[3] As an apple tree among the trees of the forest,
so is my beloved among the young men.
With great delight I sat in his shadow,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
[4] He brought me to the banqueting house,
and his banner over me was love.
[5] Sustain me with raisins;
refresh me with apples,
for I am sick with love.
[6] His left hand is under my head,
and his right hand embraces me!
[7] I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the does of the field,
that you not stir up or awaken love
until it pleases.
(Song of Solomon 2:3-7 ESV)
I feel like I've addressed these verses a lot already, but I want to be humble before God, and admit that I probably missed several things. So I'm going to ask a few standard questions of this passage, questions that I try to ask of every passage. (Spoiler alert: as you can tell by the length of this entry, I got some good answers to these questions!)
As I was asking these questions and seeking God for answers, a general theme tended to emerge. Basically, it's the theme of why this way is better than any other way. If you grew up in church, you often heard people telling you not to have sex before marriage, or not to look at porn. They typically give a few scary reasons why, like you might catch STD's or get pregnant. These are true, but they're also nothing that your high school health teacher couldn't tell you.
But have you ever wondered why God designed things this way? If God designed us in such a way that this really is the best way, what did He accomplish by doing that? Is there really any value to doing things God's way, when you get right down to the level of pure pleasure?
Keep reading to find out.
As I was asking these questions and seeking God for answers, a general theme tended to emerge. Basically, it's the theme of why this way is better than any other way. If you grew up in church, you often heard people telling you not to have sex before marriage, or not to look at porn. They typically give a few scary reasons why, like you might catch STD's or get pregnant. These are true, but they're also nothing that your high school health teacher couldn't tell you.
But have you ever wondered why God designed things this way? If God designed us in such a way that this really is the best way, what did He accomplish by doing that? Is there really any value to doing things God's way, when you get right down to the level of pure pleasure?
Keep reading to find out.
What does passage tell us about God?
This is Scripture; this passionate love is in the Bible. God designed marriage; God designed marital intimacy, in all its forms; God is therefore pleased and delighted when couples are this loving and intimate with each other. That made it sound really logical and matter-of-fact, but this is written as poetry! God was not content to talk about marriage in bullet-points; He had it written about in poetry, in the form of writing that best expresses and conveys emotion. From this, we can tell that God's heart is delighted by the love a wife feels for her husband, and the love a husband feels for his wife. Marriage reflects our relationship with God; it is one of the primary teachers in our lives of what it means for God to love us, of what it means to be love unconditionally, of what it means to be fully known and still fully loved. God is overjoyed when our relationships are beautiful and enjoyable!
You can still have sex without holiness; you can still be married without holiness; you can still experience some joy in life without holiness. Yet to experience this kind of marital joy, you have to be like God. I don't mean to say that you have to be Christian; non-Christian couples can have this kind of intimacy in many ways. Yet as you start talking with them about their marriage and how they make it work, you'll discover they have to act like God: be a servant lover, forgive, guard your marriage with faithfulness, care for the other person more than yourself, love and respect each other, etc.
You simply can't enjoy this kind of marital bliss without being made holy. This is a blessed area where holiness and happines, where sanctification and sex, joyfully co-exist.
Single people, sit up and take notice: you need holiness to have a good marriage. Thus, if you want to start working towards a delightful marriage now, start working on your holiness, on being like Jesus. The more you're like Him now, the more enjoyable any future relationship will be!
This is a good God we serve! He specifically designed our bodies and our relationships to work in this way. He also wrote these things down for us to enjoy, for us to learn from. The words in this Bible really tell us how reality really is. These aren't one man's philosophies; these are inspired words from the One who designed everything and knows intimately how everything works. These are words we can trust. They prove it by how accurately they describe our lives, and in a thousand other ways.
This is our God!
What does this passage tell us about ourselves, about human beings?
Much of the above applies to this question, as well. We are wired to experience the highest joys and bliss when we act in a holy manner. Holiness is not something stodgy, something that boring priests with no lives do in dusty rooms. Holiness is a man and woman lying in each other's arms, completely content and drunk with love for each other, enjoying this bliss as they are being made more like Jesus. Re-read that sentence a few dozen times if you need to, in order to wrap your mind around this. Holiness is the most intoxicating thing we can find in life!
