Song of Solomon 6:3 – “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.“

In Song of Solomon, the Bride, or Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, declares that she is her Beloved’s and that He is hers.

In his excellent treatise on Song of Solomon 4:16-6:3 called “Bowels Opened” (bowels being inner-most self, often referencing deep compassions for others), Puritan Richard Sibbes notes that there are four reasons why Christ must be given to us before we can give ourselves to him by the self-resignation that “I am my
beloved’s, because my beloved is mine first”:

  • Because he is the chief spring of all good affections, which he must place in us; loving us, before we can love him, 1 John 4:10, 19.
  • Because love descends. Though it be of a fiery nature, yet in this it is contrary, for love descends, whereas fire ascends. The superior, first loves the inferior. Christ must descend in his love to us, ere we can ascend to him in our affections.
  • Because our nature is such that we cannot love but where we know ourselves to be loved first. Therefore God is indulgent to us herein; and that we may love him, he manifests his love first to us.
  • Because naturally ourselves, being conscious of guilt, are full of fears from that. So that if the soul is not persuaded first of Christ’s love, it runs away from him, as Adam did from God, and as Peter from Christ, ‘Depart from me, for I am but a sinful man,’ Luke 5:8. So the soul of every man would say, if first it were not persuaded of God’s love in Christ, ‘Who amongst us shall dwell with the everlasting burnings?’ Isa. 33:14.

He then says:

Let this then be the trial that we are Christ’s, by the spiritual echo that our souls make to that report which Christ makes to our souls, whether in promises or in instructions.

And he starts to apply them:

  • Use 1: See from that the nature of faith, for these are the words of faith as well as of love
  • Use 2: And again, these words discover the mutual coherence of justification and sanctification, and the dependence one upon another.
  • Use 3: This likewise helps us, by way of direction, to understand the covenant of grace, and the seals of the covenant, what they enforce and comprise; not only what God will do to us, but the duty we are to do to him again, though we do it in his strength.
  • Use 4: To proceed to make an use of comfort to poor, doubting Christians.

And then Mr. Sibbes continues with Use 5 — to come to make an use of direction, how to come to be able to say this, ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’

Below we pick up with answer to that. You can read this section of the treatise here, or listen to the sermon with this part in it here, or listen to the entire treatise on our audio book page.

From Richard Sibbes:

Use 5. To come to make an use of direction, how to come to be able to say this, ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’ For answer hereto, take notice in the first place, from the dependence. Christ must be first ours, before we can give ourselves to him.

(1.) Therefore, we must dwell on the consideration of Christ’s love. This must direct and lead our method in this thing.

Would we have our hearts to love Christ, to trust in him, and to embrace him, why then think what he is to us. Begin there; nay, and what we are: weak, and in our apprehension, lost.

Then go to consider his love, his constant love to his church and children. ‘Whom he loves, he loves to the end,’ John 13:1. We must warm our souls with the consideration of the love of God in him to us, and this will stir up our faith to him back again.

For we are more safe in that he is ours, Gal. 4:9, Philip. 3:12, than that we give ourselves to him. We are more safe in his comprehending of us, than in our clasping and holding of him. As we say of the mother and the child, both hold, but the safety of the child is that the mother holds him. If Christ once give himself to us, he will make good his own part always. Our safety is more on his side than on ours. If ever we have felt the love of Christ, we may comfort ourselves with the constancy and perpetuity thereof.

Though, perhaps, we find not our affections warmed to him at all times, nor alike, yet the strength of a Christian’s comfort lies in this, that first, ‘Christ is mine,’ and then, in the second place, that ‘I am his.’

Now, I say, that we may be able to maintain this blessed tradition of giving ourselves to Christ,

(2.) Let us dwell on the consideration of his love to us, and of the necessity that we have of him; how miserable we are without him, poor, beggarly, in bondage to the devil. Therefore we must have him to recover us out of debt, and to enrich us.

For Christ’s love carries him forth, not only to pay all our debts for us, but to enrich us; and it is a protecting, preserving love, till he brings us to heaven, his own place, where we shall ever be with him.

The consideration of these things will warm our hearts, and for this purpose serves the ministry.

(3.) We should therefore, in the next place, attend upon the word, for this very end. Wherefore serves the ministry? Among many others, this is one main end—’to lay open the unsearchable riches of Christ.’ Therein you have something of Christ unfolded, of his natures, offices, and benefits we have by him,—redemption, and freedom, and a right to all things in him, the excellencies of another world.

Therefore attend upon the means of salvation, that we may know what riches we have in him. This will keep our affections close to Christ, so as to say, ‘I am his.’

(4.) And labour we also every day more and more to bring all our love to him.

We see in burning-glasses [magnifying glasses?], where the beams of the sun meet in one, how forcible they are, because there is an union of the beams in a little point. Let it be our labour that all the beams of our love may meet in Christ, that he may be as the church saith, our beloved. ‘My beloved is mine, and I am my beloved’s,’ saith she, as if the church had no love out of Christ.

