8. The Beloved Withdraws
8
The Beloved Withdraws1
I rose up to open to my beloved…but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone.
—Song of Solomon 5:5–6
There are two things here for us to consider that prove how wounding sins are against the love of Christ.
1. “My beloved hath withdrawn himself.” The text is, “And my beloved had turned about.” Because Christ is unwilling to remove Himself and wholly go away, He only turned aside. This intimates that Christ does not take a direct journey to go away and leave His own children. He goes aside from the door of the soul only a little to testify He would gladly, with His soul, come in. What ingratitude is it to shut Him away violently?
2. “My soul failed.” The old version is, “My soul melted at His speaking.” My soul passed over, or went away. To remember His ravishing words broke my life and made me die: that is, I remembered a world of love in Him when He knocked, saying, “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove.” To sin against so great a bond as grace must be the sin of sins and among the highest sins, as is clear in those that sin against the Holy Ghost. Then it must be impossible to give grace anything. We can only pay our debts to grace; we cannot give the debt of grace to grace in the whole sum.
1. Christ Dying, 18–19.