The enemy of holiness is sin, obviously. If this man or woman were selfish, if they refused to forgive, if they clung to bitterness, if they weren't faithful, if they chased fleeting passions instead of fighting to keep a commitment, then they could never enjoy this holy moment of love and peace. They would be hostile to each other, instead of treasuring each other. So if you ever wonder why God hates our sin, just look at this passage. God hates our sin in the same way that Solomon or his bride would hate any sin that threatened the blissful intimacy they are enjoying here.
We are made to be holy. We experience the most joy out of life when we act this way. This is simple reality.
Somebody may interject and say that if you act this way, you can never enjoy a good frat party, with lots of booze and music and sex. True, but not in the way that you're thinking. A frat party can be pleasureable, certainly, but it's a temporary pleasure, and one often filled with shame. It's especially terrifying for girls who wake up halfway through the next day wearing only a few scraps of clothing, unable to remember what was done to them last night. The pleasures of a frat party are gone by the next morning, and often give way to a lot of pain and regret. Contrary to this, the pleasures of marriage are lasting, hopefully never-ending as long as life remains in your bodies. Did you know that in a recent national survey, married evangelical Christians had the most satisfying sex lives out of anybody in the country? Check it out: http://assets.marshill.com/files/2012/02/20/Stats_On_Sex.pdf We're not making this stuff up. If you pursue marriage and sex the way the Bible describes, it will lead you to more enjoyment in marriage and sex than anyone else is experiencing!
Further, what makes a frat party enjoyable? Alcohol and music are in no way forbidden from marriage; you can enjoy them just as much with your spouse as you can with your frat guys and a bunch of random girls. So what about the sex, then? It's fun, but why? The physical pleasure is obvious, but that also is a part of marriage. As I mentioned earlier, the physical pleasure is even stronger in marriage, for a number of reasons: you have a deep connection that sex is a glorious part of, instead of it being a random act with a stranger; you serve each other, doing what each other enjoys, rather than just taking what you can get; you are safe with each other physically, not giving out diseases or unwanted pregnancies, and not abusing each other; you are safe with each other emotionally, seeking to build up and encourage each other rather than taking advantage of each other; your passion comes from deep love, not from surface-level lust; you experience joy in all parts of life together, not just in the bed; and the list could go on and on.
So the sex of a frat party is enjoyable, but not nearly as much as sex in marriage. So if you want the greatest sex possible, get a wedding ring, don't get trashed in a frat house.
But what if you're not ready for marriage and you just want to have a good time? Can't you indulge then? Can't you take a little bit of pleasure now, and then feast on the greater pleasures in marriage?
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| http://wallpaper4god.com/en/background_christian-graphic-redeemed-and-forgiven/ |
But this is only possible if your heart is repentant, if your focus is to obey God and seek Him. If your attitude is to get as much sex now as possible for the pleasure of it, and then try to get as much pleasure as possible in marriage, you're shooting yourself in the foot. If that's your attitude, then you're primarily selfish, and you will never know the joys of being a servant lover in marriage. Song of Solomon 2:3-7 can only be enjoyed by a couple committed to being selfless lovers. If you've been selfish, but are repenting, well and good! Enjoy the beauty of this passage. But if your focus is caring about yourself and your pleasure above all, you've got some serious repenting to do before you can ever enjoy the pleasures of Song of Solomon 2. God will have to change your heart, and you will have to change your entire life, if you want to enjoy selfless, servant love, as Solomon and his bride do, here.
It may take time to get to Song of Solomon 2:3-7. You have to truly know each other and truly know you are safe with each other to get here. To experience this yourself, you must be honest about your past, let God heal your scars, and repent of your sin, or you can never get your heart to this place. For your spouse to experience it with you, they must know your past and forgive you, not holding it against you. They must show you the love of the Father, who saw your sin, forgave it, and never counted it against you, because He loves you. Then you must live completely faithfully to each other, being honest about everything. You must have no secrets, because secrets only serve to separate two people and engender fear and mistrust. Even if the other person has no idea you're holding on to something, if you don't tell them, you will be holding yourself back.
