CHAPTER THREE

COURTSHIP: AN OLD IDEA REVIVED

When I began dating my now-wife, Lauren, I lived in Abilene, Texas, and she lived in Longview—about five and a half hours apart by car. At that time I worked at a church, was in school full-time, and traveled occasionally for speaking engagements. On a typical weekend, I would finish speaking Friday night around eleven o’clock, get in my car, and drive to Longview. I’d arrive at the house of Lauren’s parents sometime in the early morning, sleep for a few hours, then wake up, spend time with Lauren through lunch, get back in my car, and drive home to Abilene so that I could be at church Sunday morning. I did this for a year.

It was not a very healthy or convenient schedule. But it never felt crazy to me—never. Looking back on it now, though, I think, Man, that girl had some voodoo on me or something. I was in the car fourteen to sixteen hours in a thirty-eight-hour period every week just to spend four or five hours with her.

Solomon and the woman he loved were in a very similar stage in their relationship. We see this in chapter 2, verse 8: “The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills.”

There was excitement in her voice about the way Solomon treated her. He couldn’t get enough of her. Every spare moment he had was spent making his way to her.

This was beyond infatuation, beyond puppy love and initial attraction. There was magnetism here. “This just might be it. I think this person is ‘the one.’”

Before I met Lauren, I was always the guy who thought, Is there really a woman out there who’ll get to know the real me and still say, “Yeah, I’ll spend the rest of my life with you”? I had serious doubts about whether that woman really existed. And then all of a sudden, I met her. The kind of excitement that resulted was the kind that had me driving long distances for long periods of time as often as I could, and I never felt bothered at all by it. In fact, I felt eager and energized at the prospect. That’s different from the kind of excitement I had being merely infatuated by a girl.

When you enter the “I think this is ‘the one’” territory, you will leap over mountains and bound over hills to be with each other. Part of that excitement and eagerness is about more than “hanging out.” It becomes more and more about “sorting out.” When the excitement in a relationship moves beyond the fun of the here and now into the realm of being together for life, you start having deeper conversations—marriage conversations. Not all of these discussions are easy to have. Some can be very difficult. But when the dating stage begins to get more serious, there is no longer an avoidance of the difficult stuff. A couple will begin having conversations in categories such as these:

• The Past—What was her upbringing like? What events have shaped her, influenced her, helped her grow, or frustrated her growth? What sins were hardest to repent of?

• The Present—What are his ongoing struggles? How does he handle daily stresses? Who holds him accountable, and who is accountable for his spiritual growth? What does he fear?

• Hopes—What does she want for herself and her future spouse and family? What does she want for her church? What is her sense of God’s mission in the world and her place in it?

• Dreams—What fulfills him? Where does he see himself in the future? What is his vision for your relationship?

• Wounds—What baggage is she carrying? What sins committed against her are still difficult to recover from? Who has hurt her, and how? What still haunts her?

This is why I say the excitement at this stage in the relationship is not simply about attraction and hanging out. It is the excitement about the prospect of beginning a real life together. That decision has not necessarily been made yet, but the potential is there and agreed upon by both parties. Others have confirmed you have potential to be together, and so the conversations you have become less about getting to know each other and more about understanding each other. This is a period before official engagement but more serious than merely dating. This is the stage I would call “courtship.”

The Seriousness of Courtship

Tommy Nelson defined courtship as “the time when you begin to date one person exclusively, frequently, and with the purpose of determining if this is the person with whom you truly want to spend the rest of your life.”11 Joshua Harris said it is “that special season in a romance when a man and woman are seriously weighing the possibility of marriage.”2

What we see in Song of Solomon 2:8–9 is that Solomon got to know what made this woman tick, and he was fired up about knowing her on this deeper level. The zeal of the initial attraction was still there, but it was fueled by a deeper fire: “My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice” (v. 9).

Okay, I know this sounds a bit creeper-ish. Guys, don’t take the literal reading of this text into your application, all right? This is not a license to stalk a woman. This is a poetic description of something much more appropriate, and it continues in verses 10–13:

My beloved speaks and says to me:

“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,

and come away,

for behold, the winter is past;

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth,

the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove

is heard in our land.

