In return hereunto, for the carrying on of the communion between them, the saints delight in Christ; he is 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. Gal. vi. 14, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He hath, from the foundation of the world, been the hope, expectation, desire, and delight of all believers. The promise of him was all (and it was enough) that God gave Adam in his inexpressible distress, to relieve and comfort him, Gen. iii. 15. Eve perhaps supposed that the promised seed had been born in her first-born, when she said, “I have gotten a man from According to the view to which Owen refers, the preposition should be dropped from the translation, and אֶת regarded as in apposition with Jehovah, — “I have gotten a man, Jehovah.” The particle אֶת occurs in this sense, as simply demonstrative, forty times in the first four chapters of Genesis. — Ed. the Lord” (so most properly, אֶת denoting the fourth case); and this was the matter of her joy, Gen. iv. 1. Lamech having Noah given to him as a type of Christ and salvation by him, cries out, “This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed,” Gen. v. 29; he rejoices in him who was to take away the curse, by being made a curse for us. When Abraham was in the height of his glory, returning from the conquest of the kings of the east, that came against the confederate kings of the vale of Sodom, God appears to him with a glorious promise, Gen. xv. 1, “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” What now could his soul more desire? Alas! he cries (as Reuben afterward, upon the loss of Joseph), “The child is not, and whither shall I go?” Verse 2, “Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?” “Thou hast promised that in my seed shall all the earth be blessed; if I have not that seed, ah! what good will all other things do me?” Thence it is said that he “rejoiced to see the day of Christ; he saw it, and was glad,” John viii. 56; the thoughts of the coming of Christ, which he looked on at the distance of two thousand years, was the joy and delight of his heart. Jacob, blessing his sons, lifted up his spirit when he comes to Judah, in whom he considered the Shiloh to come, Gen. xlix. 8, 9; and a little after, wearied with the foresight and consideration of the distresses of his posterity, this he diverts to for his relief, as that great delight of his soul: “I have waited for thy Salvation, O God;” — for him who was to be the salvation of his people. But it would be endless to instance in particulars. Old Simon sums up the whole: Christ is God’s salvation, and Israel’s glory, Luke ii. 30, 31; and whatever was called the glory of old, it was either himself or a type of him. The glory of man is their delight. Hence, Haggai ii. 7, he is called “The Desire of all nations.” Him whom their soul loves and delights in, [they] desire and long after. So is the saints’ delight in him made a description of him, by way of eminence, Mal. iii. 1: “The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in.” “He whom ye seek, whom ye delight in,” is the description of Christ. He is their delight and desirable one, the person of their desire. To fix on something in particular:—