And is it love lost? No; but as Christ is the church’s beloved, so the church is Christ’s love again, as we see in this book oft, ‘My love, my dove.’

As all streams meet in the great ocean, so let all our loves meet in Christ. We may love other things, and we should do so, but no otherwise than as they convey love to us from Christ, and may be means of drawing up our affections unto Christ.

We may love our friends, and we ought to do so, and other blessings of God; but how? No otherwise than as tokens of his love to us. We love a thing that our friends send to us. O, but it is as it does convey his affection to us. So must we love all things, as they come from God’s love to us in Christ.

And, indeed, whatsoever we have is a love-token, even our very afflictions themselves. ‘Whom I love, I rebuke and chastise,’ Heb. 12:6.

(5.) Again, that we may inflame our hearts with the love of Christ, as we are exhorted by Jude, 21, let us consider the vanity [emptiness, uselessness] of all things that entice us from Christ, and labour every day more and more to draw our affections from them, as we are exhorted—’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,’ Ps. 45:10.

So, if we will have Christ to delight in us, that we may say we are his, let us labour to sequester our affections more and more from all earthly things, that we may not have such hearts, as St James speaks of, adulterous hearts. ‘O ye adulterers and adulteresses! know ye not that the love of the world is enmity with God?’ James 4:4.

Indeed there is reason for this exhortation; for all earthly things, they are all vain and empty things. There is an emptiness in whatsoever is in the world, save Christ. Therefore we should not set our affections too much upon them.

A man cannot be wise in loving anything but Christ, and what he loves for Christ. Therefore let us follow that counsel, to draw ourselves from our former company, acquaintance, pleasures, delights, and vanities.

We cannot bestow our love and our affections better than upon Christ. It is a happiness that we have such affections, as joy, delight, and love, planted in us by God; and what a happiness is it, that we should have such an excellent object to fill those affections, yea, to transcend and more than satisfy them!

Therefore the apostle wishes that they might know all the dimensions of God’s love in Christ. There is a ‘height, breadth, length, and depth of the love of God,’ Eph. 3:18.

And let us think of the dimensions, the height, breadth, and depth of our misery out of Christ. The more excellent our natures are, the more miserable they are if not changed; for look what degree of excellency we have, if it be not advanced in Christ, we have so much misery being out of him.

Therefore let us labour to see this, as to value our being in him, so to be able, upon good grounds, to say, ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’

(6.) Again, let us labour to walk in the light of a sanctified knowledge to be attained by the gospel, for as it is, ‘the end of all our preaching is to assure Christ to the soul,’ 1 John 5:13, that we may be able to say without deceiving our own souls, ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’

All preaching, I say, is for this end. The terror of the law and the discovery of corruption is to drive us out of ourselves to him; and then to provoke us to grow up into him more and more. Therefore saith John, ‘All our preaching is that we may have fellowship with the Father and the Son, and they with us,’ 1 John 1:7.

And what does he make an evidence of that fellowship? ‘walking in the light, as he is light,’ or else we are liars. He is bold in plain terms to give us the lie, to say we are Christ’s, and have communion with the Father and the Son, when yet we walk in darkness.

In sins against conscience, in wilful ignorance, the darkness of an evil life, we have no communion with Christ. Therefore if we will have communion with him, let us walk in the light, and labour to be lightsome [luminous, not dark or obscure] in our understandings, to have a great deal of knowledge, and then to walk answerable to that light and revelation that we have.

Those that live in sins against conscience, and are friends to the darkness of ignorance, of an evil life, Oh they never think of the fellowship with Christ and with God! These things are mere riddles to them; they have no hope of them, or if any, their hope is in vain. They bar themselves of ever having comfortable communion with Christ here; much less shall they enjoy him hereafter in heaven.

Therefore labour every day more and more to grow rich in knowledge, to get light, and to walk in that light; to which end pray with the holy apostle, ‘That you may have the Spirit of revelation,’ Eph. 1:17, that excellent Spirit of God, to reveal the things of God, that we may have the light discovered to us.

What a world of comfort has a Christian that has light in him and walks in that light, above another man. Whether he live or die, the light brings him into fellowship with the Father of lights. He that has this light knows his condition and his way, and where he goes.

When he dies he knows in what condition he dies, and upon what grounds. The very light of nature is comfortable, much more that of grace. Therefore labour to grow daily more and more in the knowledge and obedience of the light.

All professors of the gospel are either such as are not Christ’s, or such as are his. For such as are not yet, that you may be provoked to draw to fellowship with Christ, do but consider you are as branches cut off, that will wither and die, and be cast into the fire, unless you be grafted into the living stock, Christ. You are as naked persons in a storm, not clothed with anything to stand against the storm of God’s wrath. Let this force you to get into Christ.

May the Lord grant us that we be Christ’s, and then may we labor for and may He grant that our hearts echo back to Him His great love for us!

— David