Song of Solomon 7:6

"How fair and how pleasant you are, O love, for delights!" This, we have no doubt, is the Bridegroom's voice. We sense more depth of feeling and interest in this verse than in the previous five. Others may admire her, but He delights in her. His patient grace has formed in her a moral likeness to Himself. This He now sees and delights in. The more fully Christ sees His own likeness in us, the more He will delight in us.

The daughters of Jerusalem can look on the bride as someone to admire. But the King does not only admire. He makes the bride His own and finds in her a source of personal delight. As they look at her, the daughters exclaim, "How beautiful!" The King says "How fair!" — and He adds, "How pleasant you are, O love, for delights." … The world will admire and praise, but He will delight in His earthly bride.

Here it is the love that takes pleasure in its object. He is rejoicing over His bride, and He speaks of her beauty and her loveliness. But how can He find in us anything that can delight Him? He does find that which is the joy and rejoicing of His heart, though not because of what we are in ourselves. It is all the result of what He Himself has invested us with.

What satisfaction it will be for His own heart to see that beauty! It is the result of His sacrifice on the cross and of His own work of grace in her heart by His Spirit. She had yielded herself fully to Him so that He might mould and fashion her after His own heart. That is the only way anyone gains spiritual beauty. Self-improvement and self-effort can never produce spiritual grace and beauty. It comes only by the power of the Spirit of God, as we yield to His power working in us.

A strictly upright man can find no delight in someone crooked in his ways. An honest man can find no pleasure in one who is dishonest. … So the blessed Lord can find His delight only in what resembles His own moral perfections. O my soul, what a needed, practical lesson you may learn from this! In what way, let me ask, and in what measure, is your moral likeness to Christ?

That day of glory and great joy will come. But what we find here is more wonderful than what that day will show. Here we learn that even now He finds in the Church what delights His heart. We are still treading the sand of the desert, on our way to the glory that awaits the bride and Bridegroom. … Do we believe it, beloved, that we are a joy to Him?

This is the Bridegroom rejoicing over the bride, as Isaiah had anticipated long before this day of Zephaniah (see Isa. 62:5). It is as if the Lord were stepping into the place that the joyful song of the King of Israel gives Him.