THE BEST BELOVED – Charles Spurgeon
THE BEST BELOVED
“Yes, He is altogether lovely.” (Song of Solomon 5:16)
No words can ever express the gratitude we owe to Him who loved us even when we were dead in trespasses and sins. The love of Jesus is unutterably precious and worthy of daily praise. No songs can ever fitly celebrate the triumphs of that salvation which He worked single-handedly on our behalf. The work of Jesus is glorious beyond comparison, and all the harps of angels fall short of its worthy honor. Yet I do believe, and my heart prompts me to say so, that the highest praise of every ransomed soul and of the entire Christian church should be offered to the blessed person of Jesus Christ, our adorable Lord.
The love of His heart is excelled by the heart which gave forth that love, and the wonders of His hand are outdone by the hand itself, which worked those godlike miracles of grace. We ought to bless Him for what He has done for us as Mediator in the place of humble service under the law, for what He suffered for us as Substitute on the altar of sacrifice before the foundation of the world, and for what He is doing for us as Advocate in the place of highest honor at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
But still, the best thing about Christ is Christ Himself. We prize Him, but we worship Him! His gifts are valued, but He Himself is adored. While we contemplate, with mingled feelings of awe, admiration, and thankfulness, His atonement, His resurrection, His glory in heaven, and His second coming, still it is Christ Himself, stupendous in His dignity as the Son of God, and superbly beautiful as the Son of man, who sheds an incomparable charm on all those wonderful achievements, wherein His might and His merit, His goodness and His grace appear so conspicuous.
For Him let our choicest spices be reserved, and to Him let our sweetest anthems be raised. Our choicest ointment must be poured upon His head, and for Him alone, our most costly alabaster boxes must be broken. “He is altogether lovely.”
Not only is His teaching attractive, His doctrine persuasive, His life irreproachable, His character enchanting, and His work a self-denying labor for the common good of all His people, but He Himself is altogether lovely. I suppose at first we shall always begin to love Him because He first loved us, and even to the last, His love to us will always be the strongest motive of our affection towards Him. Still, there ought to be added to this another reason, less connected with ourselves, and more entirely arising out of His own superlative excellence. We ought to love Him because He is lovely and deserves to be loved.
The time should come, and with some of us, it has come, when we can heartily say, “We love Him because we cannot help it, for His all-conquering loveliness has quite ravished our hearts.” Surely it is but an unripe fruit to love Him merely for the benefits which we have received at His hands. It is a fruit of grace, but it is not of the ripest flavor. At least, there are other fruits, both new and old, which we have laid up for You, O our Beloved, and some of them have a daintier taste. There is a sweet and mellow fruit which can only be brought forth by the summer sun of fellowship—love because of the Redeemer’s intrinsic goodness and personal sweetness.
Oh that we might love our Lord for His own sake! Love Him because He is so supremely beautiful that a glimpse of Him has won our hearts and made Him dearer to our eyes than light. Oh that all true and faithful disciples of our beloved Lord would press forward towards that state of affection and never rest till they reach it! If any of you have not reached it, you need not therefore doubt your own safety, for whatever the reason why you love Jesus, if you love Him at all, it is a sure pledge and token that He loves you, and that you are saved in Him with an everlasting salvation.
Still, covet earnestly the best gifts, and rise to the highest degree of devotion. Love as the purest of the saints have loved. Love as John the apostle loved, for your Lord exceeds all the loving homage you can pay to Him. Love His person, love Himself, for He is better than all that He has done or given. And as from Himself all blessings flow, so back to Himself should all love return.
Our text tells us that Christ is altogether lovely. What a wealth of thought and feeling is contained in that exclamation! I am embarrassed to know how to preach on such a subject and half inclined to wish it had not been laid so much upon my heart. What, I pray you, what is loveliness? To discern it is one thing, but it is quite another thing to describe it. There is not one among us who does not know how to appreciate beauty and be enamored by its attractions. But how many here could tell us what it is?
