As spring seems to have sprung upon us and the temperatures get warmer, life seems to have returned to nature and new life is being created. It warms the heart and recalls to mind the idea of love. The next book of the Bible in our newsletter series discusses that exact topic: love. Song of Solomon may not be familiar to some, but its message is as relevant today as it was when it was first written, and contained within its words is the perfect expression of romantic love. Furthermore, that love looks beyond itself and points to God’s love for us through the metaphor of marriage. Although Song of Solomon (Songs) contains wordage we normally would not discuss in polite company, the truth that underlies the book must be known to us as Christians so that we can speak to a broken, hurting world that has lost and corrupted the idea of love even as it strives to find it.
Song of Solomon is a poem of love between a man and a woman, describing love as it was meant to be without the effects of sin: intimate, without shame, characterized by genuine admiration and care for each other. This is not only an ideal to strive for in marriage (or to a lesser extent, all of our relationships), but also important for us to understand God’s love for us. Within the love relationship contained in this text, both the husband and the wife give themselves wholly to each other. This is often the opposite of “Hollywood” and our culture’s ideas toward marriage, which is viewed as old-fashioned, dull, boring, or even scandalous. Sin breaks our relationships including marriage by tempting us with selfishness or “how can I get what I want from the other person?” Song of Solomon writes just the opposite, “how can I give myself completely to the other person, sacrificing for their benefit?” This is a beautiful gift of God for when a man and a woman unite in marriage and in the activity that accompanies it, then they really do become “one flesh”. An interesting illustration of this can be seen when we look at couples who have been happily married for a long time. The two of them become one in the sense that they start to act like each other! They finish each other’s sentences, know each other’s thoughts, even begin to look like each other in some cases. Self-sacrificial love is the pattern we seek to embody in our relationships because it is the pattern God Himself lived for us!
God describes His relationship with his people like a marriage (Eph. 5:22-33). In the person of His Son, He too gives himself to us and for us. Jesus Christ embodies God’s self-sacrificial love for us (Rom. 5:8). In Jesus Christ, we see God’s determination that nothing can stand in His way as He pursues us in His love, not even our own sinfulness. His all-consuming focus is on securing a relationship with us, the creatures that He loves so much. It is that self-sacrificial love that took on flesh and walked among us, that knelt down to wash feet, and that bore the nails of the cross in His hands in order to wash away our sins and give us the victory and new life in Him. His love is what gives us life. Take heart as you read these words. You are never so far gone away from the Lord as to outrun His love for you. He continues to court us until we reciprocate his affection and like Song of Solomon says, “My beloved is mine and I am his” (2:16).
When we respond in kind to God’s love, we too will be transformed so that we start to act like Him. We will think His thoughts after Him, and when people see us, they will see God’s love and grace being lived out, not merely spoken about. The more we grow in our relationship the more godly our lives will become because it is the Holy Spirit changing us from the inside out, weaving God’s love into every fiber of our being so that we can cultivate it and share it with others. God became like us so that we may become like Him. We become like those we love. If we love the world and things of the world, we will start to look like that, but if we love God, then we will start to look more and more like Him. God has provided us the gift of self-sacrificial love to be enjoyed in our relationships with others, but He also embodied that self-sacrificial love so that we could be forgiven and have and enjoy a relationship with Him. This is the goal of the Christian: To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.
I once heard it put this way: the reason that a new life is made when two separate lives come together is because the love of the two could not be contained so a new third life naturally emerged. If you are married, read the Song of Solomon as husband and wife. If you don’t have a spouse (even if you do!) read it as a beautiful illustration of God’s love for you. Teach its message to your children and all those around you so that they will know and see what love is like in the Kingdom of God. Show the culture that love and intimacy are not selfish, hedonistic pleasures to indulge in, but beautiful gifts of God to be eternally enjoyed.
Your Brother,
Craig