The Enemy lies, telling us that if we're honest about our junk, the person we love will leave us, or the pain will increase. But the truth is that we can never be healed of these scars without being honest; we'll never be free from pain until we are open. Further, if the person you love is striving to be like Jesus, then they should be able to forgive anything in your past. After all, whatever you've done is far less than what we've all done to God. If He can forgive us for a lifetime of rebellion against Him, those of us who are in Christ should be able to forgive each other of anything. As black as you think your sins and scars are, Jesus' blood cleanses them fully. If your loved one has likewise been cleansed by Jesus' blood, they should be able to see you as holy and dearly loved, as they themselves are. Further, if your loved one will stick with you through this and continue loving you in spite of your past sin, you can rest assured that they'll stick with you through anything.
For those who are single, if you've got scars in your past, take the time to heal them now. It will be painful. But it will also free you. If You let God heal your scars now, if you let Him point out your sin and humbly repent of it now, then you will be able to enjoy the pleasures of the future without throwing up walls internally to protect yourself.
For those who are married or engaged, you still need to find healing, here. If you haven't been completely honest with your beloved, take the time to be honest with them. Tell them everything in your past, especially the stuff you don't want to talk about. Bring the secrets into the light. Once revealed, God can start to bring healing.
For this healing to work, you must be absolutely honest, about everything. You must call things what they are. If you have sinned, you have to call it sin; you cannot justify it or excuse it. If you have been sinned against, you must call it what it is; you must not enable the other person by excusing the offense, and you must not believe that you have deserved whatever you received, because you are a perfectly holy and cleansed child of the King!
Ultimately, for any and all healing to take lasting effect, you must know who you are. At the core of your being, at the foundation of your identity, you are dearly loved by God. You are not a sinner, you are not dirty, you are not damaged goods, you are not a failure, you are not repulsive, you are not a nobody. You are a saint, holy and dearly loved, cherished by God. Your identity does not depend on what you have done, nor on what has been done to you. Your identity is shaped only by how much God loves you -- and He loves you so much that your imagination will never be able to wrap itself around the beauty and grandeur of it. You are loved. You are holy. You are new. Everything of your past is dead and gone; ultimately, you are completely new, dearly loved, perfectly clean, entirely pleasing. You are a saint, bought by the blood of the Lamb. You are dearly beloved, highly esteemed child of the King of Kings. You are fully worthy of being loved by God, and in marriage. This is the power of Christ in you!
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| http://joshuaflom.com/?p=1313 |
Also, let me share one last word of caution from this passage. The woman's warning in verse 7 makes it clear that the human heart does not naturally choose to wait. When we see something this enticing, we want to dive in head-first, right now. In other words, it's not going to feel good to say no to sex before marriage. We're going to have to fight against our urges and temptations. It's not going to be all sunshine and roses to keep saying "no" to it. It will be a fight, and you'll have to choose to keep fighting it daily.
But the rewards are so incredibly worth it! That's why we have verse 7. She had to include it, because this kind of intimacy only comes if you've protected and guarded that marriage bed, if you've protected and guarded your hearts, if you've protected and guarded your relationship.
We don't want to do this naturally. By our sinful natures, we want to do the things that will destroy us. If we follow our hearts, if we follow our body's urgings, we'll end up with pain instead of joy.
So in this case, fight your feelings. Fight for the purity of your marriage bed. If you've already slept around, it's never to late to start repenting, to start fighting for this purity. God will cleanse you, if you only ask. The sooner you start saving yourself for marriage, the sooner you can be healed of any scars and start experiencing the joys of this kind of intimacy!
Finally, let me close by giving you a few resources. If any of you are struggling in the battle for your identity, for seeing yourself as holy and dearly loved, cleansed by the blood of Christ, deserving of all things good, then I urge you to listen to this song, and keep listening until it sticks:
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| http://thereflectionofhim.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-god-says-about-you.html |
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