Spiritual Significance of Pomegranates in the Progress of our Loving Fellowship with Christ

According to the book of Song of Songs, pomegranates have a spiritual significance in the progressive experience of an individual believer’s loving fellowship with Christ, from being beautiful exclusively to the Lord to becoming His private garden for His satisfaction. Amen!

The pomegranates are mentioned in particular portions of the Bible and they have a specific significance in different portions of God’s word.

A ripe pomegranate with its seeds gives us the impression of the fullness of life and of the abundance and beauty of life.

Humanly speaking, it is good to eat pomegranates and to drink pomegranate juice; spiritually speaking, we need to enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as the reality of the good land, a land of pomegranates.

Christ is the reality of every positive thing in the universe to be our portion for our enjoyment.

He is not only in general the reality of all positive things but even more, in particular, He is the reality of the pomegranates and He wants to make us a pomegranate for others to enjoy. Wow!

As we enjoy and experience Christ as the reality of all the types in the good land, He constitutes us to become the same as He is in order to duplicate Himself in us and obtain a corporate expression in us and through us.

If we experience and enjoy Christ as the spiritual reality of the wheat, barley, the vine, and the fig tree, we will have the abundance of the life of Christ, and the beauty of Christ will be expressed through us.

He is the most wonderful, abundant, and beautiful One, and by enjoying Him, we become the same as He is.

May we learn to shift our focus from anything else to Himself so that we may enjoy Him, partake of Him, and experience Him.

As we focus on the Lord, concentrating our whole being on Him, we will be filled with Him, saturated with Him, and permeated with Him. Hallelujah!

In 1 Kings 7:18-20, we see a particular mention and application of the pomegranates, this time in relation to God’s building.

There were two hundred pomegranates on the capitals of the two pillars in the temple, two rows of one hundred pomegranates.

Out of the hundred, four were hidden or covered, and ninety-six were exposed to the open air.

The expression of the riches of life, which the pomegranates signify, is eternally complete, in the freshness of resurrection and in the Spirit. Wow!

And our natural man, our self, and our natural being are covered, so that only Christ may be seen and manifested in us. Praise the Lord!

In this article, we want to see the pomegranates and their spiritual significance in the progressive experience of an individual believer’s loving fellowship with Christ.

The Spiritual Significance of Pomegranates in the Progressive Experience of an Individual Believer’s Loving Fellowship with Christ

Song of Songs shows us the progressive experience of an individual believer’s loving fellowship with Christ, and time and time again the pomegranates are mentioned; pomegranates are mentioned at least six times in these short eight chapters.

The six mentionings of the pomegranates shows us our need to experience and enjoy Christ in particular ways according to His heart’s desire in our loving fellowship with Him.

Thank the Lord for the ministry of the age that opens up the matter of the spiritual significance of pomegranates in the book of Song of Songs.

“Your cheeks are like a piece of pomegranate / Behind your veil” (Song of Songs 4:3; 6:7)

Song of Songs is poetry; everything mentioned in this book is poetic. In chapter four the Beloved describes the beauty of this lover of His, after she passed through so many dealings and so much transformation in the first three chapters.

He describes her as being beautiful and attractive; He describes her hair, her eyes, her mouth, her teeth, and her cheeks.

He was happy with her; she is no longer a wild horse pulling Pharaoh’s chariot described in chapter one; she has become someone who is beautiful.

Her cheeks were like a piece of pomegranate; it was not a whole pomegranate but a piece of pomegranate, an open pomegranate.

The cheeks refer to our expression, the outward beauty. The outward beauty of the believers comes from an overflow of the Lord’s life.

As we enjoy the Lord and experience Him progressively in our loving fellowship with Christ, we become beautiful to the Lord.

Pomegranates are full of seeds, red, juicy, sweet, and beautiful; as we enjoy and experience Christ in our progressive experience of Him, we become beautiful to Him.

The cheeks are part of our face expressing how we feel and how we are inwardly; our expression should be full of life, even with the abundance of life, beautiful to the Lord and attractive to Him.

And our cheeks are behind our veil, signifying that we are beautiful to the Lord for His satisfaction.