Stand up, my brother, and define it. Perhaps while you were sitting down, you thought you could easily tell the tale, but now you are on your feet you find that it is not quite so easy to clothe in words the thoughts which floated through your brain. What is beauty? Cold-blooded word-mongers answer, “fitness.” And certainly, there is fitness in all loveliness. But do not tell me that beauty is mere fitness, for I have seen a world of fitness in this world which, nevertheless, seemed to me to be inexpressibly ugly and unlovable.
A wise man tells me that beauty is proportion. But neither is this a full description by many a league. No doubt it is desirable that the features should be well balanced, the eyes should be fitly set, no one feature should be exaggerated and none should be dwarfed. “In nature, what affects our hearts, Is not the exactness of peculiar parts; ‘Tis not a lip nor eye we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all.”
Harmony is beauty. Yet I have seen the chiseled marble, fashioned with skillful art into a near-perfect form, which did not, could not, impress me with a sense of loveliness. There stands in one of the halls of the Vatican a statue of Antinous. Every feature in that statue is perfect in itself and in complete harmony with all the rest. You could not find the slightest fault with eye or nose or mouth. It is indeed as much the ideal of male beauty as the Venus is of female charms, yet no one could ever have been enchanted with the statue or have felt affection for the form it represents. There is no expression whatever in the features.
Everything is so adjusted and proportioned that you need a divergence to relieve you. The materialism is so carefully measured out that there needs a stir, a break in the harmony, to give it at least some semblance of a soul. Beauty, then, consists not in mere harmony, nor in balancing the features. Loveliness surely is attractiveness. Yes, but that is another way of saying you do not know what it is. It is something that attracts you and compels you to exclaim, “Nothing under heaven does allure so strongly.” We feel its power; we become its slaves; but we cannot write with the pen of cold steel, nor could we write even with a pen of lightning, a description of what it is.
How, then, can I—enamored, entranced, enraptured as I am with Him whom my soul loves—how can I speak of Him? He is altogether lovely. Where shall I find words, terms, expressions that shall fitly set Him forth? Unless the Eternal Spirit shall raise me up out of myself, I must forever be incapable of setting forth the Well-beloved.
Besides, were I baffled by nothing else, there is this: that the beauty of Christ is mysterious. It surpasses all the comeliness of human form. He may have had great beauty according to the flesh. That I cannot tell, but I should imagine that such a perfect soul as His must have inhabited a perfectly molded body. Never yet did you or I gaze with satisfaction upon the work of any painter who has tried to picture our Lord Jesus Christ. We have not blamed the great masters, but we have felt that the effort surpassed their powers. How could they photograph the sun? The loftiest conceptions of great artists in this case fall far short of the mark.
The canvas glows in vain when the brightness of the Father’s glory is the subject. Art sits at her easel and produces diligently many a draft of the sacred features, but they are all failures and they must be. Who shall ever depict Immanuel, God-with-us? I suppose that, by and by, when our Lord had entered upon His active life and encountered its struggles, His youthful beauty was marred with lines of sadness and sorrow. Still, His courage so overshadowed His cares, the mercy He showed so surpassed the misery He shared, and the grace He dispensed so exceeded the griefs that He carried, that a halo of real glory must always have shone around His brow.
His countenance must still have been lovely even when surrounded with the clouds of care and grief. How can we describe even the marred visage? It is a great mystery, but a sure fact that in our Lord’s marred countenance His beauty is best seen. Anguish gave Him a loveliness which otherwise He had not reached. His passion put the finishing touches upon His unrivaled loveliness.
But, brethren, I am not about to speak of Christ’s loveliness after the flesh, for we now, after the flesh, know Him no more. It is His moral and spiritual beauty, of which the spouse in the song most sweetly says, “Yes, He is altogether lovely.” The loveliness which the eye dotes on is mere varnish when compared with that which dwells in virtue and holiness. The worm will devour the loveliness of skin and flesh, but a lovely character will endure forever.
