Song of Songs 8: 6-7
6 Set me as a seal upon your heart,
As a seal upon your arm;
For love is as strong as death,
Jealousy as cruel as the grave;
Its flames are flames of fire,
A most vehement flame.
7 Many waters cannot quench love,
Nor can the floods drown it.
If a man would give for love
All the wealth of his house,
It would be utterly despised.
Dearest Sisters,
That’s the power of love! These verses from Song of Songs contain the most exquisite description of love between a man and his wife. This is not the kind of “wedded bliss” love that we can have here and now, but this love that King Solomon penned by Divine Inspiration is already ours as we await our wedding day to the Prince. Someday my prince will come, indeed! He is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yes, Dear Ones, the love songs of yesterday and today are quite beautiful. I admit, I am a fool for an old romantic musical—especially those that ran first on Broadway and later became movies. I relish watching them—those corny, silly, unrealistic, tear-producing two- hour segments of simplistic songs and trivial dialogue. And they do, to a degree, represent the love that often leads, even idealistically, to marriage. After all, they go together like a horse and carriage!
But sadly, in many marriages, that is the only kind of love that may exist between a husband and wife who have no hope in Jesus Christ, or even desire to know about Him and His love for His Bride. They work like a horse to ride out their marriage in a perishable carriage. Marriage without Christ makes no sense!
But for us who trust in Christ alone for our salvation, whether married or single, we await that glorious Wedding Day when our Heavenly Groom takes us for Himself. He has sealed us over His heart, a heart that once throbbed as He wept over Jerusalem, but now throbs in Heaven for those for whom He died. He wears each of us in our own emblem on His arm, and loves us as we are, sinful now, but sinless when He comes for us, dressed in our brilliant bridal gown, unstained, unwrinkled—but washed in His very own blood!
Christ’s love for us is as strong as death and His love is eternally jealous for us. Oh, I am not speaking about the love we should have for one another, where I Corinthians 13 tells us that love is not jealous. The Song of Songs proclaims the Divine Jealousy that characterizes God Himself when He declares in Exodus 34: 24, for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. Jesus will have us for Himself, and we cannot share ourselves with anything or anyone in this world.
Precious Sisters, He does not stop there to profess His remarkable, unmatchable love for us in our eternal marriage to Him. He says that His love burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Do you remember the burning bush in Exodus 3? This is the same God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who spoke to Moses then, and is speaking to us now. What a great mystery, and yet, so real for us! Please, take a deep breath, and try to consider this kind of marital love that will send sparks flying forever! Imagine a candle lit evening, the most sumptuous dinner for two, music and poetry, His penetrating eyes, His truthful mouth, His breath of life—lasting forever and ever! And our residence will be Our Heavenly Mansion, Heaven, Heaven (no zip code required)!
There is even more good news! No waters—not even floods— can ever quench that flame of love that the Lord Jesus has for us! And no amount of money could have purchased it for us. God Himself gave Christ’s infinite and eternal love to us, by grace. As we await our Groom, let us remember that wonderful verse 8 from Ephesians 2, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
And so, my married and unmarried Sisters, marriage on earth should reflect this exciting, romantic, eternal marriage to Christ Jesus. It should, but it cannot. It cannot because sin gets in the way. It is an ancient sin that began with our first earthly parents in Genesis 3:16, the sin of struggle with one another (…Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. ESV)
Yes, as much as we love the husband God gives us here, and we sincerely strive to submit, to honor and to respect him, we fail him and we fail God. How good it is to remember that we are already forgiven of this sin, that we are called to repent of it and ask God daily to help us look upon our earthly husband as we would Our Eternal One! Ah, now that could really feel like a marriage made in Heaven!
Stay close to Jesus Christ,
Mimi