A Romance with Christ

Introduction

On his deathbed, the Puritan Thomas Goodwin is reported by his son as having said, “Christ cannot love me better than he does; I think I cannot love Christ better than I do.”

Goodwin was no stranger to the love of Christ. Born in 1600, he ministered faithfully under persecution and prevailed through it based on his firm belief in the love of Christ. He wrote one of the most encouraging books for a Christian struggling with shame and guilt and a feeling of condemnation titled The Heart of Christ. In this book, he used Hebrews 4:14-16 to draw to attention the love of Christ for his people who struggle with sin.

Hebrews 4:14–16 ESV

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

This love is reflected in the text we’ve been looking at in Eph 5:22-33. In that text, we saw last week that Jesus washes his bride from all her sins with the Word to present her spotless and without blemish before himself. A pure bride! In that state, she and her husband Christ will enjoy the pure, divinely romantic joys of paradise for ever and ever.

The relationship between Christ and the Church is behind all romance, all intimacy, and all closeness between a married couple. This intimacy is expressed in one of the most beautiful and yet confusing books in the Bible: the Song of Solomon.

Understanding the Song

The Song of Solomon is a love poem that chronicles two lovers who are engaged and wait with anticipation for marriage, which is fulfilled in marital sexual union in 8:5. The poem is not primarily about marital love, just as marriage is not primarily about marital love, but is prophetically used to show the was in which God (or Christ when we read in light of the New Testament) longs for his people and how his true people long for him. It is a colourful imagery that I hope will put a deep longing in your heart to know Christ more intimately, and that this would be played out in your marriages as you mirror the romance and closeness that Christ has with his people.

An Outline of the Content

Written either by or for Solomon almost certainly during his reign, since there is evidence in the text of a united Israel, which would not be the case after Solomon died. Prophetically, the main character is not Solomon, but rather the son of Solomon, even Christ in a spiritual sense. We will get to that more later.

The book begins with its title, which is Song of Songs. Like the term Holy of Holies referred to the greatest, most holy place where man could come into God’s presence here on earth, the Song of Songs is the Hebrew way of saying The Best, Greatest of Songs. This divinely inspired title tells us that this is no ordinary love poem, but the deepest, purest, most celebratory song ever written.

1:2-2:17 and 6:4-8:4 show the longing that the two lovers in the poem have for each other. They long for marital intimacy, but the sexual experience is put off until the consummation of the marriage mentioned in 8:5. Until then, a wall exists between the couple (4:12; 8:9), a boundary that kept the couple from sexual intimacy and they longed for the day when they would be united in marriage. After the marriage, the longing has turned into joyful bliss. The poem ends with a continued desire to be together (8:14).

In the middle of the poem (3:1-6:3) the lovers dream of each other, and the bride to be ignores her lovers call to her regret. When she finds him, she is overjoyed and once again the longing resumes. Her mistake does not stop the intimacy, though temporarily it separated the two.

Seeing Christ in the Song

This book is two things to us. First it is an allegory of God and his people, Christ the son of Solomon and the Church. The romance is a picture of the love and longing for eternal joy consumated in the Eschaton when Christ returns to “remove the veil” and be with his bride.

1 Corinthians 13:12 ESV

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

This was the view of Jews before Christ, it was the view of the early church Fathers, and it has been the view of virtually every Christian in history until about 200 years ago.

Prophetically written by or for Solomon (most likely during the reign of Solomon in any case, as there is evidence of a united Israel in the text). This poem cannot refer to Solomon personally, because of his known polygamy and his first wife being a princess not a shepherdess as described in the poem. While it is about an actual couple, real or imagined, it’s true meaning is prophetically allegorical.

Named The Greatest of Songs. A simple love song would not deserve such a title. This song is beyond the common romance between an engaged couple.

Hints in the text

Cannot refer to Solomon, yet the lover is called King Solomon (1:12; 3:11)

Garden imagery which mirrors the Temple, the Garden of Eden, and the New Heaven and Earth.

The bride is described as “a well of living water”(4:15) which parallels Jesus’ telling us that we become springs of living water (John 4:14).

The jealousy of the groom is identified as “the very flame of YHWH” (8:6).

