Love as God Intended

Song of Solomon 8:6, 7

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.

Many waters cannot quench love,

neither can floods drown it.

If a man offered for love

all the wealth of his house,

he would be utterly despised.[1]

A

s I watched television this past week, I became acutely aware of the common morality which was displayed rather prominently on one of my favourite shows. One actor played the part of a young man who was taking some good-natured ribbing for breaking up with his girlfriend. He bemoaned the fact that she was still phoning him. Questioned by his co-workers, he admitted that he had slept with her before breaking-up, but he hastened to add that he only did so because she asked him to do so. Agitated by the questions of his primary interlocutor, he asked when she had last slept with someone, and she replied that it had been two weeks prior.

What I found amazing was the casual nature with which these actors portrayed people who have reduced sex to a casual transaction and the utter absence of intimacy. The instruction conveyed to anyone watching that particular action show is that love begins and ends with two sweaty bodies gratifying base instincts. I am not a sexologist, nor do I particularly claim to be particularly well-versed in contemporary sexual techniques. However, I do know something about love.

I doubt that the world can teach us who are Christians very much concerning love. If you want to be romantic, if you will know intimacy, find a Christian to love. If you really want to discover what love is all about, find a Christian to marry. Why would I say that? Precisely because the matter has been studied in considerable detail with the result that sociologists and other pseudoscientists are continually astonished at their findings.

In 1975, that great research magazine, Redbook, published the results of a survey of over 100,000 women. The study found that strongly religious women are “more responsive” sexually than other women. Furthermore, they are more likely to describe their current sex lives as “good” or “very good” than are moderately religious or non-religious women. These results have been ratified in other studies as well (1993 Janus Report of Sexual Behavior and a 1992 survey of Christianity Today readers).[2]

Fellows, this is good news indeed. Man, if you want a woman who will love you like you’ve never been loved before, find a Christian girl! Man, they’ll wheel you home in a wheelbarrow! In the verses preceding our text, the young woman warns the choir watching the lovers not to stir up or awaken love until it pleases. For herself, love was awakened under the apple tree, in the imagery of the ancient world, the sweetheart tree.[3]

Three times in this love poem, the young woman has pleaded not to awaken love [Song of Solomon 2:7; 3:5; 8:4]. What we are being told is that there is a right time for love to blossom. Contemporary youth are taught techniques, but Christians are taught to wait for God’s time. The time for romance is different for different people. Romance is not restricted to youth; in fact, it may become most intense with those who are mature.

For the couple in the love poem, the Song of Solomon, love was born in pain and labour, just as the King himself was born in labour pains. The young woman has experienced the pain of insecurity and inferiority which we witness as the poem progresses. Just so, couples experience the pain of unworthiness as they begin to love one another. It is normal as the courtship proceeds for the couple to experience the pain of longing and the fear of unfulfilled love when they are apart. After marriage, the couple in the poem experiences the pain of separation during a time of conflict. All this pain is but the fruitful pain of the birth of their romance. Love is painful.

Those youth who rush into sex will never know the pain which accompanies the birth of romance, but neither can they know the satisfaction and joy which accompanies that romance. Our culture has bought into the lie that technique is a substitute for romance—it is not true nor can it ever be so. There is a sweetness which is unknown to the very young, a sweetness which comes only with shared lives. This is the love which God intended. That is the love which is described in these closing verses of this poem.

Love is Possessive. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm. Keep in mind that this is a love poem. Technically, it is a series of love poems, exulting in love expressed in the marriage relationship. At this point in the poem, we are witnessing the Shulammite as she seeks to be possessed by the King. It is as though the couple is on a second honeymoon and she is seeking his love. How appropriate for a Valentine message!

The fifth verse is difficult to translate. The words are clear, but the meaning is not. What we have are words which may be taken as a double entendre. Listen to the second strophe of the fifth verse as translated in the New International Bible.

Under the apple tree I roused you;

there your mother conceived you,

there she who was in labour gave you birth.

