MERRY Merry! By Parris

Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God – Is. 62:3

To realize who we are in Christ will forever remain to be an understatement! This truth will forever set us free! We learn to be filled by participating in God’s own good, his beauty and his joy. The satisfaction of the Christian involves a constant sampling of God’s goodness, drinking of his glory! The church is constantly being supplied with joy and happiness not in the world’s bill of goods but in Christ himself…. This becomes our quest!

Jonathan Edwards said, “The multitude of drops, from which the light of the sun is so beautifully reflected, signify the same with the multitude of the drops of dew, that reflect the light of the sun in a morning, spoken of, Psalms 110:3….

They are all God’s jewels, and as they are all in heaven, each one by its reflection a little star, and so do more fitly represent the saints than the drops of the dew. These drops are all from heaven, as the saints are born from above, they are all from the dissolving cloud. So the saints are the children of Christ, they receive their new nature from him, and by his death, they are from the womb of the cloud, the church. These drops receive and reflect the light of the sun just breaking forth, and shining out of the cloud that had been till now darkened, and hid, and covered with thick clouds. These saints are his jewels, that are the spoils of his enemies, that were once his enemies possession, but that he has redeemed out of their hands. These jewels are the diverse collection of believers whom Christ rescued from “his enemies possession”. The “ornament of the Savior”, His prized belonging, the church is an entity unlike any other on the earth. No transcending organization or institution, the church is the mystical body of Jesus Christ.”

What an honor to know we are his precious jewels! None of us can quite “see” the full mystical body of Jesus-which is the church. The relationship between Christ and the church is a reciprocal one, each party receiving joy in an unending cycle. Gill said, “the bodies of the saints will be like to Christ’s glorious body, and will shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father; and in their souls they will be completely conformed to the image of Christ, and enjoy uninterrupted communion with him, and have perfect knowledge of him; they will be always in his presence, and he will take unspeakable delight and complacency in them”.Christ becomes our sun and he is that light that shines over all the creation. He sees us as his jewels reflecting in the light of his son!