The fig tree ripens its figs,

and the vines are in blossom;

they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my beautiful one,

and come away.”

First of all, he was not literally peeking through her window to watch her. Instead, what is meant by his standing behind the wall, gazing through the window, and looking through the lattice is that, although his relational position to her was still outside the covenant of marriage, he nevertheless saw beneath the surface. He took stock of her interior life, saw beneath the relational facades, and considered the parts of her she kept hidden.

These verses, then, reveal that she knew he was not running away. Instead, he held out hope to her. “The winter is past; the rain is over” in verse 11 speaks to his optimism about their life together, despite the more difficult things he learned in the deepening of their romance. This is why in verse 14 he said this: “O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.”

One reason he is described as peering through the lattice to consider her interior life is that she was still dealing with some insecurity. It is even possible that something came up as they grew in intimacy that caused her to hide. Some kind of information came to light, something in the past reared its head, and it disrupted the romantic euphoria.

But whatever the issue, it didn’t dissuade Solomon. He did not pull away; he continued to pursue. She was perhaps still dealing with insecurity, and he was respectful of her feelings so as not to burden her or to pry, but he demonstrated the authenticity of the gospel of grace by refusing to distance himself. He drew nearer.

“Let me see your face,” he’s saying. “Talk to me. I’m still here. I’m not going to leave. You can tell me anything. I’m still bowled over by you.”

Isn’t it a deeply satisfying and steadying thing when someone gets a glimpse of our “crazy” and basically says, “I’m not going anywhere”?

This kind of response to less-than-perfect is the greatest indicator that a couple has moved beyond the recreational, curious dating stage and into courtship. It is the first great indicator that they are preparing for a life together; things have gotten substantively serious. If someone is willing at this early stage, before the lifelong covenantal commitment has been made, to cover guilt, shame, hurt, or other difficulty with grace, it is a reasonably hopeful sign that he or she will continue to do so after the commitment is made. And as the relationship moves into the deepening seriousness of courtship, this grace will continue to be tested.

Sorting Through Your Issues

In the courtship stage, a couple must have conversations about his and her pasts. Back in those days for Lauren and me, we began many conversations with “Here’s what you need to know about me …” “Here’s what you need to know about my background …” “Here are some things that happened to me growing up that have left marks on me …” “These are the reasons I act this way …” “These are the reasons certain things bother me …”

We had a lot of questions for each other, and we had a lot of insights about ourselves to share.

This kind of openness obviously creates a risky season in the relationship. But as the relationship progresses—and remember, we’ve already established safety with each other; we already trust each other—we enter that season when we describe our lives with depth and sincerity reserved only for those who know us most closely.

“Here are my concerns …” “Here’s where I’m growing …” “Here’s where I’m afraid …” “Here’s where I’m struggling …” The conversation is growing in depth, growing in meaning. There is more honesty. There is more risk. There is more willingness to expose our hearts, even though we know that it could still go bad. We’re not covenanted yet, and we haven’t fully locked in. We haven’t said, “Till death do us part.” We haven’t said, “For better or for worse.” But we are moving toward saying those sacred words.

This is why courtship is deeper than dating—because it is dangerous, vulnerable, and awesome all at the same time. We are testing the waters of grace, trying to see if the attraction is evidencing real love, the kind of selfless love the Bible calls married couples to embrace. And precisely because in courtship we show more of our hearts to each other, including the darker parts, courtship can go badly.

My wife and I are dear friends with a single woman who cannot have children. It’s just not physiologically possible. Revealing this about herself is part of a conversation in her relationships as they get more serious, and there have been men who walked away because it’s something they can’t see themselves getting over. As you can imagine, this is extremely hurtful and disappointing to our friend. But she knows she has to bring it up, as risky as the conversation is, as things get more serious.

Obviously, sharing this kind of issue puts a person in a very vulnerable position, but to “save” it until after he or she gets married can make both feel even more vulnerable. It can provoke a feeling of betrayal. Issues like this must be addressed before a lifelong commitment is made so that no one feels misled.

