My Beloved is Mine!

There are few books I have read which are as poetic, expansive, and thrilling as His Part and Ours by J. Sidlow Baxter.  To meet a man who knows of God is common:  to peer into the heart of a man who knows God is a rare privilege.  Here is a passage which should cause the heart of every follower of Christ to be enraptured with appreciation and love for our Savior:

"My Beloved is mine, and I am His" - this is a complete union.  The bridegroom and the bride have given themselves fully to each other.  Christ has given Himself fully to His mystic bride.  Christ is mine in all His offices and capacities - in His incarnation, in His teaching, in His redeeming, in His resurrection life, in His exaltation, in His second advent and the glory of His coming reign, yea, and in all the blessedness of His eternal glory!  He is altogether mine.  O the wonder of it!  My heart, what of thy present response to all this?  Truly thou art Christ's by unmistakable bonds; but hast thou completed thy part by giving thyself up entirely to Him here and now?

"My beloved is mine, and I am His" - this is a complex union.  Shalamith's beloved is Israel's sovereign.  To be His bride is to sustain a variety of relationships.  So is it with the believer and his royal Lord.  It takes a complexity of metaphors to express such a unique union.  Christ is the head and we are the body - for it is a living union.  Christ is the bridegroom and we are the bride - for it is a loving union.  Christ is the foundation and we are the building - for it is a lasting union.  Christ is the vine and we are the branches - for it is a fruitful union.  Christ is the Firstborn and we are His brethren - for it is a union of joint-heirship.  But we must forbear.  There is no more wonderful study in Scripture than that of our complex union with the Son of God.

"My Beloved is mine" - that word "mine," does it not speak the fact that Jesus belongs to His people individually?  He is not just ours.  He is mine.  I may have Him as though there were none other in heaven or on earth beside me.  Again, when the bride says, "My Beloved is mine," is she not speaking out of a real experience of what she affirms?  And cannot I, too, say that Jesus is mine by conscious, personal experience, by the indwelling of His Spirit within my heart?  O how much more remains to be said about this exclamation of Solomon's typical bride which we cannot stay to say here!  We cannot resist a further glance at that possessive pronoun, however - "My Beloved."  Like a bee which comes back again and again to the same flower, we find our eyes turning back again and again to that word.  O the unutterable sense of blessedness which fills the heart when we take that word upon our lips!  "MY Beloved is MINE" - what a world in a word!"  - quoted from His Part and Ours, Baxter, page 147-148