“A bundle of myrrh is my Beloved to me,
That lodges between my breasts.”
Song of Sol. 1:13.
THE figure here employed is expressive of the spiritual agreeableness and pleasantness to the hearts of His people of intimate and holy spiritual communion with Jesus. He is compared to an amulet, or a box filled with liquid myrrh-gum borne continually in the bosom.
One has written― “The Eastern women, among other ornaments, used little perfume boxes, or vessels filled with perfume to smell at. These were worn suspended from the neck, and hanging down on the breast. Such smelling-boxes are still in use among the Persian women, to whose necklaces, which fall below the bosom, is fastened a large box of perfumes. Some of these boxes are as large as one’s hand; the common ones are of gold, the others are covered with jewels. They are all bored through, and filled with a black paste, very light, made of musk and amber, but of very strong smell.” Another says― “Myrrh was one of the most costly and fragrant perfumes. The shrub is beautiful, with smooth leaves of a dark green on the upper, and a whitish color on the under surface, with flowers of a reddish-purple, and a remarkable odor in the root, branches, leaf, and bloom, so that a cluster gathered therefrom was beautiful and fragrant. Yet the liquid obtained by exudation gave the tree its chief value, and is most probably what is here mentioned. Nothing of the kind could be more delightful to the senses than myrrh thus worn in the bosom.”
The spiritual mind of the Christ-loving one is of “quick understanding” to discern the meaning of such a word as “a bundle of myrrh is my well-Beloved unto me.” Myrrh was a chief spice in the anointing oil of God’s sanctuary; so is the Beloved of most excellent fragrance to the believing soul: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon the earth that I desire beside Thee.” And the word is “a bundle of myrrh!” How great the treasure one has in having Jesus, for in Him “it pleaseth all the fullness to dwell” (Col. 1:1919For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; (Colossians 1:19)). He is “full of grace and truth.” And how intense the loving apprehension of His pleasantness to the soul! “My Beloved to me.”
It is like the language of the loving Mary at “the grave of Jesus,” who speaks as though she were entitled to claim Him and take Him entirely to herself. “Tell me,” said she as to the gardener, “where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away.” He was all her own. What precious affection! What a sense of our title to Him! How should it be thus with each one of us; each of us knowing our own personal individual claim and right to a whole Christ in all His fullness―our title to Himself!
There is surely a great lack of spiritual appreciation of Christ in all His excellencies when we hear those who take the place of Christians, speaking, praying, and praising, as if they were in the outer court of the Gentiles, smiting on the breast and standing “afar off;” instead of now “having boldness to enter into the holiest, by the blood of Jesus,” as fully-purged worshippers, who have seen the divine love go through all the functions and services necessary to its day of consecration (1 John 4:1717Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. (1 John 4:17)). How far from the experience of the preciousness and pleasantness of fellowship with a known and intensely-loved Saviour are those who are deprecating wrath, imploring mercy, as if they had never known anything of the God-glorifying and sin-atoning sacrifice of the cross; who think it Christian humility to groan in legal bondage, continually bemoaning their defeat in the contest with their corruptions; and who have not got beyond beseeching God to give them an interest in Christ, adopt them into His family, and prevent them from going down to the pit. Nothing is more common than for Christian men unchristianly to finish off their public prayers in this way: “Remove our guiltiness and save us; pardon our sins and accept us in the Beloved; for all we ask is for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.” There is no Beloved like a “bundle of myrrh” in the bosom, when such language is on the lips; but there is Jewish distance, doubt, fear, and uncertainty. We may often hear such suppliants take their position before God as creatures, and unhesitatingly acknowledge Him with “much assurance” as their Creator and Preserver; but they lose their “assurance” instantly they refer to Him as the God of salvation; and their speech runs in this way: “We thank Thee if thou hast redeemed us by the ‘precious blood of Christ;’ if Thou hast opened our eyes, and shown us our sinful condition; if Thou hast given us Thy Holy Spirit to cleanse our hearts; and if Thou hast given us good hope through grace of getting our souls saved, of being united to Christ, and gaining the prize of eternal life in heaven.”
