“My beloved is mine, and I am his.” - Song of Songs 2:16


In this Song of Songs we see the love of Christ and his church running towards each other in a full torrent.


The text contains three general parts:

1. A symbol of affection: “My beloved.”
2. A term of appropriation: “is mine.”
3. A holy resignation: “I am his.”

Doctrine: There is a marital union between Christ and believers. The apostle, having treated at large of marriage, winds up the whole chapter thus: “This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32). What is closer than union? What sweeter? There is a twofold union with Christ:

1. A natural union. This all men have, Christ having taken their nature on him and not that of the angels (Heb. 2:16). But if there is no more than this natural union, it will give little comfort. Thousands are damned though Christ is united to their nature.

2. A sacred union. By this we are mystically united to Christ. The union with Christ is not personal. (...)

There is much talk these days about the rapid growth of the cults. Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Mormonism, the Unification Church, and a host of lesser-known groups are making converts at astounding rates. Yet, the combined effect of all these groups is over-shadowed by a movement that in the last few years has grown to include over 30% of the U.S. population. The amazing development of what might be called “Born-againism” is affecting all sectors of our society.

The two great graces essential to a saint in this life are faith and repentance. These are the two wings by which he flies to heaven. Faith and repentance preserve the spiritual life as heat and radical moisture do the natural. The grace which I am going to discuss is repentance.

Christians, do you have a sad resentment of other things and not of sin? Worldly tears fall to the earth, but godly tears are kept in a bottle (Ps. 56.8). judge not holy weeping superfluous. Tertullian thought he was born for no other end but to repent. Either sin must drown or the soul burn. Let it not be said that repentance is difficult. Things that are excellent deserve labour. Will not a man dig for gold in the ore though it makes him sweat? It is better to go with difficulty to heaven, than with ease to hell. What would the damned give that they might have a herald sent to them from God to proclaim mercy upon their repentance? What volleys of sighs and groans would they send up to heaven? (...)

‘Christian Hedonism’ is a term adopted in the literature of Dr John Piper to describe his scheme for sanctification and advance in the spiritual life. Certainly, it is a very strange term, because hedonism is, for Christians, a bad word. Hedonism means the pursuit of pleasure as the chief good, but in the case of this new scheme of spiritual living, it refers to the pursuit of pleasure in God.

Christian Hedonism says that the pursuit of happiness in God is the overruling source of power and energy for the life of the Christian. The proposer, Dr John Piper, is a prominent evangelical preacher in the United States, who began to popularise his views in 1986 with the publication of his book, Desiring God. In this he maintains that delighting in God is the pivotal issue in the Christian walk; the central and the most important part of the life of faith.

Dr Piper makes much use of the little sentence, ‘God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.’ Indeed, the (...)

“Salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9); but the Lord does not save all. Why not? He does save some; then if He saves some, why not others? Is it because they are too sinful and depraved? No; for the apostle wrote, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Tim. 1:15). Therefore, if God saved the “chief” of sinners, none are excluded because of their depravity. Why then does not God save all? Is it because some are too stony-hearted to be won? No; because of the most stony-hearted people of all it is written, that God will yet “take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 11:19). Then is it because some are so stubborn, so intractable, so defiant that God is unable to woo them to Himself? Before we answer this question let us ask another; let us appeal to the experience of the Christian reader.

Was that then which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. Rom. 7:13

We find our apostle in the 9th verse to have been alive, but struck upon the sudden dead, by an apparition presented to him in the glass of the law, of ‘the sinfulness of sin.’ ‘Sin revived,’ says the 9th verse, ‘appeared to be sin,’ says the 13th verse, looks but like itself, ‘above measure sinful;’ and he falls down dead at the very sight of it; ‘I died,’ says he in the 9th; ‘it wrought death in me,’ says the 13th, that is, an apprehension of death and hell, as due to that estate I was then in. But yet as the life of sin was the death of Paul, so this death of his was but a preparation to a new life, ‘I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live to God,’ Gal. ii. 19. And here he likewise speaks of God’s work upon him at his first conversion; for then it was (...)

At a Synod of Bishops in Rome in October, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI inaugurated the “Year of Faith” that he had announced in his Apostolic Letter called “Motu Proprio Data.” The Year of Faith commencement date of October 11, 2012, was chosen because it is both the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and the 20th anniversary of the publication of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.

In the Motu Proprio Data, Pope Benedict affirmed John Paul II’s conviction that Vatican II remained “the great grace bestowed on the Church in the twentieth century,”and is “a sure compass by which to take our bearings in the century now beginning.”

The teachings of Vatican Council II on ecumenism are indeed “a sure compass” by which to read the Papacy’s current actions - for the “new” outreach of the Catholic Church, as outlined there, is nothing short of a grand design to ensnare the true church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

At its centre, the goal is to lure unsuspecting believers (...)

Many people, I fear, are not aware what a vast store of comfortable truths the Bible contains for the peculiar benefit of real Christians. There is a spiritual treasure-house in the Word which many never enter, and some eyes have not so much as seen. There you will find many a golden verity besides the old first principles of repentance, faith, and conversion. There you will see in glorious array the everlasting election of the saints in Christ—the special love wherewith God loved them before the foundation of the world—their mystical union with their risen Head in heaven, and His consequent sympathy with them—their interest in the perpetual intercession of Jesus, their High Priest—their liberty of daily communion with the Father and the Son, their full assurance of hope—their perseverance to the end. These are some of the precious things laid up in Scripture for those who love God. These are truths which some neglect from ignorance. Like the Spaniards in the days when (...)

The first commandment emphasized the truth that God is God alone, and that there is no God beside Him.

The second commandment presupposes the principle that God is a Spirit, invisible, and infinitely glorious.

Hence, while the first commandment deals with the question who and what God is, the second rather gives an answer, in negative form, to the question how God is.

The negative or prohibitive form of this commandment is: “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.”

Now, what does one do who presumes to make an image or representation of the invisible, incomprehensible, infinitely glorious God? He looks about himself in the visible universe. From that visible creation that exists in time and space, that, therefore, is strictly finite, limited, he derives his idea. He looks at the heavens above, at (...)