> John D. Morrison Bible and Church History Case #72 - Peace and Healing

Divine Delight

April 29, 2025

Divine Delight

Love has suffered much abuse as a word. The banality of its use and the stretching of its definition can lead us to easily pass over biblical pronouncements of God’s love for us with little more than a glance. To better appreciate the gospel, we would do well to reflect more deeply on God’s love for us in Christ.

The seventeenth-century English theologian John Owen (1616-1683) does us a great service in this regard. With his usual meticulous care he unpacks the nature of Christ’s love. He highlights that one of the key aspects of Christ’s love is that he delights in his people. ‘Delight,’ Owen submits, ‘is the flowing of love and joy—the rest and complacence of the mind in a suitable, desirable good enjoyed’.[1] Citing Isaiah 62:5, Owen proposes that Christ’s delight in his people is like a groom’s delight in his bride: ‘As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you’ (ESV). According to Owen, the delight a groom experiences on a wedding day ‘is the height of what an expression of delight can be carried unto’. Thus, he freely makes use of the Song of Solomon to describe Christ’s love, adding of our Saviour, ‘His heart is glad in us, without sorrow. And every day while we live is his wedding day’ (p118).

The delight that Christ has in his people is reflected in their delight in him. For believers, Christ himself has become ‘their joy, their crown, their rejoicing, their life, food, health, strength, desire, righteousness, salvation, blessedness. Without him they have nothing; in him they shall find all things.’ Owen returns to the Song of Solomon for how believers express their delight in Christ. The bride longs to be with her groom, and so, too, believers long to be with their Savior. The bride shows her delight in the groom ‘by her exceeding great care to keep his company and society’ (p124).

Owen understands that times come in the Christian life when one feels far from Christ and that delight in him seems a distant memory. He compares this to the bride in Song of Solomon searching for the groom and being unable to find him. Like the bride, believers must keep seeking Christ. When the Lord cannot seem to be found through personal devotions, Owen encourages believers to make ‘vigorous application to the ordinances of public worship’. He particularly identifies prayer, preaching, and the ‘administration of the seals’—that is, the sacraments or ordinances—as central to the pursuit of Christ (p130). Even when both personal devotion and public worship fail, Owen proposes, ‘the soul has nothing left but waiting silently and walking humbly’, and it is often in this waiting when one once again experiences the delight of Christ’s presence. Owen continues, ‘When all ways are past, the summer and harvest are gone without relief—the bed nor watchmen can assist—let us wait a little, and we shall see the salvation of God’ (p131).

May Owen help us to see that Christ delights in us, and that we, in turn, have all the more reason to delight in him.

John D. Morrison (PhD, Southern Seminary) serves as the pastor of Christ the King Church in Hickory, North Carolina where he lives with his wife Dori and their two children.

[1] John Owen, ‘Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost’. The Works of John Owen Volume II, ed. William Gould (Banner of Truth, 1965 [orig. 1850-53]), p118. Language and punctuation have been modernised.