Communion Broken and Restored

Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. HEBREWS 2:1

If the first section of Union and Communion describes the soul finding rest in Christ, the second and fourth describe it losing that rest. Taylor was too honest to write a book in which the bride, once satisfied, never falters. Most of us, he says, know how easily communion with Christ may be broken. The failure is never on His side.

He traces two different falls. The first is a drift back into the world. The second, more subtle and more dangerous, is a slide into spiritual self-satisfaction. Between them they explain how Christians who love their Lord find themselves, without quite knowing how, far from Him.

Drifting

In the second section the bride has slipped back into worldliness. Taylor does not suggest she has stopped loving her Lord. She loves Him truly, though not wholly. Perhaps, he suggests, the very restfulness of her new joy made her feel too secure. Perhaps she thought she might safely go a little way back into her old life and win her friends to follow Christ. Perhaps she did not think at all, and simply forgot that the current of this world was against her.

It is not necessary, he says, “when the current is against us, to turn the boat’s head down the stream in order to drift.” Nobody decides to backslide. They simply stop rowing.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 JOHN 2:15

“We have to take our choice: we cannot enjoy both the world and Christ.” The Bridegroom comes leaping over the hills, looks in through the lattice, and calls to her: Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. But He cannot come where she is. And she, instead of running out to Him, comforts herself with the thought that she is His and He is hers, and that she can find Him later. Until the day be cool, she says, turn, my beloved. And He goes.

The little foxes

In the middle of that section Taylor dwells on the little foxes. The enemies may be small, he says, but the damage great. A tiny spray of blossom is easily spoiled, and with it the fruitfulness of a whole branch.

Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes. SONG OF SOLOMON 2:15

Then he names them: “Little compromises with the world; disobedience to the still small voice in little things; little indulgences of the flesh to the neglect of duty; little strokes of policy; doing evil in little things that good may come.” There is nothing dramatic on the list. That is the point.

The bride learns the hard way. The day cools and the shadows flee, but He does not return. At night she seeks Him and cannot find Him. Only when she rises, goes out into the dark, and begins to confess her Lord openly does she find Him again. The section closes with her restored, and the Bridegroom once more charging the daughters of Jerusalem not to disturb her.

Sleeping with the door barred

The fourth section is different, and in some ways more searching. This time the bride has not gone back to the world. She is still, in Taylor’s phrase, a garden shut up so far as the world is concerned. Her failure is slothful self-indulgence. Perhaps, he suggests, it began with spiritual pride in what grace had enabled her to do, or with satisfaction in the blessing rather than in the Blesser.

I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night. SONG OF SOLOMON 5:2

Why is His head wet with dew? Because He has been out all night on the mountains seeking the lost sheep. And will she, who so recently went with Him through lions’ dens, now leave Him to seek the wandering alone? Her answer is pitiful: she has taken off her coat, she has washed her feet; how can she get up?

How sadly possible it is, he says, “to take delight in conferences and conventions, to feast on all the good things that are brought before us, and yet to be unprepared to go out from them to self-denying efforts to rescue the perishing.” It is possible to delight in the rest of faith and forget to fight the good fight of faith. That, he thought, was the peculiar danger of comfortable, well-taught Christians.

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. REVELATION 3:20

When at last she rises, her hands drip with myrrh upon the handles of the bolt, and He is gone. This time the search is harder. The watchmen strike her and take away her veil. Restoration, Taylor says, is more difficult after a second fall, and tardy obedience is no small matter.

The road back

Yet this is not a gloomy book. In both sections the bride is restored, and in both Taylor lingers over the manner of it. When, wounded and searching, she is asked what her beloved is more than any other, she forgets herself and pours out a description of His beauty: He is the chiefest among ten thousand; yea, he is altogether lovely. And no sooner has she confessed that she is His than He appears, and, in Taylor’s words, “upbraideth not.” There is no scolding, only tenderness.

I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him. HOSEA 14:4

Taylor also notices a change in the bride’s words over the course of the book. Early on she says, My beloved is mine, and I am his: her claim comes first. After her second restoration she says, I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine: His claim comes first. Near the end she says only, I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me. Her claim has disappeared into His. That, for Taylor, is the path of growth: from what Christ is to me, to what I am to Christ.

Some of the details Taylor draws from the Song are more his own than the poet’s, and a reader need not follow them all. But the pattern he describes is true to Scripture and to experience. Communion is broken by drift and by self-satisfaction. It is restored by rising, seeking and confessing. And the One we have grieved does not reproach us when we come back.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask where in your life you have simply stopped rowing, and the current has been carrying you.

2. Write down your own little foxes, the small compromises and delays you have excused. Deal with one today.

3. Consider whether you enjoy good teaching more than you obey it. Choose one self-denying act of service this week.

4. If you have lost your sense of Christ’s nearness, do what the bride did: rise, seek Him, and confess Him openly.

5. Trace your own growth: is it moving from what Christ is to you towards what you are to Him?

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You have stood at my door and knocked, and I have been too comfortable to rise. Forgive me.

Show me the little foxes that are spoiling the vine, the small compromises I have called harmless, and give me grace to deal with them.

Keep me from drifting with the current of this world, and from resting in blessings while You are out on the mountains seeking the lost.

When I wander, bring me back; and when I return, let me find You as You have always been, without reproach and full of love. Amen.