“My brethren, these things ought not so to be:” for God has so loved us as to give His Son to redeem us: Christ also hath loved us and died for us: redemption has been accomplished through His death: the righteous demands of God have been satisfied, the veil is rent, heaven opened: Christ is risen: God has been glorified about sin: remission of sins is now preached to the guilty, and justification from all things through a dead and risen Christ to every believer in His name; and we are invited, in virtue of Christ’s one sacrifice, once offered, to draw near to God “in full assurance of faith” and worship in the holiest of all, as those whose consciences are purged by the blood of Christ, and of whom the Holy Ghost testifies, “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” The work of redemption is as complete as the work of creation, for “His work is perfect.” And the work of new creation in Christ Jesus is as real as the work of the old creation; and there need be as little uncertainty whether we belong to the new creation as about our connection with the old creation. If we are alive to men, we are in the old creation; if we are “alive to God,” we are in the new. And there is no more difficulty about knowing whether we are by grace the risen children of God than that we were by nature “children of wrath.” But there must be the realization of Christian position in order to the enjoyment of Christian experience. Sorrowful it is to say, that those who profess to be believers are occupied rather in seeking to get Christ as a Saviour than in enjoying Him as a Friend. This is wholly unscriptural. There is no instance of any believer whose conversion or Christian course is detailed in the New Testament after the descent of the Holy Ghost doubting whether he were a believer or not. The woeful spectacle of Christian professors being generally unestablished was reserved for a later era; for, so far as we have the record of Christian experience in the Apostolic Church, doubters were unknown. How sad it is that in our day the great majority of those who profess faith in Christ could not say, “He loved me and gave Himself for me;” and hence they can, know nothing of the holy and unselfish experience of the bride when she says, “A bundle of myrrh is my Beloved to me, that lodges between my breasts.”
God has given us a finished salvation in Christ Jesus to begin with; “for by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves—it is the gift of God;” and all that we might be set before His Presence in love in the holiest, without any fear as to our state, and have nothing to do to get ourselves into His favor, but only delight His heart by enjoying His beloved Son. “Truly our fellowship is with the Father” when we delight in Christ as our Beloved. “For the Father loveth the Son.”
It is interesting to remember that myrrh was among the gifts presented to Christ by the wise men at His birth; and myrrh was employed by Nicodemus for embalming “the body of Jesus at His death;” and in the ivory palaces where He has been anointed with the oil of gladness His garments smell of myrrh: and whether we think of Him as the “Word made flesh,” or as laying down His life for us, or as within the veil as our anointed High Priest after the order of Melchisedec, which is that of power and blessing, we can say individually, “A bundle of myrrh is my Beloved to me.”
This is individual, personal communion. “We have an altar” whereof we have a God-conferred right to eat “who worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh;” and this altar is one of peace offerings, for these were the sacrifices of which the offerer ate; and after all the imperfect sacrifices have been set aside, we are left with “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” His work haying been finished, we are now invited to gaze on Him, the great Purger of sins, seated at the right hand of the throne of God, the Maker, Upholder, and Heir of all things, crowned with glory and honor, His person the same, His work, His priesthood, His kingdom the same forever. Perfection is stamped on everything He has touched; and, among other things, His blood perfects the sinner’s conscience, and leaves us free to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus,” and enjoy Himself now that He is enthroned in the calm peace of the heavenly sanctuary.
When we think of the glory of His person as the Son of God, the efficacy of His one sacrifice to put away sin, and perfect forever us who are sanctified by His blood, His grace as the minister of the sanctuary and the true tabernacle in heaven, His dignity as the ascended Man crowned with glory and honor, and of His coming in due time to take us to be with Himself, and then come forth with us in heavenly majesty to enter along with us, His blood-bought associates, on the enjoyment of His “kingdom that cannot be moved;” and when we reflect that each of us may take up the apostolic strain, and say, “He loved me, and gave Himself for me,” we will see cause for loving Him with our whole hearts, and saying individually, “A bundle of myrrh is my well-Beloved unto me: He shall lie all night between my breasts.”
