there is a connection here between the gladness of salvation and the willingness of spirit – when we are happy in the Lord and with the Lord, we also have a willing spirit! A willing spirit depends upon the joy of salvation – when we have the joy restored to us, we are happy and willing to go along with the Lord and do what He desires. We obey the Lord because we love Him and we are filled with the joy of our salvation!
create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit / a right spirit within me
Once we confess our sins, God forgives us of our sins and He also forgets them! To forgive literally means “causing it to leave” / “sending away” (Matt. 12:31; Rom. 4:7). When God forgives us of our sins, He forgives us of our sins because of the Lord’s blood which covers us and He also causes them to depart from us!
enjoying and ministering Christ as the sin-dealing life to bear away the inquity of God’s people
It is only after we enjoy Christ as the sin-dealing life that we can also minister Him as such to others. In Leviticus the priests were to eat the sin offering in the holy place that they may make expiation for the people of Israel before Jehovah(Lev. 10:17). As we enjoy Christ as the sin-dealing life, we have an enlarged capacity to bear away the iniquity of God’s people – by learning to minister Christ to the dear saints who are in sin
enjoying God in the house of God: beholding His beauty, tasting His goodness, and being saturated!
Our God is enjoyable – and He created us with the need for enjoyment… In the house of God we know and testify that God Himself is so enjoyable and pleasant! Praise the Lord, our God is an enjoyable God in an enjoyable house! This means that there’s loveliness, pleasantness, and delightfulness here – to behold the beauty of the Lord is pleasant, delightful, and lovely!
our daily enjoyment of Christ leads us to the continual enjoyment of God in the house of God!
As individual Christians we can experience God and enjoy God only in a limited way, but when we grow and realise that spirituality is a Body matter and that the Triune God is mingled witht he church as the Body of Christ, we will see that our God is the God of the Body of Christ, the God of the House of God! God is not just the God IN the house of God, but the God OF the house of God, the God who makes Himself known as our enjoyment only when we are built into His house as His dwelling place.
praising Christ in the sweetness of His virtues and praising the church as the queen in her beauty
In Psalm 45 there is an extensive praising of Christ as the King and the church as the queen. The psalmist praises Christ in the sweetness of His virtues, especially in verse 8, “All Your garments smell of myrrh and aloes, of cassia; from palaces of ivory, harpstrings have made You glad“. What a poetic […]
since we have an affectionate love for the Lord Jesus, our tongue is like the pen of a ready writer
since we have an affectionate love for the Lord Jesus, our tongue is like the pen of a ready writer ready to write our love for Him and our praise to Him with our experience and enjoyment of Him according to all that He is! If we love the Lord Jesus, our tongue will be like the pen of a ready writer – we don’t need to “write a draft” of our love for Him, of the things we want to say concerning Him! If we have an affectionate love for the Lord Jesus, our heart is fully in love with Him, and we are ready to write our love our praise to Him…