing and perceiving His love to us. And so, if you do not perceive—if you do not feel, know, take to heart, apply in your life—the love of Christ for you… then you should note, here, His insistence that you would do so. You should acknowledge that He is implying that there is a difficulty in you, but that He Himself is overcome it. He intends upon making you to know His love.
Now, note his compliment of her. There is a general compliment and then a specific compliment. The general compliment is the one that He doubles: “you are fair,” which means, “you are beautiful.” The specific compliment is, “you have a dove’s eyes.” So in the general compliment, He calls her beautiful. He is the One Who assigns to everything its beauty. Beauty is determined by what God thinks is beautiful. He invented beauty. He is the source of it. Men like to say that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but this is wrong. This is a perversion. It’s only true if the Beholder is God, because beauty is in the eyes of the Creator. Beauty is what He beholds to be beautiful. We must determine beauty according to Christ's opinion. And He insists that His church is beautiful.
But the church’s beauty isn’t just Christ's opinion; it's also Christ's work. He has made her beautiful by making her His beloved; and, therefore, she is beautiful on account of Him. She is beautiful in union with Christ, and on account of Him and His ongoing work. She is beautiful to Him with the beauty that she shall have when He has completed his work in her—when she has no spot or wrinkle or any such thing (Ephesians 5:25–27).
And part of that work that He is doing in her is giving her humility about her present blemishes. She knows that she is dark or black (Song of Songs 1:6), and that she needs the ministry of the Shepherd feeding her (Song of Songs 1:7-8), the loving attendance upon her of the King at His banqueting table (Song of Songs 1:12). She needs Him. And, never is a believer, or the church, more lovely to the Lord Jesus than when we see our blemishes, than when we know our need of Him.
And so it's in the midst of her self-awareness, and desire for Him, and need for Him, that He affirms that this is lovely to Him. It's part of her fairness, her beauty, in His eyes.
Also, especially, we should expect to have communications from the Lord of His love for us, in those times when we have been communicating our love to Him. His love is what initiates. We love Him because He first loved us. But the more love for Himself that He stirs up in us, the more we should look for Him to be communicating His love to us. It is when we are expressing our love to him, that He most communicates to us makes us to know His love for us. Not because our love for Him is the reason that He loves us, but because He reinforces and confirms and strengthens in us our love for Him precisely by making us to know, especially at those times, His love for us.
Would you know Christ's love for you? Well, you do so primarily by meditating upon the cross: in this we know love, that He gave Himself up for us (cf. 1 John 3:16). But an important factor in experiencing and perceiving Christ's love for you is expressing your love to him. There are those times, like in Song of Songs 1:12-14, when the Lord comes and he addresses our heart in the way of Song of Songs 1:15: “Behold, you are fair, my love.”
Again, He doesn't just say, “I love you.” It's not just a truth about us that we are loved. It is part of our identity. It is at the core of what a believer is, at the core of what the church is. A believer is someone who is the love of the Lord Jesus. He loves us because we are His beloved. He loves His church because she is His beloved. So even more than just recognizing something that goes out from Christ towards us, we see that Christ's love for believers, Christ's love for the church, actually begins to constitute their very identity. They are the beloved of the Lord.
In addition to the general compliment of her beauty, He also pays her the specific compliment: And so we have the general compliment, “you have dove's eyes.” Now, this means at least one of two things, and probably both. Throughout the Bible, the dove is indicative of single-mindedness and purity: to be innocent as a dove, to be harmless. as a dove. One of the things that most pleases Christ, most pleases God, one of the things that is most beautiful to the Lord Jesus Christ is when we have a single-minded love for Him and desire for Him.
The other thing that is most often indicated by a dove in the scripture is the presence and ministry of God the Holy Spirit, which of course is how we come to have single-minded, pure love for and desire for the Lord. For, it is the Spirit Who gives us such desire for the Father and for the Son. And so these two things, although they are two different images, they are two parts of one meaning. The particular loveliness that the church has is that, by the presence and ministry of God the Holy Spirit, she has a single-minded, pure love for the Lord. This is the specific beauty that He is praising here.
How has your perception of Christ’s love been lately? How are you responding to His insisting that you would meditate upon it? What expressions of love to Him have you been making? In what way is it at the core of your identity?
Sample prayer: Lord, we confess before You that we do not often perceive, and feel, and have joy and peace, in the greatness of Your love, Your ardent affection, for us. And we pray that You would help us by Your Spirit, the same Spirit Who stirs up our love for You—that He would make us to know your love for us. Give our emotions to submit to Your insistence, as You tell us to “behold,” and as You double the command. Give to our emotions to submit to, and enjoy, the sweetness of the knowledge of Your love for us. For we ask it in Your Name, Lord Jesus. Amen!
Suggested songs: ARP126 “What Blessedness” or TPH405 “I Love They Kingdom, Lord”
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