Marital Love is about Christ

Ephesians 5:32 ESV

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

If the very text that establishes marriage is actually about Christ and the Church, than the same can be said of this poem. Thus, when reading the Song of Solomon, Christ and the Church should be mainly in view even as marriage itself is but a shadow of this glorious truth.

The Key Couple: Christ and the Church

So just as we see marriage being a picture of Christ and the Church, this greatest of poem’s describes the love between Christ and the Church as marital in all its romance, intimacy, and closeness.

Christ’s Love for His People

Let us take a moment to look at the great love Christ has for his people.

Song of Solomon 7:10 ESV

I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.

Can it truly be that Christ desires us? Yes, even in our worst days with all our imperfections. We are the Shulammite, a shepherdess of no account or status, who has been elected by the King to be his only bride. We are created and saved together as his people to be a bride being perfected, as a bride is made beautiful, to be presented to him in glory without spot or wrinkle so that the closest intimacy may be shared with him. Christ’s love for us is indescribable, but let us cover a few points about it.

Christ’s love is an electing love. That is, his love is based on those elected by the Father. He chose us in him before the creation of the world, knowing our sin, knowing our filthiness, knowing our weaknesses, he chose us to be his bride. Therefore, this love is a chosen love, a love motivated by his will. This means his love is already established, it cannot be moved.

Jesus suffered in love for his bride, to make her holy and able to be united to him in marriage.

Romans 8:34 ESV

Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

Since Christ died for us and washed us in his blood, we are spotless before him. We are made beautiful because of what he did on the cross. What kind of charge can stand against that?

Moreover, this suffering was motivated by love.

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

If he loved us while we were still under sin, how much greater will his expressions of love be now that we are made holy by his blood?

Jesus showed love while he was in this world.

John 13:1 ESV

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

Jesus’ love for his disciples is even more profound when his first words to them are “peace” after his resurrection. After they had fled from and denied him, Jesus’ speaks no words of judgement, but only “peace”. The only thing he rebukes them for is unbelief.

Jesus also expects love from them, as when he asked Peter three times whether he loved him. It is clear that Jesus is establishing a love relationship between his people and himself.

Jesus shows his love where he is seated at the right hand of God. This is what Thomas Goodwin focused on most in his book The Heart of Christ.

He sympathizes with our weaknesses. This means, according to Goodwin, that when we sin, Jesus is filled with pity for us. He isn’t filled with anger, for the anger of God against sin was satisfied on the cross. Rather, Goodwin says that sin is viewed by Christ as some dangerous disease in his child that he, rather than being angry with the child, has great pity and takes great care to remove the disease. Jesus is not angry with you, though he is angry with your sin. He wishes to remove it from you because he loves you. He does all this sympathetically, having been tempted “in every way as we are, yet without sin.” How great a promise this is. Your God is pleased with you, maybe some of you really need to meditate on that. Jesus is happy with you, he wants you, he is eager to be with you as part of his bride. He’s not put off by your bad days, he’s not frowning at your failings, he is working hard to make you holy not because he can’t stand the sight of you but because he wants to be nearer to you.

With confidence, we are told to approach the Throne of Grace. With all your sin, your failing, your giving into temptation and then feeling the immense weight of your rightful guilt, you can approach Christ confidently though repentantly. If we don’t approach his throne with confidence, it means that we must not trust him. We so often avoid that throne, either out of shame or hardheartedness. But all he wants is the embrace of his Beloved. He wants is your confidence in his love.

“mercy” and “grace to help in time of need.” Christ is ready to help his beloved be all that she is meant to be. His hand is firm but gentle as he leads, and he is rich in compassion for your situation. He will help if you will only let yourself rely on his love. He has stores of grace for your particular struggle and your particular temptations, and all you have to do is ask in faith. Many feel abandoned by God simply because they do not come to his throne and rest on his mercy. Many feel cold in their heart towards God because they have let so much time go since they have last been in that blessed place. Christian, I hope you will be driven there again and again for help and mercy. Let Jesus love you as he intends to. Don’t try to do this life by yourself, you have a loving husband in Christ who is ready to bless you. Through difficulties, through loss, through sin, through trials, through persecutions, through anything the world or the flesh or hell itself throws at you is an equal and even abounding portion of grace for help. This all issues from his love for you as part of the elect. If you are a believer, he will not have his church without you. Cling to that love now, and let it be your stronghold in life. Jesus loves you, this you know because Scripture indeed tells you so. To look upon Christ is to look upon the friendly and affectionate heart of God.