[Song of Solomon 8:5b]

The choir asked who they saw coming up out of the wilderness, leaning on the breast of her beloved. It may be of interest to you to note that this is the only time the verb which is translated leaning occurs in the Old Testament. The use of this verb denotes intimacy and mutual dependence, alluding to what they have been doing in the wilderness.[4]

The woman answers, seeming to implicitly respond to the question. However, her answer does not address the choir, but rather she speaks to her lover. She connects the apple tree to the place of sexual excitement and arousal, as has been evident in other places in this poem [Song of Solomon 2:3, 5; 7:8]. The verb translated awakened may denote any kind of arousal, including sexual excitement, the probable meaning here.[5]

She speaks of the man’s mother in an intimate manner. The thrust of her words is that she stands in the tradition of his mother by making love to her man in the same erotic locale as his mother made love to his father. The emphasis on the place of conception may imply that she hopes to become pregnant.

With this, she gushes out the words of our text to her lover, inviting him to possess her. The seal in view is the seal of ownership and personal identification. We have many such seals or signets from the ancient Middle East. We understand how they were used. Often these seals would be hung on a cord or chain worn around the neck. There, it would be readily available to imprint the ownership to any item of importance. Pressed into soft clay or onto wax, it would leave an imprint identifying two things about whatever was imprinted. First, ownership would be evident as the seal would identify who owned the item, whether a jar or a tablet or even a house if the seal were imprinted on the door. Second, if the seal was unbroken, it would indicate purity. An unbroken seal on a jar containing wine would indicate that it was undiluted and thus pure. An unbroken seal on a legal document would give confidence that it had not been altered.

You will understand, then, than a seal was a most precious possession for an individual. Whoever held a seal would be able to act in behalf of the one to whom the seal belonged. The seal both committed the owner as well as identified the owner.

In the Apocrypha is the book known as The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach. It is also identified as Ecclesiasticus. In that book occurs these words which speak of the value of a seal or a signet. The alms of a man is as a signet with him, and he will keep the good deeds of man as the apple of the eye, and give repentance to his sons and daughters [Ecclesiasticus 17:22]. The saying speaks of God viewing the good deeds of an individual as His signet, the means of identifying that God is at work in that life. I do not suggest that this is to be taken as a Scriptural principle, but I do suggest that we understand that it would have been received as a pious view of the Jewish people from ancient time.

These seals were so precious to individuals that they were often deposited in the tombs of those to whom they had belonged so that the deceased could take them to the afterworld. You will no doubt recall that it was because of Tamar’s acquisition of her father-in-law’s seal that she was spared from being burned alive [Genesis 38:18]. Pharaoh’s seal served to promote Joseph to the post of royal deputy [Genesis 41:42]. The value set on one’s signet is shown in the divine view found in Jeremiah 22:24, 25 and in Haggai 2:23. Read those two passages with me.

As I live, declares the Lord, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off and give you into the hand of those who seek your life, into the hand of those of whom you are afraid, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and into the hand of the Chaldeans.

On that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel my servant, the son of Shealtiel, declares the Lord, and make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the Lord of hosts.

The Shulammite is asking her lover to posses her—to own her. Her request is not to be understood as implying some cheap, commercial transaction. She wants him to willingly give himself to her even as he takes her and ravishes her. She asks that she be set as a seal on his heart and as a seal upon his arm. Taken together, heart and arm signify the whole person.[6] “Hold me. Take me. I am yours,” is what might be said today. The implication is that she gives herself away to him because she is confident that he will reserve his love for her and she is assuring him that she will keep herself for him.

Love cannot grow in an environment where it is diluted through sharing with others. With all due respect, those cultures which have attempted to practise polygamy will never be able to create intimacy. Here is a shocking statistic for you. Among the states listing the highest divorce rates are those states which have the highest number of adherents to the Mormon religion (Utah, Idaho, Nevada).