And as painful as it can be to have people confront the reality of your issues only to walk away, imagine how confidence building and hope giving it will be when you enter marriage with one who has confronted the reality of your issues and says, “I’m all in. Nothing could stop me from marrying you.”

When I was dating Lauren, I had a developing sense of God’s calling on my life to serve him in ministry, and it was getting stronger and stronger. In my head, as I considered what this kind of service would entail, I assumed that if we got married, we were going to be broke. And I was thinking God could call us to go overseas. I was thinking that he could send me anywhere to do anything and require me to give up all sorts of things to do it, and I certainly wasn’t going to hide any of these thoughts from the one considering spending the rest of her life with me.

We had that conversation at a Chili’s restaurant in Longview. It wasn’t a very romantic location, of course, but I just put it all out on the table. I said, “Here’s where I think the Lord is taking me …” “Here’s what he is calling me into …” “I don’t know how this is going to end, but I need to go. Despite all the uncertainty and the risk, can you come along?”

I’m glad we had that conversation, because I made three transitions before I became the pastor of The Village Church, each of which was at a smaller place and for less money. Lauren knew those kinds of transitions were possible, though, because we had that conversation before we even got married.

Each time I felt the Holy Spirit leading me to consider a smaller ministry and a smaller paycheck, I’d lay it out in front of her and say, “Let’s pray about this together. If I sense this is where God wants us to be, can you follow?”

These are the kinds of conversations that you have when you are in courtship. In this stage it’s also time to have a conversation about your wounds, about where you’ve been deeply hurt, whether you were abused or underwent another kind of trauma that makes trust difficult for you. Most of these things will have already started to reveal themselves in your relationship by the time you get to courtship, but now is the time to discuss them. You’ve probably seen some crazy and wondered what to do with it. It hasn’t been enough to make you want to hit eject, but you have thought, Well, that was weird. Maybe you can’t think of an explanation for what happened; maybe the behavior seemed sudden or out of character. In courtship, you’ve got to sort those things out, though.

Ask questions such as the following: “Where did that come from?” “Why did you do that?” “What were you feeling and thinking when you reacted that way?” “How can I help you?”

Your significant other may retreat in response, so it’s important to stay tender, to stay patient, because his or her inclination to open up to you will largely depend on how kind and gracious you are. She may be used to people glimpsing at her emotional dysfunctions and bailing. So it may be difficult for her to trust you won’t do the same. Or it could be that nobody has ever even asked her about these things! Maybe she’s surprised by the interest and unsettled by it.

Many of us are wounded and don’t even realize it. Others of us know we’ve had moments that marked us, but we haven’t fully grasped the damage. Some wounds won’t even come out until later, after becoming married. But as much as we are able, before marriage, we must have these conversations.

One thing I learned about myself is this: I desperately wanted to earn the approval of my father. And I found it to be impossible. I just couldn’t do it, and that marked me. It embedded in me a terrible insecurity, and that insecurity at times caused me to act like an idiot with Lauren. I’d get frustrated and angry, and it all came out of this “father wound” I was carrying around. If you’re familiar with my ministry, you might appreciate my sarcasm and wit, but let me tell you: it’s a nightmare when I’m operating out of insecurity. I can cut deep.

In courtship you see each other’s wounds, and you also see how you each respond to woundedness. In my life, as things are revealed about me that I wish weren’t true, my natural desire is to hide, to not let these things be seen.

In courtship we have conversations about our wounds as best as we understand them. We end up providing insights into ourselves that make our partners either run away or draw nearer. Solomon was a man of God, and he was being called into a relationship of true love for his partner, so he chose the latter.

He was operating under the banner of the kind of love that doesn’t leave (see 2:4). The Hebrew word for “love” in Song of Solomon 2:4 is ahava, which describes “love of the will.” It’s the “I’m not going anywhere” kind of love. It’s the love that says, “I’ve seen the crazy, and I’m going to stick around.”

Courtship reveals the presence or lack of ahava. Because, as we’ve said before, isn’t everybody on his or her best behavior the first few months of dating? But as we move into courtship, the guard comes down a little. The couple are more relaxed with each other, more at home with each other, so their real selves are coming through.

