It is only after we enjoy Christ as the sin-dealing life that we can also minister Him as such to others. In Leviticus the priests were to eat the sin offering in the holy place that they may make expiation for the people of Israel before Jehovah(Lev. 10:17). As we enjoy Christ as the sin-dealing life, we have an enlarged capacity to bear away the iniquity of God’s people – by learning to minister Christ to the dear saints who are in sin
our repentance and confession marries God’s forgiveness to produce something for God’s building
In a way, if in our Christian life we didn’t have a great failure – something that we do which makes the other saints shake their head when they think about it – we cannot say we have experienced a great repentance matched by God’s forgiveness… No, we don’t want to say, Let us do evil so that good may later come. We don’t want to tempt God nor do we desire to willingly fail, but we may fail and commit a great sin – we may have a great failure – and there will be a deep repentance that will follow.
enjoying God in the house of God: beholding His beauty, tasting His goodness, and being saturated!
Our God is enjoyable – and He created us with the need for enjoyment… In the house of God we know and testify that God Himself is so enjoyable and pleasant! Praise the Lord, our God is an enjoyable God in an enjoyable house! This means that there’s loveliness, pleasantness, and delightfulness here – to behold the beauty of the Lord is pleasant, delightful, and lovely!
our daily enjoyment of Christ leads us to the continual enjoyment of God in the house of God!
As individual Christians we can experience God and enjoy God only in a limited way, but when we grow and realise that spirituality is a Body matter and that the Triune God is mingled witht he church as the Body of Christ, we will see that our God is the God of the Body of Christ, the God of the House of God! God is not just the God IN the house of God, but the God OF the house of God, the God who makes Himself known as our enjoyment only when we are built into His house as His dwelling place.
praising Christ in the sweetness of His virtues and praising the church as the queen in her beauty
In Psalm 45 there is an extensive praising of Christ as the King and the church as the queen. The psalmist praises Christ in the sweetness of His virtues, especially in verse 8, “All Your garments smell of myrrh and aloes, of cassia; from palaces of ivory, harpstrings have made You glad“. What a poetic […]
praising Christ as the King in His victory and in His kingdom; praise Christ for His awesome deeds!
praising Christ as the King in His victory and in His kingdom; praise Christ for His awesome deeds – as seen in Psalm 45! Such a Christ – the Victorious One, the righteous One, the One performing awesome deeds, the righteous and victorious King – has been anointed by God with the oil of exultant joy above His companions!
since we have an affectionate love for the Lord Jesus, our tongue is like the pen of a ready writer
since we have an affectionate love for the Lord Jesus, our tongue is like the pen of a ready writer ready to write our love for Him and our praise to Him with our experience and enjoyment of Him according to all that He is! If we love the Lord Jesus, our tongue will be like the pen of a ready writer – we don’t need to “write a draft” of our love for Him, of the things we want to say concerning Him! If we have an affectionate love for the Lord Jesus, our heart is fully in love with Him, and we are ready to write our love our praise to Him…