RESTORING GRACE
RESTORING GRACE
“……….. The King hath brought me into His chambers; we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee” continues the bride in verse 4 of Chapter 1 of the Song of Songs.
Remember that the King of Kings has brought you, the wretched man into His chambers. He has brought you in, because He loves you eternally in spite of your spot or blemish, and not because of your worthiness or righteousness. You are now in His very presence – His chambers. You are now in the chamber of His holiness, and in the chamber of His righteousness. As He is Holy, you must be holy. As He is righteous, you must be righteous. He has restored your soul by bringing you back into His chambers. The has brought you to His healing chambers and has healed you or your family members. The moment you enter His chambers, you or your dear ones stand healed.
On being restored, the prodigal son was taken by his loving father into the banqueting house of music and dancing. Your restoration is but an occasion of merriment for other children of God. Let us, therefore, be glad and rejoice in Him rather than lament or nurture a guilty conscience over what happened in the past life. Let us remember His love more than the wine of sin, which had intoxicated us in the past life. It is now time for His pre-eminent love to pre-empt your thoughts of carnal nature of the old man.
“The upright love thee”. We must be honest and upright in our relationship with God. We must be upright in our relationship with men as well. Honesty counts more with God than efficiency or any other best virtue in a man. You may not be that much holy or righteous, as God wants you to. But God expects you to be honest with Him so as to admit before Him your unholiness or unrighteousness, and to be honest with fellow men so as to admit before them your folly. Don’t be a hypocrite before God. Tell Him what you are. A hypocrite never loves God but an upright man loves God, in spite of his shortcomings.
Now the bride proceeds to tell the daughters of Jerusalem in verse 5, “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon”.
“I am black,” confesses the bride overtly to her friends in a true spirit of meekness rather than boasting that she is fair (holy). She further lowers her own personality in the sight of her friends by comparing her with the black tents of Kedar and the black curtains of Solomon. Kedar was one of the sons of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar bore to Abraham (Gen.25: 12). The divine Author describes the tents of Kedar as black and the curtains of Solomon as black. The Shulamite thus makes a clean breast of her blackness in its worse state to her friends, in the first place, before confessing as such to her Beloved in the following verse. Oh, how necessary for us to take into confidence the other beloved children of God or to give them all the more importance! Nowadays we boast so much before the children of God about our own holiness in a hypocritical manner that we make God a liar. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us……… If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (I Jn.1:8, 10).Can you tell the daughters of Jerusalem, that is the children of God, that you are black? Of course, you can tell our Lord in your secret chamber that you are black.
While uttering the words “… but comely”, the bride means to say here that though she is very black, yet she is comely in the sight of her Beloved. Don’t be disheartened over your being black in the sight of men because you are comely in the sight of Jesus. Christ looks at your inner man, and not at your outer man.
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