Solomon peered through the lattice; he’s seen her malfunctions. He’s made a note to himself: “Okay, that’s going to come up again.” Right? He thought, We’re going to be dealing with that one for a while.

But he didn’t run.

Look at chapter 2, verse 15: “Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.” The little foxes are representative of their recurring issues.

In courtship, all of a sudden the “little foxes” start coming out, and instead of ignoring them and trying to pretend like they’re not there, you work through them together and sort them out. They will ruin the vineyard of your relationship if you don’t work together to catch them before they do serious damage.

I’m always worried about people who don’t think there are issues to deal with at the levels of courtship and engagement. Have you ever met these people? They are so infatuated with the romance that they forget they’re in relationship with a sinner. They especially forget that their partner is in a relationship with a sinner. I’m always telling people at The Village, “Look, marriage is difficult,” and I’ve got about two thousand engaged couples out there in the congregation looking at each other saying, “Not us, baby, not us. It won’t be that way for us.” Because when you’re young and in love, you’re kind of oblivious to the storm of dysfunction lying in wait for you.

You’ve got to start opening up, start being honest with yourself and with each other. Solomon and his woman were honest enough to admit, “Hey, we’ve got issues.” They had a vineyard full of little foxes eating away at their ability to walk in intimacy, eating away at their ability to communicate effectively, eating away at their ability to trust God. But they were committed early on in the courtship stage to catch the foxes before they did too much damage.

Notice the perspective of the statement in Song of Solomon 2:15: “Catch the foxes for us.” There is an implication of third-party help. They asked for help together, possibly from someone else who loves them. By way of application, I would strongly recommend for every couple in courtship, as you come across the “little foxes,” ask for outside help. For some couples, this may mean simply seeking out good premarital counseling. For others, it may mean more intensive gospel-centered counseling individually and as a couple. It certainly means engaging in a discipleship relationship and submitting to spiritual leaders in the church and family.

If you are in a courtship, you’re considering uniting with someone for the rest of your life. Why not seek help? Why not ask a wise, godly third party to peek through the lattice too, to consider your interior lives and relationship dynamics and help you navigate with wisdom and godliness through the potential difficulties ahead?

The couple in this Song was doing that. They were prayerfully working through deep heart issues, and part of that meant they were asking for third-party help.

The result for them was continued affirmation of ahava love. “My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies. Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on cleft mountains” (vv. 16–17). Through all of this consideration, he continued to pursue her.

It probably bears mentioning here that when I talk about navigating hard issues and continuing to pursue, I am not recommending (to women in particular) that you seek to be the savior of a violent person. That’s not your job. You don’t need to put your body on the altar of an abusive person’s redemption. Christ has done that.

I know that often this is where third-party help is most important. It unfortunately often takes a third party to counsel victims away from offenders. So I want to be clear about this: If you’re in an abusive relationship—whether it’s physical or sexual or verbal or spiritual—you need to get out and get help. If you’re being victimized, tell the police. Talk to your pastor or elders. Talk to a counselor. But don’t think it will get better on its own, and don’t think that showing grace means subjecting yourself to abuse. That’s not ahava love.

Nevertheless, in courtship, ahava is affirmed through the joint confrontation and consideration of all the dark spots hidden in the heart. If you don’t sense ahava is there in your partner for your imperfections, it’s a sign that it’s probably time to move apart rather than forward. Once in college, I was sitting on my balcony with a dear friend on the night before his wedding, and he said, “Man, this is a mistake.”

I said, “Hey, brother, you should cancel this thing.”

And he replied with, “Well, her dress cost this, and the dinner cost that.”

And I said, “You can’t get married because you spent money on a wedding. You should cancel it.”

He protested further. “No, we’ll work at it.”

So I asked him why he said it was a mistake, and he went deep into the dynamics of their relationship and outlined many deficiencies and incompatibilities.

“We don’t know what to talk about anymore, we’re not connecting on any real level, and I think we’ve both just thought that if we just get married, these things will work themselves out.”