I. THIS IS RARE PRAISE. Let that be our first head. This is rare praise. What if I say it is unique? For of no other being could it be said, “Yes, he is altogether lovely.” It means, first, that all that is in Him is lovely, perfectly lovely. There is no point in our Lord Jesus that you could improve. To paint the rose were to spoil its ruddy hue. To tint the lily, for He is lily as well as rose, were to mar its whiteness.
Each virtue in our Lord is there in a state of absolute perfection; it could not be more fully developed. If you were able to conceive of each virtue at its ripest stage, it would be found in Him. In the matter of transparent ingenuousness and sterling honesty, did ever man speak or act so truthfully as He? Ask, on the other hand, for sympathizing tenderness and love, was ever any as gentle as Jesus?
Do you want reverence to God? How He bows before the Father. Do you want boldness before men? How He faces the Pharisees. You could not better anything which you find in Jesus. Wherever you shall cast your eyes, they may rest with satisfaction, for the best of the best of the best is to be seen in Him. He is altogether lovely at every separate point.
So that the spouse, when she began with His head, descended to His feet and then, lifting her eyes upward again on a return voyage of delight, she looked into His countenance and summed up all that she had seen in this one sentence, “He is altogether lovely.” This is rare praise.
II. IT IS PERPETUAL PRAISE. You may say of Christ whenever you look at Him, “Yes, He is altogether lovely.” He always was so. As God over all, He is blessed forever, Amen. When, in addition to His godhead, He assumed our mortal clay, was He not inimitably lovely then? The baby in Bethlehem was the most beautiful sight that ever the world beheld. No fairer flower ever bloomed in the garden of creation than the mind of that youth of Nazareth gradually unfolding.
As He “grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon Him,” all the while He lived on earth, what moral perfections, what noble qualities, what spiritual charms were about His sacred person! His life among men is a succession of charming pictures. And He was lovely in His bitter passion, when, as the thick darkness overshadowed His soul, He prayed, in an agony of desire, “Not My will, but Yours, be done.”
III. IT IS TOTALLY INSUFFICIENT PRAISE. Do you say that He is altogether lovely? It is not enough. It is not a thousandth part enough. No tongue of man or tongue of angel can ever set forth His unutterable beauties. “Oh,” you say, “but it is a great word, though short, very full of meaning though soon spoken—‘altogether lovely.’” I tell you it is a poor word. It is a word of despair.
It is a word which the spouse uttered, because she had been trying to describe her Lord and she could not do it, and so she put this down in very desperation, as much as to say, “There, the task is too great for me. I will end it. This is all I can say. ‘Yes, He is altogether lovely.’”
IV. VERY SUGGESTIVE PRAISE. If Christ is altogether lovely, it suggests a question: Suppose I never saw His loveliness. Suppose that in this house there should be souls that never saw anything in Christ to make them love Him? If you were to go to some remote island where beauty consisted in having one eye and a twisted mouth, and a sea-green complexion, you would say, “Those people are strange beings.” Such are the people of this world.
Spiritual beauty is not appreciated by them. This world appreciates the man who makes money, however reckless he may be of the welfare of others while scheming to heap up riches for himself. As for the man who slays his fellow creatures by thousands, they mount him on a bronze horse, put him on an arch, or they pile up a column, and set him as near heaven as they can. He slew his thousands. He died blood-red, he was an emperor, a tyrant, a conqueror, and the world feels his power and pays its homage.
As for this Jesus, He only gave His life for men. He was only pure and perfect, the mirror of selfless love. The vain world cannot see in Him a virtue to admire. It is a blind world, a fool world, a world that lies in the wicked one.
Not to discern the beauties of Jesus is an evidence of terrible depravity. Have you, my dear friend, to frankly confess that you were never enamored of Him who was holy, harmless, and undefiled and went about doing good? Then let this come home to you—that the question is not as to whether Christ is lovely or not, the mistake is here—that you have not a spiritually enlightened eye, a fine moral perception, nor even a well-regulated conscience, or you would see His loveliness at once. You are dark and blind. God help you to feel this.