We need to have a good testimony from those outside and let our light shine before men, but we don’t do this to exhibit this before others but to please the Lord and be beautiful to Him.

We believers in Christ need to live within the veil and behind closed doors, having intimate fellowship with the Lord and loving Him to be full of beauty and abundance of life for His satisfaction.

In Song of Songs 4:12 we see that the lover of Christ is like a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, for the Lord’s private and intimate satisfaction.

This is the same thought as in Genesis, where God planted a garden and put man there right after He created all things.

A garden is not something ordinary but something particular, specially designed for beauty and enjoyment.

There are flowers in the garden, and everything there is pleasing to the eyes.

Today we are in a garden, the church life garden, where we enjoy Christ together with all the saints; also, we become a garden for the Lord’s satisfaction.

We are a garden enclosed for the Lord’s private enjoyment and a fountain sealed, a spring shut up, available only to the Lord as our Beloved.

All that we are and have is for the Lord’s delight and for no one else.

Lord Jesus, we love You. We open to You. We want to enjoy and experience You more. We want to advance in our loving relationship with You to be beautiful to You. Amen, Lord, fill us with Yourself as life. May we have the abundance of life with all its riches. We want to live within the veil before You, being beautiful to You. Take us on with You in our loving relationship with You until we are beautiful in Your eyes for Your satisfaction. We want to spend much time with You in secret to enjoy You, love You, open to You, and have much intimate time with You, because we love You and we want to live for Your satisfaction! Amen, Lord, we want to be a garden enclosed for Your personal enjoyment and private satisfaction. We love You, Lord Jesus! You are our Beloved!

“Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates / With choicest fruit” — Song of Songs 4:13a

How sweet is this! In Christ’s enjoyment of His lover, she is an enclosed garden that grows all kinds of plants in different colours as different expressions of the inner life and in a variety of fragrances as the rich expression of the mature life (vv. 13-14).

We are becoming a garden to the Lord for His satisfaction not in a general way; rather, there’s much beauty and a lovely fragrance in this garden.

And this garden does not lack in fruit; our shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with choicest fruit.

We are filled with the power of life to overcome death and to have the power of resurrection.

As we advance in our progressive experience as individual believers loving the Lord Jesus, we are filled with the divine life, even the resurrection life, and we bear fruit in resurrection.

On one hand, our cheeks are like a piece of pomegranate; on the other hand, we bear rich fruit for our Beloved Lord Jesus.

As we fellowship with the Lord in a loving and intimate way, we grow a lot of flowers, spices, and trees in our garden for Him, and a variety of things develop in us to satisfy Christ (2 Cor. 9:8; Col. 1:9-11).

There is a well in this garden (Song of Songs 4:15), which waters the garden and waters the Lord also.

In the garden of Eden, there was a river splitting into four branches, and in the New Jerusalem, there’s one river of water of life watering this garden city.

This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to bring forth better and finer gardens.

The source is the hills of Lebanon, in Christ’s ascension; the Holy Spirit flows in us and among us to water us in Christ’s ascension, and we grow in life, bearing much fruit, having many fragrances, and becoming a garden for the Lord’s enjoyment and satisfaction.

We have trees of frankincense and all the chief spices in our garden for the Lord to enjoy and be satisfied.

And our shoots are an orchard of pomegranates with choicest fruit.

On the one hand, we have a loving fellowship with the Lord and remain in the organic union with Him in the divine romance.

On the other hand, we become to Him a garden filled with fruits, flowers, and fragrances for Him to be satisfied and pleased with us in our loving relationship with Him.

This becomes our beauty to the Lord as His loving seekers.

As lovers of Christ, we are now rich in life, producing fruits to nourish and refresh Him, giving forth sweet fragrances, and displaying beautiful colours for Christ’s enjoyment. Amen!

“I went down to the orchard of nuts / To see the freshness of the valley, / To see whether the vine had budded, / Whether the pomegranates were in bloom” — (Song of Songs 6:11)

This is a description of the lover’s work; after she has undergone quite an amount of transformation, she has become beautiful.

And her work, her service, is described as she went down to the orchard of nuts.

She is serving the Lord, and her service is actually to grow a garden.

