Is your experience of Christ one of doctrine and cerebral belief, or is it one that encompasses all your affections? Many Calvinists err in being focused on the mind at the expense of the affections. God has called us to love him with heart, mind, soul, and strength. Our brethren in the Old Economy understood this as they longed for the day of full salvation. They longed to be kissed with the kisses of the Redeemer's mouth.
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, that is, be reconciled to me, and let me know that he is so; let me have the token of his favour." Thus the Old-Testament church desired Christ's manifesting himself in the flesh, to be no longer under the law as a schoolmaster, under a dispensation of bondage and terror, but to receive the communications of divine grace in the gospel, in which God is reconciling the world unto himself, binding up and healing what by the law was torn and smitten; as the mother kisses the child that she has chidden. "Let him no longer send to me, but come himself, no longer speak by angels and prophets, but let me have the word of his own mouth, those gracious words (Luke iv. 22), which will be to me as the kisses of the mouth, sure tokens of reconciliation, as Esau's kissing Jacob was." All gospel duty is summed up in our kissing the Son (Ps. ii. 12); so all gospel-grace is summed up in his kissing us, as the father of the prodigal kissed him when he returned a penitent. It is a kiss of peace." -Matthew Henry, Canticles
2 comments:
Y'know, we can gripe all we want about the word "kiss", but shaking hands with Christ just doesn't have the same effect. If nothing else, it's a poor literary device.
I'm reliably informed that the reason M.H. looked so fat was because of an illness.
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