June 2006   

Thy Love Thy love is better than wine He brought me into His banqueting house, His banner over me is love Many waters cannot quench love   These verses are taken from the Song of Solomon, in which the Bride speaks of her Beloved. One interpretation is that the Bride is the Church and the Beloved is Christ. It is lovely to read this book from this perspective, it speaks volumes concerning Christ’s love for the church, ‘Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it’.   In the opening verses the love of Christ is described as better than anything else this world has or could ever offer, we sometimes sing, ‘There’s no love like the love of Jesus’, it’s true, it has a quality all of it’s own. By any measure it is superior and is beyond our comprehension. John writes, ‘we love Him because He first loved us’, and Paul exclaims, ‘while we were yet sinners Christ died for us’.   Christs’s love has brought us into a place which we could never attain, we are under His shadow, we are in His banqueting house. Mephibosheth was sought out by David because of David’s love for Jonathan, he was brought from the far country and given a place at the king’s table. Christ’s love unites us, His banner flies above us, it is the ensign of the One who is victorious.   Christ’s love is eternal and all powerful, it has and will stand the test of time and eternity. At Calvary what He suffered for our sins, in our place, is referred to prophetically by David as ‘waves and billows’, yet He completed the work and could victoriously cry, ‘It is finished’.   Christ’s love for us will never be quenched, Paul could write with confidence that nothing ‘shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ and David concluded the 23rd Psalm with these words, ‘I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever’.   P. Roberts