Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God (With a word to wives from Carolyn Mahaney) (eBook)

CHAPTER ONE: GREAT SEX TO THE GLORY OF GOD

Deeply Satisfying Intimacy Is the Inheritance of Every Christian Couple

Asmile crossed the king’s face as he dipped his quill into the inkwell one last time. With firm, smooth strokes the final lines flowed freely onto the parchment.

Pushing back from his writing desk, he sighed with satisfaction. The project had gone very well. This was some fine work. Rising from the chair and lifting his hands to heaven, Solomon, the son of David, offered thanks to the Lord. Here, complete at last, was his greatest song, one of the most important pieces of writing he had ever done. With satisfaction he lowered his eyes to the finished work spread out before him. Today we call it the Song of Solomon (or the Song of Songs).

It’s about sex.

In his lifetime Solomon would produce three thousand proverbs and more than a thousand songs and hymns. The son of a legendary king, and a great king himself, he would be esteemed in Scripture as the wisest man who had yet lived. And his Song of Songs is nothing less than an explicit and unblushing celebration of sex within marriage.

To Solomon, this may have been simply a deeply personal reflection on love. But really it was much more than that.

Because one day, as we know, it would be counted among the perfect and infallible words of Scripture, inerrantly inspired by the Holy Spirit and intended by God as a primary source of guidance for mankind until the return of the Son.

That’s right, gentlemen. Solomon’s Song of Songs is an entire book of the Bible devoted to the promotion of sexual intimacy within the covenant of marriage. It’s an eight-chapter feast of unbridled, uninhibited, joyous immersion in verbal and physical expressions of passion between a man and a woman.

Not a couple of verses. Not a chapter or two. God didn’t consider that enough. He decided to give us a whole book!

But can the Song of Songs really be about sex? Isn’t the Bible about, well, spiritual stuff?

It sure is. And sexual intimacy within marriage has profound spiritual significance. In fact, in the next chapter we’re going to take a quick look at what the Bible says about marriage. We’ll see that, above all else, marriage is spiritual.

For now, though, let’s put ourselves back in King Solomon’s study. As husbands, we need to be clear about what this book is telling us. And when you want to understand what the Bible really means, you have to start with what the original writer actually meant. So I want us to take a moment to try to see through Solomon’s eyes.

REAL PEOPLE, REAL BODIES

When Solomon was writing his Song, what do you think he had in mind?

The question is important because some Christians see Solomon’s Song as a book of symbolism. Men more godly than I—and a lot smarter—have believed that this book of the Bible, if it’s about marriage at all, is only about marriage in a secondary way. They understand the book primarily as an allegory or as typology. That is, they see all its talk of love and longing as symbolic of the relationship between Christ and the Church or between Christ and the soul of the individual believer.

Maybe that’s how you see Solomon’s Song. If so, please understand—while I don’t share that view, I’m not attacking or ridiculing you or anyone else.

But I am going to take a few sentences to try to persuade you otherwise!

There are five reasons why I think the Song of Songs is exactly what it appears to be: a celebration of marital intimacy.

1) Solomon’s topic was obviously sex. Just consider all the sensual and erotic language in this book! It certainly looks like it’s about physical and emotional passions. It sure seems like this is the story of a real man and a real woman with real human bodies. When Solomon was at his desk writing the Song, do you think he had in mind some symbolic, spiritualized relationship between God and his chosen ones? I don’t.

2) The Bible never suggests that this book isn’t primarily about sex. No New Testament writer (or Old Testament writer, for that matter) suggests that this book, which seems so obviously to be about sex, ought to be understood primarily as an illustration of spiritual realities. This compels me to read Solomon’s Song according to the plain meaning of the words.

3) God’s relationship with man is not sexual. The Song is full of erotic phrases; yet our relationship with God is never portrayed in the Bible as erotic.