We are not working in a mill or a factory to make things for the Lord with the labour of our hands and the sweat of our brow.

We love Him, we enjoy Him, and our service and work for the Lord is to grow a garden.

Whether we are serving full-time or we work and serve the Lord in spirit, we need to consider our service to the Lord as growing a garden.

We are not here to serve God in a busy way, saving others, getting them baptized, raising churches, and shepherding others to remain in the church life.

Rather, we are here growing a garden, watering the plants and cooperating with the Lord to help them grow. We want to see the vine budding and the pomegranates in bloom.

On one hand, we are beautiful to the Lord, and our cheeks are like a piece of pomegranate; on the other hand, we work with and for the Lord by caring for others to have pomegranates blossoming in the church life.

When we meet others, when we shepherd them, we want the Lord to grow in them and for them to blossom and be beautiful before the Lord.

Paul said that he was labouring and striving to present every man full-grown in Christ, until we all arrive at a full-grown man (Col. 1:28; Eph. 4:13).

We all need to arrive at a full-grown man in Christ, and we need to labour one with the Lord by first spending intimate time with Him to enjoy Him and be beautiful to Him, and then minister Him to others for them to grow in life and bloom.

May we care not only for outward success or accomplishments but also pay attention to the blossoming of the pomegranates in the church life so that we may be full of life and the saints may have the fullness of life.

This means that, though we work for the Lord and with the Lord, we pay more attention to life than to work.

We are not work-centred; we are not work-driven, nor do we just want to have results and obtain a certain success and bear fruit.

We are life-centred; we do work, but we focus on life, for we want the Lord’s life to grow in all the saints in their progressive experience as believers loving the Lord and fellowshipping with Him.

We are here not only working and labouring; we want to cooperate with the Lord for the work to be full of life, for there to be budding, blossoming, and growing.

Lord Jesus, we love You and we want to labor one with You by loving You and by paying attention more to life than to work. Save us from being those who are centred on working for God and obtaining a certain success. Oh Lord, we want to go with You to the orchard of nuts and see the freshness of the valley so that we may see whether the vine has budded and the pomegranates are in bloom. Amen, Lord, grow in us. Grow in all the saints. Cause Your life to grow abundantly in us and in the dear saints. May we all arrive at the full-grown man and may You gain the fullness of life in the church life!

“Let us rise up early for the vineyards; / Let us see if the vine has budded, / If the blossom is open, / If the pomegranates are in bloom; / There I will give you my love” — Song of Songs 7:12

As we progress in our loving fellowship with Christ, our union with the Lord becomes so perfect and complete that we are not only working for the Lord and serving Him but working with the Lord.

The loving seeker doesn’t just go by herself to the vineyards; she says, “let us” – this us is her and the Beloved.

We initiate the going in prayer, and together with the Lord we go to see the church and the churches.

We and our Beloved work together.

We are not distracted by the work and we don’t focus on the work; rather, our focus is on us and the Lord, together, working together, and taking care of the saints and the churches.

Sometimes we may be focused on the work so much that we get drained, bummed out, and dried up; when this happens, we need to come to the Lord and just love Him and give all our love to Him.

In the vineyards, in the churches and among the local churches, we work together with the Lord, and there we give Him our love.

In the midst of working with the Lord, we give Him our love.

We are not exhausted by working for the Lord, nor are we depleted; rather, we are one with the Lord in working with Him, and His work becomes our work while our work is the work of the Lord.

We visit the churches, and see the vineyards, not just to have a good time and have love feasts together but to see the pomegranates blossoming and in bloom.

We want to see all the churches, and in visiting and blending, we want to see the growth in life of the saints, for this is what the Lord desires – and this is what we also desire.

We want to see the level of life increasing among us in the church life.

We want to see the divine life grow in the saints and among the saints.

As we practice blending with the saints and visiting the churches, may we be saved from merely visiting the saints outwardly and be brought into the inward reality of visiting the vineyards and seeing the pomegranates blossoming.

“I would make you drink spiced wine / From the juice of my pomegranate” — Song of Songs 8:2b

This is mentioned in chapter eight of Song of Songs; this is the last chapter, at the point where the loving seekers of Christ are waiting to be raptured.

