[She]
[5] I arose to open to my beloved,
and my hands dripped with myrrh,
my fingers with liquid myrrh,
on the handles of the bolt.
[6] I opened to my beloved,
but my beloved had turned and gone.
My soul failed me when he departed.
I sought him, but found him not;
I called him, but he gave no answer.
[7] The watchmen found me
as they went about in the city;
they beat me, they bruised me,
they took away my veil,
those watchmen of the walls.
(Song of Solomon 5:5-7 ESV)
Last week we introduced this marital conflict and discussed Solomon's initial response to it. Today we'll look at how the woman responds, and how it teaches us what not to do in times of interpersonal crisis.
Today's message, in brief: if we let our emotions run wild with us during times of conflict, it will make matters worse. It won't solve anything.
This bride delayed opening the bedroom door to her husband when he wanted to be with her, intimately. She delayed so long that he gave up and left. When she finally opens the door, he's long gone.
And then she realizes what she's done. Her new husband just wanted to be with her, and she shot him down.
Then she says, "My soul failed me when he departed," meaning that she fell into a sharp depression. She searched for him and called out to him, but he had gone far away; he didn't answer.
Recall that in chapter 3, this woman suffered anxiety wondering whether her man would stay with her or seek someone else. She has an underlying fear that she's not worthy enough to keep his attention, and so she often fears that he will one day leave her.
At this moment in the ongoing conflict, these fears resurface. She's afraid that because she denied and rejected him, he's left her. Her emotions get the best of her. Despite the fact that they are newlyweds, despite his continuing professions of love for her, she fears that he's gone, and her fears take her over.
Her fears are so strong that when she falls back asleep, after searching in vain for her husband, she dreams that the watchmen of the city beat her up as punishment for what she's done.
Emotionally, she wants herself to be punished. She feels that she deserves it, for hurting her husband so bad that he left the palace in the dead of night.
This woman is essentially doing the flip-side of what we talked about last Friday. Solomon demonstrated wisdom; instead of punishing her in any way for how she hurt him, he walked away. As Christians, we have to rely on the truth that the punishment for all sin committed against us was paid by Christ on the Cross. We therefore have no need to punish anybody who hurts us.
But Solomon's bride illustrates another key point in this discussion. Just as the Cross means we don't punish others for their sins, neither do we punish ourselves for our own sins.
This woman is caught up in the fact that she hurt the man she loved, and now she fears that she's lost him. She wants to punish herself for her stupidity, and does so in her heart and in her dreams.
But there is no need for her to punish herself! Yes, she did something stupid, but Christ already suffered the just penalty of that sin, as well.
She gains absolutely nothing by punishing herself. God is not impressed by how terrible we make ourselves feel, by how much we regret our actions.
As humans, we are hard-wired to resort to works-righteousness instead of grace. That means that when we do something wrong, we feel like we have to make up for it. It feels right, emotionally. It's how our parents raised us and how society trains us. If we do wrong, we have to make it right.
But that's not how God works. We have done wrong, but we can never make it right. Only Jesus can make it right, and He already did so on the Cross.
That means that when we do something stupid and someone gets hurt, we should not punish ourselves. It might feel right, but it gains us absolutely nothing.
Look at this woman. She punishes herself, but what does she gain? Nothing happens, aside from getting a terrible night of sleep. Her conflict with Solomon is not resolved; her soul is not comforted; no solution presents itself; she doesn't even feel better about herself. It just makes the whole experience worse for her.
Their conflict is eventually resolved, which we'll talk about on Wednesday and Friday, but it does not come about through emotional self-punishment.
To be clear, that doesn't mean that when you hurt someone, you act gleeful instead of feeling sad. It's right to feel sad for the hurt you caused, for the damage the relationship took. But there's a world of difference between feeling sad and beating yourself up for your mistakes!
This difference is mostly in the intention behind the feelings. If you're feeling sad because things aren't as they should be, that's a healthy sign from a heart that yearns for things to be right. This is perfectly fine.
But if your emotions are coming instead from the idea that you have to atone for your sins, then you are straying into sin. If you feel like you should suffer for your mistakes, if you feel like you deserve to feel bad, if you feel like you don't deserve to feel good until this is fixed, if you're trying to appease your accusing conscience by making yourself feel worse, if you feel like God won't be happy with you until you show how sorry you are for your mistakes, if you feel like you have to earn your way back into favor with Him, then you are trying to replace Christ on the Cross. Instead of trusting in Him to suffer for your sins, you are saying that you have to shoulder some of the suffering, too. But there's only room on the Cross for one, and Jesus is already nailed there. He isn't moving over to let you on.
So to everyone out there who is ever inclined to punish yourself, I ask you to learn from the example of this woman.
Punishing yourself, even just by making yourself feel bad, doesn't help anything. It has no power to repair damage.
Instead of trying to punish yourself, realize that Christ suffered it all. Then, in the freedom of knowing that you don't have to pay God back for your mistakes, go and apologize to those you've hurt.
One final thought:
To be clear, you'll never have to make things right with God. That's the meaning of the Cross; Jesus already made it right.
But you might have to make it right to someone else. For example, if you stole something of theirs, you'll have to give it back.
Yet these actions, these ways of making things right with other people, are actions. They aren't feelings.
You don't make things right by making yourself suffer. You make things right by acting in love and repentance to those you've hurt.
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