When the bride in the Song of Solomon wished to experience afresh the love of her beloved, she exclaimed, 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine' (1:2). No words could more perfectly express the longings of the Christian's soul for new and refreshing enjoyment of the love of Christ. Every true believer echoes the sentiment that the love of Jesus is 'better than wine'. As wine fills the mouth with the taste of sweetness, so does Christ fill the heart of the child of God. As wine refreshes and gladdens the spirit of man, so does a taste of Christ's love elevate and exhilarate the Christian's soul. As wine banishes care and brings ease to the heart and mirth to the lips, so does the love of Jesus lift the believer's mind above earthly care and stir within him strong emotions of delight in God. But, whereas wine may cheer man only for a time and may then leave him weakened and worsened by intoxication, the love of Christ is a never-failing tonic which puts iron into the soul and only makes a man 'beside himself' (2 Corinthians 5:13) in a way that honours God.

This theme of a believer's enjoyment of Christ's love is a frequent one in the Holy Scriptures and yet, strangely, it is one which we may so easily overlook. At least, we may so far overlook it as to take only a theoretical interest in it as a mere item of theology for which we make a space in our minds but of which we have only a scanty experience in our hearts. But for the Christian to treat the love of Christ as a mere item on the agenda of his theology is to run the risk of offending the Lord and starving his own soul of vital spiritual nourishment. There are, therefore, compelling reasons why every Christian should pause frequently in life and ask himself if, amidst all the duties of his calling, he has a felt enjoyment of the love of Christ in his heart or whether, amid the welter of his conflicts and strivings, he ought honestly to confess to himself and to the Lord that he has left his 'first love' (Revelation 2:4).

A Matter of Priorities⤒🔗

The Christian's life is seldom lived out in the rarified atmosphere of an ivory tower. The pressures of a sinful world bear in upon us almost ceaselessly day and night. Our own hearts are a tinder-box of latent mischief and corruption. Satan untiringly plies his trade of seduction, casting into our minds his 'fiery darts' (Ephesians 6:16) in order to kindle and keep burning the flammable material within us and so to roast us pitilessly in the fires of our own depravity, if he can. Almost all a Christian sees is a burden and a trial to him. The state of society is a grief to his mind; the present earthly condition of the Church is a fruitful source of care to him; the whole world and all within it is a daily reminder to him that 'all things are full of labour; man cannot utter it' (Ecclesiastes 1:8) and that 'all is vanity and vexation of spirit' (v. 14). Clearly, we live in a world where 'that which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting (or lacking) cannot be numbered' (v. 15).

Nothing we do (and we ought to do everything in our power) can fully negate the effects of sin or wholly reverse the sentence of 'vanity' pronounced by God upon the entire world (Romans 8:20). Exert ourselves as we may in church and state to lift things back to God, pray and labour as we can to have the Kingdom of Christ advanced, we know as a matter of principle that we shall never silence the inward groanings within us (v. 23) for a rejuvenated universe till the Lord Himself shall come the second time.

In the light of these facts, both of Scripture and of experience, we are apt on occasion, as Christians, to become almost swallowed up with conflicts, activities and burdensome cares. Certainly, there is no avoiding these inconveniences if we mean to be faithful to Christ. It would never be right for us to withdraw from the sphere of God's calling or to throw down our arms and flee from the field of battle. But, on the other hand, we must not allow ourselves to be pressurised by circumstances in such a way that we lose sight of our priorities.

There is no priority higher in the believer's life than to delight himself in the love of Christ. When our circumstances have succeeded in crowding out a sense of the love which Christ bears towards us, then we have allowed ourselves to be pressurised into a false position where we are in danger. This lesson comes home to us from many passages of Scripture. Psalm 73 is a notable instance. Asaph allowed his circumstances and his thoughts to lead him away from his priorities for a time. That is the great theme of this famous and most helpful Psalm. So long as he forgot the love of God towards believers, Asaph was in danger of being bitter, cynical and envious of the wicked. But as soon as he came to himself and remembered the love which God bears to his own people and to them only, he ceased to 'slip' (v. 2) and was able to go on his way with his triumphant song:

Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.  My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.Psalm 73:25-26

The very same emphasis on the love of Christ is to be found in the Apostle Paul also. What minister — indeed, what Christian — was ever in greater danger of being engulfed with work and care than Paul? Whoever in Christian history could record a longer catalogue than Paul of imprisonments, labours, journeyings, sufferings or tribulation? And yet there is always in Paul's writings a warm consciousness of the love of Christ.