Divorce rates have been reported and compared on a state-by-state basis in the United States for the past five decades. Utah has had "a higher than average" divorce rate in all but three years, a trend often reported in the media, both local and national. Since about 70 percent of the residents of Utah are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, implications have been made that the divorce rate is high among Latter-day Saints.[7]

Those states of the United States populated with a significant proportion of the population that hold as religious doctrine the plurality of wives have high divorce rates. Could it be that uncertainty of affections creates an atmosphere with decreased intimacy? Mormon theology, instead of creating strong families, destroys families by destroying intimacy! Biblical theology insists upon one wife and one husband in no small measure because it is the perfect environment in which to grow the delicate fruit of intimacy.

Listen to Jesus on this issue. Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate [Matthew 19:4-6].

Here, Jesus cites Genesis 2:24, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Husband and wife are to be one. Whatever else may be meant in these words, they lay the groundwork, as does nothing else for intimacy. The words which follow in the Genesis account make this abundantly clear. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed [Genesis 2:25].

To youthful individuals sharing this service, this is an incredibly vital point. There is an astonishing difference between sex and love. All that is required for sex is raging hormones. Love, on the other hand, will require work. However, the ensuing stability will ensure intimacy and romance unlike anything you could imagine. To the married among us, intimacy is attainable and worthy of our most diligent efforts.

No man will willingly share his lover with another man. No woman will willingly share her lover with another woman. It should go without saying that there is no room for what has come to be known as same-sex relationships—not if we hope to please God. Love is possessive.

Love is Passionate. Love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. The reason the young woman wants her man to possess her is revealed in these words. She boldly asserts that love—her love—is stronger than death. In other words, her love is irresistible, resolute and unshakeable. It is as though she were singing the lyrics:

One way or another, I'm gonna find ya'

I'm gonna get ya', get ya', get ya', get ya'

One way or another, I'm gonna win ya'

I'm gonna get ya', get ya’, get ya', get ya'

One way or another, I'm gonna see ya'

I'm gonna meet ya', meet ya', meet ya', meet ya'[8]

As she continues her speech, she becomes even more specific. Jealousy, in the context of her speech, points to a single-minded devotion to a person or an ideal.[9] Jealousy, in this instance, is not to be seen as negative. Today’s English Version translates this colon, passion is as strong as death itself. This is in keeping with the translation of the New Revised Standard and Revised English Bible. I bring this up because it is probable that the appropriate view is that she is speaking of her passion or ardour (margin of ESV).

There is an aspect of jealousy which must be acknowledged, however. The Bible affirms a proper type of jealousy, which is a desire for another that tolerates no rivals. God, you will recall, is a jealous God. Nahum begins his prophecy with the declaration that The Lord is a jealous and avenging God [Nahum 1:2]. Through Zechariah, God declares His holy jealousy for Jerusalem and for Israel. Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath [Zechariah 8:2].

Consider these opening words from the prophecy of Zechariah. The angel who talked with me said to me, “Cry out, Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion. And I am exceedingly angry with the nations that are at ease; for while I was angry but a little, they furthered the disaster. Therefore, thus says the Lord, I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy; my house shall be built in it, declares the Lord of hosts, and the measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem. Cry out again, Thus says the Lord of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem” [Zechariah 1:14-17].

God states that it is His jealousy which will bring about judgement on the nations [Zephaniah 1:18; 3:8]. Repeatedly, through Ezekiel, God states that it is His jealous wrath which prompts Him to judge the nations opposed to Israel [e.g. Ezekiel 36:5, 6]. Thus, we would conclude that jealousy is permissible in a holy context.

There are only two relationships where jealousy is a potentially appropriate reaction. In the divine-human relationship, God will tolerate no rivals. The standard has been set: you shall have no other gods before me. Even more pertinent to the issue are the words of Exodus 20:4-6. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Man may have only one God. Attempting to worship another triggers God’s jealousy. God’s jealousy is a powerful force which is focused in an attempt to rescue the relationship. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money [Matthew 6:24]. Likewise, the relationship between a man and a woman dictates that they can have but one love between them. Any threat to the marriage relationship demands that jealousy be displayed. Such demonstration is proper and godly.