The Church’s Love for Christ

Now let us speak of the Church’s love for Christ

Song of Solomon 8:6 ESV

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.

Romance, Intimacy, and the Glory of God

This is a series on Marriage, Singleness, and Family, but we are only now getting to that topic. That is because it is infinitely secondary to understanding the love relationship of Christ and the Church. If you are to grow your marriage into a godly relationship, you must be looking first and only to Christ and his love. Romance in a Christian marriage is unique from the romance of the world. Romance in the world is based on feelings, in Christ it is based on love. In the world, it comes and goes, in Christ it is permanent even when feelings are not there. In the world, it is meaningless except for the subjective meaning to the individual, in Christ it is founded on his love and therefore has objectivity to it. In a word, Christian marriages must pursue romance because in it we experience a measure of Christ’s love for us.

God is glorified in an intimate and romantic marriage because it tells the truth about his relationship to us. Romance and intimacy with your spouse is a means to showing the glory of God! What a wonderful tool he has given us, and yet so easily set aside as the years go by. Early in marriage there is a flame of passion that sadly withers if not cultivated. Couples learn to live together without cherishing each other as Christ cherishes the church. Dates become fewer until they are non-existent. Children make the marriage a labour rather than a joy. But we must understand four things about romance in marriage.

It is necessary. We see this even in a sexual way as Paul commands,

1 Corinthians 7:5 ESV

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Except in cases of sexual fasting, sexual intimacy, which is not just an act but rather the end of of a romantic pursuit, must be practiced.

It is important that we show this to be a broad command. It is not just the sexual act, or else sex in marriage would devolve into using each other as merely a sexual outlet, which is far from the passion we find in Song of Solomon. Conjugal rights, which Paul refers to, includes romantic gestures, pursuit, time together, kisses and caresses, and mutual binding of heart and soul which is expressed in the end on the marriage bed. A husband, for example, cannot use this to simply demand the sexual act on any given occassion. It speaks as much to him in provoking and nurturing that intimate environment as it does to the wife to respond to those affectionate advances. Normally, this should look like the husband tenderly pursuing the wife, and the wife affectionately responding to her husbands pursuits, and being a pleasure and joy to each other in the process.

It is beneficial. Not only is it beneficial in a physical sense, fulfilling a God-given desire, but it is beneficial in our spiritual walk.

First, as Paul points out, it keeps us from temptation. Especially in our day of wanton sexually immoral material, it is worth pursuing in order to avoid such temptations.

But beyond that, it changes the way we view relationships. If we let our relationship with our spouse grow cold, are we not in danger of letting our relationship with Christ grow cold as well? The habits you cultivate in relationship with the one your body is bound to on this earth will affect the relationship with him your soul is meant to love.

It is hard work. We will speak of this more in a moment, but suffice it to say that romance for us needs to be worked at. We cannot go with our feelings and let the romance die when our feelings do, we must master our feelings and guide them. This takes work and self-control as well as priority. How many married couples have let children get in the way of pursuing their spouse?

This means setting aside time and effort in stoking the fires of your marriage. What things are taking away from the time and effort you could be spending with your spouse?

It is not about us. Again, I point you to the fact that marriage is a picture, what sort of picture are you painting about Christ and the Church? Will Christ forever ignore us once the celebration of the new world has lost its excitement? Will glorification give way to indifference? Will the church in heaven become so busy with other things that we will forget to be with Christ? So we should eagerly seek to make our marriages a picture of the Church and Christ in eternity.

Cultivating the Garden

The Song of Solomon expresses this atmosphere of romance and intimacy in the language of a garden.

Song of Solomon 5:1 ESV

I came to my garden, my sister, my bride, I gathered my myrrh with my spice, I ate my honeycomb with my honey, I drank my wine with my milk. Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!

This garden is reminiscent of the garden of Eden, and becomes symbolic throughout Scripture as a place where God and man are at peace with one another. The temple was designed to look like a garden, garden language is often used for God’s work, Jesus prayed in a garden, and the new heavens and new earth are pictured as a garden. The garden is a place where the effects of the curse do not exist, unlike the thorns where the church is found blooming “As a lily among brambles” (2:2). He brings her out from the brambles and into his garden. What is this garden?