“The night is far spent; the day is at hand:” but however long or short, Jesus himself shall lodge “all night” in my bosom. “I in them,” is His own word; “that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith” is the spirit-breathed prayer of the holy apostle. He had prayed to the GOD of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the first chapter of Ephesians, that the eyes of their understanding might be opened; that they might know their standing, and the glory awaiting them in association with their heavenly and glorified Head: and in chapter 3 he bows his knees to the FATHER, whose deep eternal love underlies all Christian standing privileges and glory. The apostle prays “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the length and breadth and depth and height:” of what? He does not say. Most readers will say it is “love;” but that does not seem likely, for the next limb of the sentence adds, as an additional thing― “And to know the Love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.” The whole of the preceding part of chapter 3 is about “the mystery of the Christ,” which contains the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” They might have searched for it in vain in the Holy Scriptures, for “by revelation He made known unto me the mystery which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men,” “being the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God,” but is “now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by His Spirit.” And now, seeing it was given only by Paul, He says, “When ye read” my “few words, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of the Christ;” and when he bows his “knees unto the Father,” he prays for the strengthening of the inner man by His Spirit, that the Christ of this newly-revealed mystery―the glorious Man, who was raised from the dead and set on high as Head of the Church, His body―may dwell in their hearts by faith; for it is only as faith accepts this new revelation by the apostle, and the Christ dwells in the heart according to the latest communication, that, “being rooted and grounded in love, we will be able to comprehend with all saints what is the length and breadth and depth and height” of the mighty display of the scheme of the God of grace and Father of Glory, according to His purpose and grace and counseled wisdom for the manifestation of His glory in the Church by Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end, “and know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.” What a name is His!― “a name that is above every name;”―and we are gathered to that name of life, love, grace, power, and glory; and He is “made of God unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” In the night period of deep trial, when the apostle was moving about in the service of the gospel, he was constantly cherishing a sense of the presence of Christ with him, and he spread abroad the savor of his own enjoyment of Him in every company and in every place. When he enumerates his trials in 2 Cor. 11, he ends them by recounting the undignified circumstances in which he began his ministry: “Through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall and escaped.” That is the very bathos of humiliation for him as a man; but from being let down in a basket he can come immediately to visions and revelations of the Lord, and glory in “a man in Christ,” being caught up into paradise; and again, on coming back, have a thorn in the flesh which the Lord will not remove, but give him his present power to bear; and immediately that he hears Him say, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness” he says, “Most gladly will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” One who knew Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, as did Paul, could say in truth, “A bundle of myrrh is my Beloved to me.”
And just as a bag of myrrh, carried in the bosom, scents the garments, and the person diffuses the odor wherever he goes, so do those who have a passionate and intelligent affection for Christ cast around them, unconsciously, the sweet savor of their fellowship in love with Him. A person redolent of odoriferous perfumes does not need to sound a trumpet before him, and announce the fact, so neither do those who are enjoying Christ, for they cannot move without giving proof, though all unconsciously (Moses wist not that his face shone), that they carry Him continually in their bosom, and enjoy the sweet perfume of all the graces of His person as the Man of Sorrows or the Man of glory. “Christ is all” to them as their object, and He is “in all” as their life. For real spiritual enjoyment of Him we must get clean out of “the flesh” by death to it in virtue of the death and resurrection of Christ, and be united to Jesus, risen, ascended, and glorified, sins all forgiven us for His name’s sake, and we consciously set free by the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus on resurrection ground, and blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, before we can truly say, “A bundle of myrrh is my Beloved to me.” It is not love first, but faith that takes hold of the revelation of God. The eyes must be opened, and faith must receive Christ, “according to the riches of His glory,” before we come to the prayer to know the love of Christ. God’s order in Ephesians is Christ and all blessings in Him, the heart occupied with Him, and then the life devoted to Him, “according to the power that worketh in us.”
When we see intelligently and by the Holy Ghost that Christ has died for our sins, and they can no more condemn us, and we have died to sin in Him, and it shall not any longer have dominion over us; that He was delivered up for our offenses, and raised up for our justification; that we are now associated with Him in life, blessing, and glory, and that His love will not be satisfied until its service reach its utmost bound, when He not only presents us faultless before the presence of His glory, but seats us at the glorious banquet of love in the Father’s house, and Himself comes forth and serves us. No expression is too strong to convey our sense of the joy and delight He is to our souls, “for the love of Christ constraineth us;” “we love Him because He first loved us.” “A bundle of myrrh is my Beloved to me; He shall lodge continually in my heart.”
“And there was a flower that sprang from the tomb,
When the days had numbered three:
Upon my heart that flower shall bloom―
Eternal joy for me.”