AP

Song of Songs 4:15-16  “You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon.”  “Awake, north wind, and come, south wind!  Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere.  Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.” 

This book of the Scriptures is traditionally understood to be a beautiful ‘love song’ interchange between the LORD and his Chosen People, Israel, foreshadowing as it does the intimate relationship between the Bridegroom, Christ, and his Bride, the Church.  Up to these last two verses, the rest of Chapter 4 is clearly Christ who is speaking to his Church in very glowing personal terms about her rapturous beauty.  The words ‘You are’ at the beginning of verse 15 do not occur in the Hebrew text and are added into the NIV on the assumption that they conclude the speech of the ‘Lover’ [Christ], with the response of the ‘Beloved’ [the Church] beginning with “Awake …”.  It would be equally valid to assume the inserted words should be ‘I am’ (which possibility is included as a footnote in the NIV), with the Church declaring that she herself is ‘a garden fountain …’.

Whichever way it is interpreted, the point is clear: Whatever beauty the Church has, it does not have of its own accord, but only as it derives its beauty from Christ himself.  When Paul declares in Ephesians 5:25-27, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless”, he makes this truth very clear.  Because of Christ’s perfect sacrifice of himself for us on the cross, and because of his own inherent beauty that is proven by his perfect obedience to the Father’s will, we can be ‘cleansed’ and ‘radiant’, ‘without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless’, clothed in his righteousness.

This is all his work, all of grace alone.  And the only proper response to such overwhelming love and affection must be our whole-hearted desire and longing that when he comes ‘into his garden’ he will be able to ‘taste its choice fruits’.  What evidence do we see of the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ in our daily lives, and in our collective life as part of his Church? (Galatians 5:22-23).  Is the ‘fragrance’ of this fruit ‘spreading abroad’ to others in our family, in our workplace, in our various places of social interaction?

– Bruce Christian