The Love of God

Readings for today: Song of Solomon 5-8, Psalms 12

There is nothing like the love of God. No force in the universe is as powerful. Not gravity. Not electromagnetism. Not the strong or weak nuclear forces that hold together the atom. Not the laws of quantum physics or thermodynamics. God’s love is the connective tissue that holds all space and time and matter together. It is the animating force for all of life. Everything that has breath. Everything that crawls on the earth or swims in the sea or flies in the air. Every person on earth. All of it held together by the love of God. God’s love is the operating system of all of life. It is both the hardware and the software off which everything runs. It operates in the background and the foreground. It is both tangible and intangible. Concrete and incorporeal. Expressive and ineffable. And there may not be a better description of it than what’s written here at the end of the Song of Solomon…

“Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death; jealousy is as unrelenting as Sheol. Love’s flames are fiery flames  — an almighty flame! A huge torrent cannot extinguish love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If a man were to give all his wealth for love, it would be utterly scorned.” (Song of Songs‬ ‭8‬:‭6‬-‭7‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

Imagine how your life would change if you truly believed and walked in the love described here by Solomon. Imagine if you believed God had set you as a seal on His heart and arm. Imagine if you believed God’s love for you transcended death and Hades. Imagine if you believed God’s love for you was fierce and jealous. Imagine you believed God’s love for you could never be lost or expire or be extinguished, no matter what you said or did. Imagine if you believed God’s love could not be bought or earned but was a gift of grace. How would it change your life? How would it change how you lived? How would it change the relationships in your life? How would it change how you spent your time and money and energy? Imagine how different things would be for you if you tapped into this unquenchable, inexhaustible love every single day?

Readings for tomorrow: Jeremiah 1-3, Psalms 13 (No devotionals on Sundays)

Relationship with God

Readings for today: Song of Solomon 1-4, Psalms 11

For centuries, both Jewish and Christian interpreters of the Song of Solomon understood it as an allegorical poem depicting the love God has for His people. A love that is deep and intimate. A love that is stronger than death. Perhaps this is why the Song of Solomon is read during Passover each year. Passover is the celebration of the seminal event in Israel’s history, the deliverance of Israel from bondage in Egypt. Because of His steadfast, faithful, covenantal love, God acted within human history to set His people free. We celebrate a similar act of salvation at the Lord’s Table which is why some Christian traditions read the Song of Solomon whenever they eat the bread and drink the cup. They are honoring the God’s eternal, unchangeable, relentless love for His people. A love that will never let us go. A love that holds us together when everything else in this world is tearing us apart.

Yes, I know it sounds strange to our 21st century, post-modern, Western ears. We read the Song of Solomon and almost blush at the graphic imagery. We are uncomfortable with the sexual connotations and struggle to understand how this book could depict anything other than the erotic love a man has for a woman. It feels almost unholy to suggest otherwise. But this attitude only serves to underscore how little we understand about the love of God and the kind of relationship God wants with us. God wants a relationship that is deep and intimate with His people. He wants us to look forward with anticipation to the time we get to spend with Him. He wants us to be filled with longing for His presence in our lives. He wants us to search for Him earnestly until we find Him. Listen again to the words of the poem…

“Oh, that he would kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your caresses are more delightful than wine. The fragrance of your perfume is intoxicating; your name is perfume poured out. No wonder young women adore you. Take me with you  — let’s hurry. Oh, that the king would bring me to his chambers.” (Song of Songs‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬-‭4‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

“Listen! My love is approaching. Look! Here he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. My love is like a gazelle or a young stag. See, he is standing behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice. My love calls to me: Arise, my darling. Come away, my beautiful one.” (Song of Songs‬ ‭2‬:‭8‬-‭10‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

“In my bed at night I sought the one I love; I sought him, but did not find him. I will arise now and go about the city, through the streets and the plazas. I will seek the one I love. I sought him, but did not find him. The guards who go about the city found me. I asked them, “Have you seen the one I love?” I had just passed them when I found the one I love. I held on to him and would not let him go until I brought him to my mother’s house  — to the chamber of the one who conceived me.” (Song of Songs‬ ‭3‬:‭1‬-‭4‬ ‭CSB)

Doesn’t it change how you hear it? How you read it? How you understand it? With this frame of mind, listen to how God describes His beloved. How He describes His people. How He describes you and me.

“I compare you, my darling, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots. Your cheeks are beautiful with jewelry, your neck with its necklace…How beautiful you are, my darling. How very beautiful! Your eyes are doves.” (Song of Songs‬ ‭1‬:‭9‬-‭10‬, ‭15‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

“Arise, my darling. Come away, my beautiful one. For now the winter is past; the rain has ended and gone away. The blossoms appear in the countryside. The time of singing has come, and the turtledove’s cooing is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs; the blossoming vines give off their fragrance. Arise, my darling. Come away, my beautiful one. My dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crevices of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.” (Song of Songs‬ ‭2‬:‭10‬-‭14‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

“You are absolutely beautiful, my darling; there is no imperfection in you.” (Song of Songs‬ ‭4‬:‭7‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

Imagine how it would change you if you truly believed these things about yourself. Imagine how it would change you if you truly saw yourself as God sees you. Beautiful. Perfect. Beloved. Can you not see why God desires to have a relationship with you? Why He takes great delight in you? Why He has lavished on you every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places? God is deeply in love with you. He is eternally committed to you. He will never leave you or forsake you. He has your name graven on His hand and written on His heart and He will not rest until you, His beloved, turns and embraces Him with all your heart.