In this thought lies the relationship between the imagery of marriage and the love of Christ and His church. It is the imagery which Paul advances in the Ephesian letter. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband [Ephesians 5:22-33].

No wise husband would ever give his wife cause for jealousy, but he must know that she has the capacity for jealousy. No wise wife will ever give her husband cause to experience jealousy, but she must know that he is capable of the emotion of jealousy. Each must be utterly committed to the other, and they must communicate their passion for one another through more than mere words.

Just so, the church which will honour Christ will never give Him cause to express His jealous love, for Christians must know that our God is a jealous God. We know that He loves us and that He will never leave us. There is in the letter to the Romans a glorious passage which has often comforted me, and no doubt has comforted many of you. In Romans 8:31-36 Paul lists many threats to our relationship with the Saviour. Having listed these various threats then follows this marvellous conclusion.

In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord [Romans 8:37-39]. Death cannot separate us anymore than life can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The love which Shulammite has for her lover is hot. Longman states that her love is “a ‘god-awful’ flame.”[10] Love demands respect. One must take care with such love. This is not an emotion with which one may trifle. There is danger involved in such love. The love in view in our text is the sensual, erotic love between a husband and wife. It must not be allowed to burn outside the context for which God designed it. This is the basis for the warning found in Hebrews 13:4. Let marriage be held in honour among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

It is vital that the people of God understand that the love of husband and wife is a reflection of the love of God for His people. Recall the tenacious love of God for a recalcitrant Israel in Hosea 11:8, 9.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

How can I make you like Admah?

How can I treat you like Zeboiim?

My heart recoils within me;

my compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my burning anger;

I will not again destroy Ephraim;

for I am God and not a man,

the Holy One in your midst,

and I will not come in wrath.

The passion and ardour of pure, godly love cannot be extinguished. Love continues unquenched. The language at this point in the poem is not unlike the beautiful poetry with which God speaks of His power to keep His own. In Isaiah 43:2, God comforts His people with His powerful promise of divine protection.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

I make the following observation which must be stated openly. The Shulammite does not say that no waters will come, nor does she say that no floods will beat against the house of love. She says such waters cannot quench love and even the floods will be unable to drown love. If I say of a couple, “and they lived happily ever after,” you know it is a fairytale. If I say, “they grew in their love for one another,” you should know that they discovered the spring of joy which waters the garden of love.

One of the pressures facing youth today is that they are unprepared for the floods and the waters since they know only technique. They have not learned resilience or experienced passion as those who have learned to love as God loves.

Occasionally, people speak of a new girlfriend or boyfriend or even a new wife or husband as “the latest flame.” Such language assumes there have been other flames in the past. Evidently, waters were capable of quenching what they mistook for love, or such furious torrents came as to extinguish their flames, or the fire was so weak that it burned out on its own. Real love isn’t like this. Real love is a waterproof torch. Love will persevere even through the adversities which assault every marriage. The love to which God calls His people is a beautiful love built on a persevering flame which burns as brightly at the beginning as it does at the end.

Love is Priceless. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised. “Money can’t buy me love” was the message of John Lennon and Paul McCartney in 1964.[11] Though the Beatles were no doubt ignorant that there is a biblical basis for their assertion, there is a biblical foundation. Not only will wealth prove insufficient to purchase love, but wealth will be scorned if it were offered for real love. Love is too precious to be negotiated with a cheque.

The individual who depends upon wealth to secure love has underestimated its worth. Love cannot be reduced to a commodity which can be bartered or bargained for. Love must be given. Money can buy sex, but money can’t buy love. The bluegrass standard, Satisfied Mind, states the issue well.