In our progressive experience as individual believers having a loving fellowship with Christ, we will arrive at the point where we are looking to the Lord to be raptured and be with our Beloved.

We are looking forward to entering into that eternal union, the marriage with our Beloved.

So we make the Lord drink spiced wine, from the juice of our pomegranate.

The pomegranate juice is very sweet and satisfying.

We pour ourselves out on the Lord and on the sacrifice of the saints’ faith, waiting to be raptured and be with the Lord for eternity.

We are looking forward to that wedding, the glorious wedding when the bride and bridegroom meet.

There will be cheering then, and we have produced the pomegranate juice to satisfy our Beloved Lord Jesus.

We have become a cheering wine to the Lord.

This is what we are becoming toward the Lord in a personal way and also corporately.

We will become a drink offering to the Lord for His satisfaction, and our loving relationship with the Lord both personally and corporately will issue in our becoming a spiced wine from the juice of our pomegranate to the Lord for His satisfaction.

May we all advance in our progressive experience with the Lord, in our loving fellowship with Christ, until we are one with Him to yearn for His coming.

May we all arrive at Rev. 22:17 where the Spirit and the bride say, Come!

Lord Jesus, take us on with You in our loving fellowship with Christ day by day until we are fully one with You. We want to grow in life, be filled with life, and love You to the uttermost. Give us the experiences we need for us to be transformed in life and be fully conformed to Your image. Oh Lord, we want to arrive at the stage where we are looking forward to our wedding and are yearning to be raptured. Hallelujah, there will be a glorious wedding when the bride and the Bridegroom meet! Amen, Lord, we pour ourselves on You and we want to give You to drink from the overflow of Your life in us for You to be satisfied. Come, Lord Jesus!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother James Lee in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 23, “The Song of Songs,” section 3, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Laboring on the All-inclusive Christ Typified by the Good land for the Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ, for the Reality and the Manifestation of the Kingdom, and for the Bride to make Herself Ready for the Lord’s Coming (2023 Winter Training), week 9, entitled, A Land of Pomegranates.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – Growing for building, the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense, a portion from, Life and Building as Portrayed in the Song of Songs, Chapter 8, by Witness Lee.
  – What is the Significance of the Good Land? More via, Hearing of Faith.
  – How Spacious is Your Christ? More via, Holding to Truth in Love.
  – Working together with the Lord, a portion from, The Song of Songs, Chapter 5, by Watchman Nee.
  – Concerning Allegorizing the Bible, a portion via, Shepherding Words.
  – Eat and Be Satisfied, via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – My Coming into the Church Life, studying at the FTTA, and Serving with the Students, via, Living to Him.
  – A life within the veil, a portion from, The Song of Songs, Chapter 4, by Watchman Nee.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – To the Lord we’re as a garden, / Out from which the spices flow; / All the precious fruits of Jesus / Freely in this garden grow. / Spikenard, saffron, henna flower, / Cinnamon and calamus, / Frankincense and myrrh and aloes; / O Lord, we would ever grow Thee thus. / O Lord, come into Thy garden, / Come, Beloved, come and eat / Freely for Thy satisfaction / Of Thy fruit, abundant, sweet. / “Yea,” Thou answerest, “I am eating / Honeycomb with honey pure.” / All sweet spices from Thy garden, / Doth Thy satisfaction, Lord, secure. (Hymns #1156 stanzas 1-2)
  – Paradise of pomegranates, / Pleasant fruits, and henna flowers, / Spikenard, saffron, myrrh, and aloes: / His enjoyment now—not ours. / He has come into His garden, / Gathered myrrh and spices there, / Eaten honeycomb and honey; / Wine and milk He’ll drink fore’er. (Hymns #1161 stanzas 3-4)
  – My Beloved, come on spices’ mountain; / How I yearn to see Thee face to face. / Drink, dear Lord, from my heart’s flowing fountain, / Till I rest fore’er in Thine embrace. / Not alone, O Lord, do I adore Thee, / But with all the saints as Thy dear Bride; / Quickly come, our love is waiting for Thee; / Jesus Lord, Thou wilt be satisfied. (Hymns #1159 stanza 4)