Readings for tomorrow: Song of Solomon 5-8, Psalms 12

Union with Christ

Readings for today: Song of Songs 5:2-8:14, Psalm 45

“I am my lover’s and my lover is mine.” It’s perhaps the most beautiful expression of the oneness Christ desires for us in all the Scriptures. It speaks to the depth of the intimate relationship God desires to have with us. It speaks the union God wants with His people. Nothing held back. Nothing coming between them. All barriers coming down. All walls torn down.

Union with Christ is the “central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation” according to John Murray. You see it reflected in the number of times the Apostle Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” in his letters. 216 occurrences in the Pauline Epistles and 26 times in the Johannine literature. It conveys a wide range of meaning from the righteousness of Christ imputed to believers to the spiritual nourishment we receive from Christ day by day to the life of Christ that manifests itself in our lives as we grow in faith over the years. John Calvin taught that union with Christ was the basis for our justification and sanctification as nothing can happen apart from our relationship with Him.

The Song of Songs speaks to the experience of our union with Christ not just the theological principle. It speaks to the heart rather than the head. It communicates emotion and desire and seeks to awaken in us a deep longing for Christ, the lover of our souls. It’s one of the reasons the Song of Songs was read historically by the church as they prepared to come to the Lord’s Table. Similarly, it is considered one of the festal scrolls by the Jews for Passover. While it may have meaning for the relationship between a man and a woman, the deeper allegorical meaning relates to Christ’s relationship to His people.

God wants us to both know Him and experience Him. He wants to dwell in both our heads and our hearts. He longs for us to walk with Him in the cool of the day as He once did with Adam and Eve. He longs to reveal Himself to us in the day to day. As we reflect and pray over the words from the Song today, ask the Holy Spirit to give you a greater awareness of God’s abiding presence in your life. Ask the Spirit to give you a greater experience of the deep, deep love of the Father and the sacrificial love of the Son. Ask the Spirit to give you the eyes to see and the heart to understand the beauty and wonder and awe of the Triune God.

Readings for tomorrow: Proverbs 1-4

Intimacy with God

Readings for today: Song of Solomon 1:1-5:1

The Song of Solomon is one of the most difficult and least understood books in all of Scripture. It’s one we tend to avoid in our sex-saturated culture. The language is far too intimate. The imagery too graphic. We won’t allow ourselves to even picture it much less reflect on how the Spirit might speak to us through it. We flip through the pages as fast as we can to get to the end so we can avoid any embarrassment. We’re not alone, of course. Our Orthodox Jewish friends have a tradition that men should not read this book until they are at least 30 years old. The early church fathers advised a similar practice. Both traditions speak to a healthy respect for the power of sexual desire and want to make sure it is not stirred up before the appropriate time.

So what is this book all about? The love for a man and a woman? The love of God for His church? Perhaps both? Are we comfortable thinking about our relationship with God in sexually intimate terms? Is that a bridge too far? For my part, I believe this book invites us to approach God in the most intimate of ways. The language of the Song is designed to arouse. It’s meant to touch the deepest places of our hearts. It’s breathed out by God in order to draw us into His intimate embrace.

Our inability to embrace this book reveals how corrupt our understanding of human sexuality has become. Generally speaking, we see sex as dirty yet pleasurable. Something to be enjoyed and yet something to be feared. Our culture boasts of sexual freedom and yet is shocked when such freedom leads to abuse and violence. If there’s anything the #MeToo movement taught us is that our sexual appetites are almost impossible to satisfy. Sexuality without restraint is incredibly destructive and traumatic to all parties involved. There simply is no way to reduce it to a biological act or a simple exchange of fluids. Sex just doesn’t work that way.

Sex is God’s creation. Sexual desire is something He instilled within each of us. Now I am fully aware there are those who do not experience sexual desire just as I am aware there are those who experience an addiction to sexual desire. Both of these conditions - along with many others - are products of the Fall when the sexual desires of human beings became disordered and God’s original design for sex became corrupt. Originally, God designed sex to be the ultimate experience of “knowing.” A way for us to express our deepest affections. Our deepest emotions. Our deepest vulnerabilities. When the Bible talks about “knowing” another person, it often uses the most sexually intimate of terms. The same is true for “knowing” God. And such knowledge is designed to be experienced within the safety of a covenant relationship. A covenant relationship with Jesus or a covenant relationship of marriage between a man and a woman.  

Viewed from this angle, is it possible to read this song as a prayer? A way to express the deepest desires of our hearts to God? A way for us to ask for deeper intimacy with Him? Or, does the brokenness of the human experience of sexuality warp our thinking? Does it corrupt how we understand this most powerful and primal of drives? Does it poison this well and thus prevent us from fully grasping the depth of relationship God desires to have with us? There’s a reason Christ calls the church His “bride.” There’s a reason God so often refers to Himself in the Old Testament as a “husband” and Israel as his “wife.” Marriage is the place where a man and a woman become “one flesh” before the Lord and it is designed to point beyond itself to something even greater...the “oneness” God desires to have with His people for all eternity.  

Readings for tomorrow: None