![praising Christ the King in the sweetness of His virtues and in praising the queen! (the Psalms) [picture source: thoughts on grace, the Psalms]](https://i0.wp.com/agodman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/the-psalms.jpg?resize=240%2C180&ssl=1 "praising Christ the King in the sweetness of His virtues and in praising the queen! (the Psalms) [picture source: thoughts on grace, the Psalms]")
Just when I thought that I have seen a lot in the Psalms in this recent video-training on the Crystallization Study of Psalms(1), we watched last night the seventh message entitled, Praising Christ as the King. There were so many things that enlightened me and touched me, but in particular towards the end of the message I was impressed with praising Christ the King in the sweetness of His virtues, and praising Christ the King by praising the queen.
When He was living on the earth, Christ expressed the bountiful God in His rich attributes through His aromatic virtues – Christ’s virtues were aromatic with the aroma of the Triune God! There was an indescribable sweetness and aroma emanating from Christ in His humanity.
Wherever He went, though the people He met might have never met Him before, they would leave everything behind and follow the Lord at His call. Matthew the tax collector was attracted by the Lord’s aromatic virtues and left everything to follow Him. Peter, though he was rebuked, exposed, and corrected by the Lord countless times, still followed the Lord and stayed with Him because there was an indescribable aroma and sweetness with the Lord.
Even after Peter denied the Lord three times – in His resurrection, the Lord told the women who came to the tomb, Go and tell My disciples AND PETER…. (Mark 16:7) – such a sweet shepherding. Then, the Lord cooked breakfast for the disciples on the seashore and asked Peter, Do you love Me? Peter was shepherded by Christ so that he could shepherd others also. The bountiful God was expressed in His rich attributes through Christ’s aromatic virtues to shepherd Peter and the other disciples. This is why we need to praise Christ as the King – for His aromatic God-filled humanity!
Praising Christ the King in Praising the Queen in Psa. 45
The Psalmist in Psa. 45 also praised Christ the King in praising the queen and the honorable women. The queen is the church, the honorable women are the overcoming saints. As believers, we have Christ as the honorable and majestic One in our being. We can also live a life fully dignified with the divine attributes expressed through our human virtues!
The King desires the queen’s beauty (Psa. 45:11) – Christ is the King, He is the Man, He is God, and He is the Lord! The church is the queen produced by Him and endowed by Him with His fourfold power in His processes! Unto Christ is glory in the church, the queen!
In the Old Testament we see that Abraham’s steward went to Rebecca with all of Isaac’s wealth: all Isaac’s wealth became Rebecca’s beautification and returned to Isaac with Rebecca! Christ’s wealth and beauty becomes our wealth and beauty and we go to Him adorned with His wealth and beauty to be His and His alone!
In the same way we see in Eph. 5:25-28 that the church is beautified by the washing of the water in the Word so that there would be no spots (caused by wounds) or wrinkles (caused by oldness) or any such thing. But rather, through the washing of the water of the Word (which is the living Christ), we are being presented to Christ as a pure and holy Bride to be His wife. What Christ appreciates in us is the expression of Himself. He is working Himself into us as our wealth and beauty and we become beautiful for Him to enjoy us!
Psa. 45:13-14 say, The King’s daughter is all glorious within the royal abode; Her garment is a woven work inwrought with gold. She will be led to the King in embroidered clothing… There are two garments in our Christian life – the first one is Christ as our righteousness before God, Christ as our objective righteousness to cover us before God. He covers the penitent sinner and He is our righteousness for our justification – through the faith of Christ, He becomes our righteousness and we are approved by God according to His standard of righteousness.
But there is another garment – the one of fine linen, called in Rev. 19:8, the righteousnesses of the saints. This is Christ wrought into us to be lived out of us as our subjective righteousnesses in many details of His perfect and fine humanity. This is what the Lord’s recovery is for – to produce the Bride, for us to gain the second garment. We want Christ to be wrought into us stitch by stitch so that He may be our embroidered clothing.
Though the saints and our family members / friends are wonderful, yet the Lord uses them as the many “needles” to stitch Himself into us, to work Himself in a fine way into every part of our being, until He as our righteousnesses is being lived out of us. Christ is woven into our character and He is embroidered into our being through His needle work – this is the process of transformation and renewing.
It may be painful when this happens, it can be accompanied by suffering… but Christ desires and arranges everything for this – to work Himself into the very fiber of our being so that He may be lived out of us as the second garment, the fine linen! We enjoy Christ today as our subjective righteousness and He is lived out of us as the subjective righteousnesses in many little details of His perfect, fine, balanced humanity.
Praise Christ the King in His work of perfecting, adorning, and beautifying the church as the qeen! When we see this embroidered work, this second garment, we just praise Christ as the king!
Sharing inspired from message 7 of the recent summer training on the Crystallization-Study of Psalms(1) – become a fan on facebook and share your enjoyment!