It is a place of rest. The lovers are able to rest together and enjoy each other’s company. The curse is not there, the labour that results only in thorns is not there, it is a restful place for the purpose of being the setting for the intimacy and love between the couple.

It is cultivated. The garden does not exist by itself, it has been cultivated and grown by the husband. It is the King’s garden, and he is planted it for the purpose of being with his bride there.

It is fruitful. The groom himself is likened to an “apple tree among the trees of the forest.”(2:3) He plants all kinds of fruit, the greatest of these garden plants is the tree of life which we are told in Revelation 22:2 blooms and bears its fruit beside the rivers of living water. The fruit of this garden also parallels the command for mankind to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. It is fruitful in bringing many sons and daughters of God there. It is fruitful in providing life, death does not live in this garden. There is no end in sight to the bliss of this place. Fruit replenishes the garden itself and those in the garden. It is a place full of life, which this fruit symbolizes.

If this is true in the marriage of Christ and the church, how can we have marriages that are also fruitful like this?

Cultivate an environment of intimacy and romance in your marriage. Go on dates, buy flowers, lovingly tease and touch and speak loving words just as the lovers in our text do. Some of you need to do some weeding in your life, plucking out those things that choke your marriage and choke your spiritual life out of you. You may not be intimate with your spouse and more important some of you are not intimate with Christ. Cultivate the garden, lest your heart be hardened by the flesh and the world.

Prioritize the garden. What happens to a garden when it is neglected? It is bound to become dead and full of pests, disease, and drought. Again, it takes hard work to keep the garden of your marriage flowering. It must be a priority. You cannot let jobs or hobbies or even kids get in the way, for even the children of your union will benefit greatly from a loving marriage as well.

Lead your desires. While the world is led by desires, we need to lead our flesh to what is good. It is a mystery how something so good can be so neglected by our flesh because we secretly believe its not worth it even though we know it is. If your heart is cold towards yourself, find ways to revive it. Cultivate the garden even when you don’t want to. Be affectionate even when your affection are quiet. I don’t mean lie to your spouse, I mean do things that will lead your heart to the affections that you want and need.

Conclusion

Above all these things, meditate on the love of Christ. The garden he has for his church is watered by his own blood. He leads his bride the church, he leads us, he leads you into this place. Don’t try to cultivate the garden of your marriage before you have let Christ lead you into his garden. It is sorrowful how many Christians keep themselves from this garden of intimate meditation on God’s Word and the love of Christ and continue in a Christian walk that is hopeless, loveless, and stale. They are like the church in Ephesus

Revelation 2:4–5 ESV

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Have you let the honeymoon stage of your Christian life pass by and become content in a state of lukewarm Christianity? Stop being content with the apple cores from the garden of Christ and come back to the tree which satisfies our souls. Do the work to lead your heart to deeper affection for Christ. He died to make this Song a reality between you and him, along with the rest of his people. The garden is here, right here with God’s people where Christ dwells. It is in your prayer closet, in the Word, in your obedience to the Word. Pursue holiness out of love for God.

A true love for God must begin with a delight in his holiness, and not with a delight in any other attribute; for no other attribute is truly lovely without this.

Jonathan Edwards

Believe that God loves you and wants to be close to you in Christ.

The distinguishing mark of a Christian is his confidence in the love of Christ, and the yielding of his affections to Christ in return.

Charles Spurgeon

When you believe this, and when you cultivate a close, affectionate walk with Christ, not only will your spiritual walk become more passionate and close with God, but your marriage will begin to reflect the same attitude. The best way for an actor to play a part is to study the character they are playing and the story they are playing in. The more they lose themselves in the reality, the more they will reflect that reality in their acting. So it is, the more you lose yourself in the love of Christ, the compassionate, merciful, intimate love of Christ, the more you will play it out in your life and marriage. An intimate marriage will be the natural fruit of an intimate walk with God. Let your love for Christ spill over into your love for your spouse and for all other Christians. That is how we may truly be people of love.

We are never nearer Christ than when we find ourselves lost in a holy amazement at His unspeakable love.

John Owen