23 March 2007

The pioneer missionary to China, James Hudson Taylor wrote a little treatise on the Old Testament poem called “The Song of Songs”, it is entitled “Union and Communion”. These words sum up the Christian Life. Through the work of the Lord Jesus we are brought into union with Him that we might enjoy communion with Him.  

Hudson Taylor’s little book interpreted the poem as the marriage and life between Christ and His bride, the church. Many regard that handling of the Song as fanciful, but Taylor was treading ground that many godly preachers and writers had gone before. One of the best expositions of the Song of Songs that I have ever read is that of John Gill. It is still available new, though not easy to obtain. It is a book to savor, a little at a time, perhaps using it for daily readings for a while.

 

Jesus lived ‘in the bosom of the Father” ( John 1 v 18). Before He became man, born of Mary, He enjoyed unbroken face to face communion with His Father. In His incarnation He took human nature so bringing it into that place of sharing the face to face life with God the Father. This He did by constantly living and walking in the Spirit.

 

The central fact of sin was, and is, a rejection of this life of union and communion with God. Adam chose a life independent of God (though this is really impossible for we have our being from Him) and the result is a mere existence, the common state of the humanity now. Even those who have come to know God frequently live as islands, cut off from Him in their daily experience by a sea of uncertainties. The legacy of sin, both in us and its presence in the world about us serves to threaten immersion in a life of miserable suspicion. Distrust of God and of our fellowship believers isolates us profoundly and we do not enjoy the sharing of His life that is the heart of communion with Him. Instantaneously and at every moment He is our life, taking our sin and clothing us with His righteousness. In the inward parts He makes us to know wisdom for our folly, strength for our weakness, faith for our faithlessness, hope for our self-despair and His love for our loneliness. He must become unto us, in our daily and deepening experience, our wisdom, our righteousness, sanctification and redemption. He is the Fount of that superior affection enabling us against temptation. We are saved by His life and we enjoy the exchange of His life for ours and in so doing experience the partaking of His divine nature. There is necessarily a continuity of this exchange and impartation. It must not be allowed to cease on our part. To forsake Him, the fountain of living waters, and to hew out cisterns of our own devising is still the issue leading to all the tragedy of mans soul.

 

Perhaps there is a very real sense in which we never leave aspects mentioned in Romans 7. I am particularly thinking of verse 18 where Paul writes “I know that nothing good dwells in me….’ Surely he is thinking of himself as from himself. He has not confidence in the flesh, in what he is in himself. However, simultaneously he is living in Romans 5 where he is ‘saved by His Life” (v 10). In and of ourselves we are nothing, but in Him is everything that gives life. In and of ourselves there is only corruption but in Him and from Him is righteousness, purity, honor and eternal life. In a life of daily walking in union and communion with the Lord these awarenesses grow. Communion is the heart of worship and the heart of communion is union and the heart of union is love. The Father has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts that through His teaching we might learn that these things are so and live in the increasing enjoyment of Him Who is our life.

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