The Epistles of Paul are a standing reminder to the people of God that we must never lose our sense of priorities. In the midst of all the fierce invective and the unanswerable theologising of his letter to the Galatians, Paul finds space to refer to 'the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me' (2:20), is at pains to remind us that 'the fruit of the Spirit is love' (5:22) and concludes with the reminder that the marks in his body are 'the marks of the Lord Jesus' (6:17).

Similarly, in writing to the Ephesians as 'the prisoner of the Lord' (4:1) he announces to his readers that the highest aspiration of his soul for them is that they might 'be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge' (3:18-19). To the Philippians, again writing from prison, he is at pains early in his letter to state that for him 'to live is Christ' (1:21); and before he ends his diatribe against 'dogs ... evil workers ... (and) the concision' (3:2), he cannot hide from his readers his own personal ambition, which is to attain 'the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus' (3:14).

This is the spirit of Paul in all his epistles and, in that he bids us to take himself as our model (1 Corinthians 11:1; Philippians 3:17), it is our clear duty to maintain and preserve the same priority as he had in the Christian life.

The Place of Sanctified Emotions←⤒🔗

There is another reason why every Christian needs to dwell long and often on the theme of Christ's love and to drink deeply from that 'cup of salvation' (Psalm 116:13). It is because we need to enjoy the sanctified and sanctifying emotions which an experience of the love of Christ gives to us.

It is undeniably true that a very great deal that is worthless has been said and written over the centuries of the Church's history about experience. But we would be foolish to ignore entirely the place of emotion in the Christian life. There is such a thing as 'tasting that the Lord is gracious' (1 Peter 2:3) and tasting is more than notion. Emotions of delight, peace, comfort and reassurance are as surely and certainly a part of authentic Christian experience as the emotions of fear and anguish generally are of the unregenerate, yet awakened, sinner.

Perhaps, as a generation of Christians, we fall short in this point more than most others, that we are often emotionally stunted, even when our minds are well furnished with divinity. But if we would grow in spiritual profundity we would do well to covet more those emotions which the New Testament presents to us as normal and healthful to the believer: 'joy in the Holy Ghost' (Romans 14:17), 'the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost' (Romans 5:5), 'the peace of God, which passeth all understanding' (Philippians 4:7), 'joy unspeakable and full of glory' (1 Peter 1:8), and whatsoever else are represented to us in God's Word as Spirit-given emotions. Whilst we rightly recoil from sentimentality and hollow expressions of Christian emotion, we must beware not to react so strongly that we become afraid of what is genuine and even inevitable.

Genuine emotion in the Christian is sometimes the fruit of his own meditation on the theology which he believes. Sometimes too it is the result of something still more profound and mysterious, the action of God's Spirit upon our spirit (Romans 8:15, 16, 23, 26; 2 Corinthians 5:4, 5; Romans 5:5; 14:17).

It is all too possible for us to read the Puritans and not to notice that they were a race of Christians who not only thought clearly about, but also felt strongly, the truths of the gospel. Their 'day-books’, diaries and other autobiographical remains reveal to us a people who were deeply exercised in soul. They were no strangers to sighs, tears, groans, spiritual elevation, heavenly foretastes and periodic ecstasies. If we had nothing to go by but only Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress we should have evidence enough to make good our case that they were a deeply feeling, deeply exercised generation of believers who would have found a cerebral, unfeeling Christianity unrecognisable.

When all due allowance is made for the difference between one Christian's temperament and another's, we must surely come back to this, that the more we appreciate the love of Christ towards us, the more comfort we shall have along the way to glory. Christ has loved us 'with an everlasting love' (Jeremiah 31:3). He has in love given Himself for us to be 'a propitiation for our sins' (1 John 4:10). Very soon we shall see Him in His glory and enjoy His love eternally. It is therefore only fitting that here and now we should seek from God a frequent enjoyment of that love. He who experiences it will both renew his strength and reinvigorate his soul. In so doing, he will find that the love of Jesus is 'better than wine'.