Do you not love Christ? Then let me ask you why you do not. There was never a man yet, that knew Christ that could give a reason for not loving Him, neither is there such a reason to be discovered. He is altogether lovely. In nothing is He unlovable.
Oh, I wish that the good Spirit of God would whisper in your heart, and incline you to say, “I will see about this Christ. I will read of Him. I will look at the four portraits of Him painted by the evangelists, and if He is indeed thus lovely, no doubt He will win my heart as He appears to have won the hearts of others.”
I pray He may. But do not, I pray you, continue to deny Christ your love. It is all you can give Him. It is a poor thing, but He values it. He would sooner have your heart than all the gold in Europe. He would sooner have the heart of a poor servant girl or of a poor humble laborer upon the soil than the Queen’s diadem. He loves love. Love is His gem—His jewel. He delights to win it, and if He is indeed, altogether lovely, let Him have it.
You have known people, I dare say, whom you could not help loving. They never had to say to you “Love me,” for you were captivated at once by the very sight of them. In like manner many and many have only received one beam of light from the Holy Spirit and have thereby seen who Jesus was, and they have at once said of Him, “You have ravished my heart with one look of Your eyes,” and so it has been that all their life they have loved their Lord.
Now, the praise is suggestive still further. “Is Christ altogether lovely? Then do I love Him? As a child of God, do I love Him as much as I ought? I do love Him. Yes, blessed be His name, I do love Him. But what a poor, cold, chill love it is. How few are the sacrifices I make for Him. How few are the offerings that I present to Him. How little is the fellowship that I maintain with Him.”
Brother, sister, is there a rival in your heart? Do you allow anyone to come in between you and the “altogether Lovely”? If so, chase the intruder out. Christ must have all your heart, and let me tell you, the more we love Him, the more bliss we shall have. A soul that is altogether given up to the love of Christ lives above care and sorrow. It has care and sorrow, but the love of Christ kills all the bitterness by its inexpressible sweetness.
I cannot tell you how near a man may live to heaven, but I am persuaded that a very large proportion of the bliss of heaven may be enjoyed before we go there. There is one conduit pipe through which heavenly joy will flow, and if you draw from it, you may have as much as you will. “Abide in Me,” says Christ. And if you abide in His love, you shall have His joy fulfilled in yourselves that your joy may be full. You will have more capacious vessels in heaven, but even now the little vessel that you have can be filled up to the brim by knowing the inexpressible loveliness of Jesus and surrendering your hearts to it.
Oh that I could rise to something better than myself. I often feel like a chick in the egg. I am pecking my way out and I cannot get clear of my prison. Gladly would I chip the shell, come forth to freedom, develop wings and soar heavenward, singing on the way. Would God that were our portion. If anything can help us get out of the shell, and to begin to rise and sing, it must be a full and clear perception that Jesus is altogether lovely. Come, let us be married to Him afresh tonight. Come, believing hearts, yield again to His charms. Again surrender yourselves, to the supremacy of His affection. Let us have the love of our espousals renewed.
As you come to His table, think of the lips of Christ, of which the spouse had been speaking before she uttered my text—“His mouth is most sweet.” There are three things about Christ’s mouth that are very sweet. The first is His Word—you have heard that. The second is His breath. Come, Holy Spirit, make Your people feel that. And the third is His kiss. May every believing soul have that sweet token of His eternal love.
Forgive my ramblings. May God bless to all His people the word that has been spoken. May some that never knew my Master ask to know Him tonight. Go home and seek Him. Read the word to find Him. Cry to Him in prayer and He will be found of you. He is so lovely that I should not live without loving Him, and I shall deeply regret it if any one of you shall spend another 24 hours without having had a sight of His divine face by faith.
Charles Spurgeon