The Church certainly is the Bride of Christ. But although the marriage between Christ and his Bride will be many unimaginably wonderful things, it will not involve sexuality.

Will it be extraordinarily and supernaturally intimate? Yes. Infinitely rewarding and fulfilling? Absolutely. But not physically erotic.

When describing our relationship with God, or when communicating our passion for him in prayer or worship, it’s right to use a vocabulary of love. But this language should never include anything erotic. “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth” (John 4:24).

4) Spiritualizing the book doesn’t work. When many of the passages from Solomon’s Song are viewed as symbolic statements, the results can get very strange.

In chapter 1, verse 2, we read, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.” Now that sounds an awful lot like a particular woman saying she wants to be kissed by a particular man. But some commentators say that this verse is actually about a spiritual yearning for the Word of God.

Verse 13 of that chapter says, “My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh that lies between my breasts.” Some commentators find in this passage a reference to Christ appearing between the Old and New Testaments.

Guys, I’m no scholar, but I don’t think so!

Jumping ahead to chapter 7, verse 7, we find, “Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters.” Again, one commentator—a godly and sincere person, I have no doubt—suggests that in this passage “breasts” refers to the nurturing effect that sound biblical teaching has upon the Church.

You know, that idea never occurred to me. When the man says to the woman that her breasts are like fruit on a palm tree, it seems to me he’s talking about . . . her breasts!

Spiritualizing the Song of Solomon just doesn’t make sense. What’s worse, it denies to us the powerful impact that God intends for it to have on our marriages.

5) We need instruction on sexuality. If marriage is immensely important to God (and it is), and if sex is a marvelous gift from God to married couples (which it is), it’s entirely appropriate for God to tell us in Scripture how to understand and enjoy it.

In fact, how could God leave us, his most beloved creatures, on our own when it comes to something as powerful and universal as sexuality? Would he give us such a gift without also giving us guidance? Where is a Christian couple supposed to look for a model of God-glorifying sexuality? If not to Scripture, where? To Hollywood? Pop culture? Pornography?

We must not, cannot take our sexual cues from the sinful impulses of ourselves or others. And we don’t have to. God has not left us in the dark. Scripture illuminates the path of marital intimacy. The Song of Solomon shines brightly, showing us the way to the best sex we can possibly experience.

Guidance . . . on sex? From the God who made us? From he who established marriage as an institution and came up with the whole fantastic idea of sex? Now that is guidance we ought to receive eagerly.

PREPARE TO CELEBRATE

So I trust my point is clear. I don’t believe the Song of Solomon is primarily allegory or typology. I don’t believe it is drama. I do not believe it is an elaborate diary entry. I agree with this perspective offered by the biblical commentator Lloyd Carr: “The lover and the beloved are just ordinary people.”1

Tom Gledhill, in his commentary, puts it this way: “The two lovers are Everyman and Everywoman.”2 That’s encouraging. The Song’s about your marriage and mine. These eight chapters of Scripture can speak to us and, in doing so, make a dramatic difference in our lives, for the glory of God.

PASSION UNDEFILED

There are a few experiences in this life that seem to me to have been undiminished by that first sin in the Garden of Eden. Lobster with melted butter comes to mind. So does chocolate. But at the top of the list is having sex with my wife. When I am making love to Carolyn, it’s difficult for me to imagine that Adam and Eve, prior to the Fall, ever had a better time than we can have right here in the twenty-first century.

Maybe they did have a better time; I’m not sure. But I am sure that sex itself, in the context of marriage, is not sinful.

Because sex outside of marriage is so clearly sinful, it’s easy to imagine that the purity of sex within marriage must also have been tarnished—at least a little—by the Fall. But it hasn’t. Not in the slightest. Man in his sinfulness may distort it, but in the context of marriage, sex itself remains an unblemished, untainted gift from God.

When we are told that “the marriage bed,” an obvious reference to sexuality, is to be “undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4), we’re reminded that sex in marriage is intended by God to...