Money can't buy back your youth when you're old

or a friend when you're lonely or a love that's grown cold.[12]

To attempt to purchase love is to attempt to reduce a person to an object. To offer money for love is to deny that the one you wish to bargain with is created in the image of God. Thus, to try to buy love is to take away the voluntary choice of an individual to love whom she or he will. It is an attempt to depersonalise the individual. To accept such an offer is to prostitute human dignity and to deny God. Love is priceless.

What is the purpose of this message? It is severalfold. First, I seek to remind those who share in married love just how much they have to look forward to—if they are not now enjoying the fruits of love. This is worth working for. This is worth waiting for.

That leads into a second reason why I deliver this message. To those who are single among us, you need to know that there is a great difference between sex and love. Keep yourself pure and clean so that you need not repent in bitter tears at a later time because you surrendered to your hormones.

Far too many people, especially our youth, have fallen for the satanic lie that they may surrender to their hormones without consequence. If your date expects sex because it was a date, he or she is treating you as a prostitute, treating the date as payment for sex. If as Paul says, he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her [1 Corinthians 6:16], why would you think you are different? To engage in sex without commitment is to prostitute yourself and to ensure that there shall be no intimacy.

The final reason I bring this message is to honour God through reminding you of His great love for His holy bride. Ah, Church of the Living God and Bride of Christ, your Saviour loves you. Jeremiah, speaking on behalf of God addressed ancient Israel. Listen to this promise. I have loved you with an everlasting love [Jeremiah 31:3]. If God loved His ancient people with such love, are you surprised that Christ loves the church every bit as much? Listen once more to Paul’s words to married couples.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband [Ephesians 5:22-33].

Whatever else may be evident in these verses, husbands are to be ravished with the love of their own wives. Wives are to be devoted to their husbands. Together, they create a home—an enclave of Heaven on earth. Just as Christ calls all to life in Himself, so He calls our families to love as He has loved us.

If you are an outsider to grace, you cannot love as God would have you love. Men are incapable of loving as they ought until they have experienced the love of God in Christ the Lord. Likewise, women cannot love with the pure love expected of them until they have known the love of God in Christ. Herein lies the secret of evangelical lovers. They have discovered the love of God and are thus able to love their spouse as they ought. Listen to the Word of God as delivered through the Apostle John.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins [1 John 4:7-11].

Wouldn’t you wish to become such a lover? It begins with obedience to this call. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” [Romans 10:9-13].

Become a lover. Become a lover of mankind. Become a lover of God. Be saved today. Amen.

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[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Ó 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

[2] See Gracie S. Hsu, Abstinence: the new sexual revolution (Vital Signs Ministries–Abstinence: the new sexual revolution), http://www.vitalsignsministries.org/vsmabstinencethenewsexualrev.html

[3] S. Craig Glickman, A Song for Lovers (InterVarsity Press, Wheaton, IL 1976) 95

[4] see Tremper Longman, III, Song of Songs, NICOT (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI 2001) 208

[5] Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, The Anchor Bible (Doubleday, Toronto, ON 1977) 665. For addition insight, consult J. Schreiner, rw[ ‘wr (art.), in G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Volume X (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI 1999) 570

[6] Longman, op. cit., 210

[7] http://www.adherents.com/misc/divorce.html (see also State-by-state divorce rates: http://www.divorcereform.org/94staterates.html

[8] “One Way or Another,” sung by Deborah Harry, Written by N Harrison & D Harry - © EMI Music, Found on the albums Parallel Lines, The Best Of Blondie and Atomic

[9] Longman, op. cit., 211

[10] Longman, op. cit., 213

[11] “Can’t Buy Me Love,” sung by Paul McCartney, Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney - © Northern Songs, Found on the albums The Beatles’ Second Album, A Hard Day’s Night, The Early Beatles, Hey Jude, The Beatles 1962-1966, The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, 20 Greatest Hits, Live at the BBC, Anthology 1, Beatles 1

[12] “Satisfied Mind,” written by Red Hayes and Jack Rhodes, Ó ’54 Starday Music