I have to tell you that if in the course of courtship you hit this same ceiling, it is not wise to keep walking together. If, as issues come up, you can’t graciously sort through them together and commit to bold love of each other despite them, then you probably shouldn’t press on to engagement and marriage.

Moving Toward the Covenant

When a relationship deepens, weaknesses come to light, and heart-level issues are raised, many couples pretend those issues aren’t there. They turn to something to mask the pain and to help them avoid dealing with the growing seriousness of the relationship. They may medicate with sexual intimacy, getting more and more physical until there’s no longer any real conversation at all. Or they may spend most of their time in passive activity—outdoor stuff that involves no opportunity for talking or indoor activities such as watching movies. Medicating away the difficulty and avoiding it provide an illusion of intimacy because a couple is spending time together and remaining physically connected. However, it is a false sense of intimacy because it is outside the biblical boundaries for a couple in this stage. People in this situation aren’t really learning about one another anymore; mostly, they’re just using each other, pretending to be adults, trying to do adult stuff, including the stuff that comes with the privilege of the marriage covenant without actually making the commitment and doing the real work of a relationship. The results are absolutely devastating.

Solomon and the Shulammite woman realized this is a real danger. They realized, “Hey, we’ve got issues we need to work through. Before we’re free to turn on the physical side of our relationship, let’s pull back on the reins.” They wanted to make sure growth was in place so they didn’t wind up using and hurting one another.

The trajectory they followed was sound for them, and it remains spiritually and therefore relationally sound for us today. They respected each other, cared for each other, spent time getting to know each other, and ministered to one another. They sought outside counsel. They were submissive to God’s Word. When difficult things came up, they persevered through them and committed to bring grace at each place of tenderness.

So the relationship kept moving forward, and the second chapter of the Song of Solomon ends like this: “My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies. Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on cleft mountains” (vv. 16–17).

Here’s what happened: Specifically on her part, there was deepening trust for Solomon because as issues arose, he didn’t run but instead said, “Let’s deal with them.” He didn’t medicate; he didn’t try to take advantage of her when she felt weak and vulnerable. They slowed things down, they worked through their issues, and look how she responded:

On my bed by night

I sought him whom my soul loves;

I sought him, but found him not.

I will rise now and go about the city,

in the streets and in the squares;

I will seek him whom my soul loves.

I sought him, but found him not.

The watchmen found me

as they went about in the city.

“Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”

Scarcely had I passed them

when I found him whom my soul loves.

I held him, and would not let him go

until I had brought him into my mother’s house,

and into the chamber of her who conceived me. (3:1–4)

Her desire for him continued to be kindled. She longed to be with him and dreamed of him. And then? She brought him home to meet Mom. “I … would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother’s house.”

Ideally, even for adult-aged couples living on their own, as the relationship becomes more serious, they should meet each other’s parents, if possible. In this stage of courtship, time with each other’s parents has a greater seriousness. Mom and Dad are considering the inclusion of a new son or daughter to the family. When you marry someone, you are joining his or her family, so beginning to experience family life together becomes more important.

This is a necessary step in courtship, and it’s something that must be ongoing, assuming you don’t live so far away that it’s impossible. Time with family is also about more than getting to know each other. On the role of parents in courtship, John Thomas wrote:

[It’s] much more than just saying, “We bless this relationship.” It’s offering guidance, within proper boundaries, and modeling the kind of relationship you’d like to see your children experience. It’s helping them avoid the pitfalls you have experienced or seen others experience. It’s cheering them on and helping them gain confidence as they navigate new waters.

As for specifics, think about what you wish someone had asked you, now that you have the benefit of hindsight. Ask him some questions that get him thinking, like, “What is it about our daughter that attracts you to her? What are some of the qualities you admire most about her? What do you hope to accomplish or discover during the courtship season? What steps will you take to seek God’s guidance through this season? What are the things you are looking for to confirm that she is who you want to spend the rest of your life with? How will you be held accountable for purity during this season?”

His answers to those thought-provoking questions should give you a fairly good idea of his seriousness, and at the very least it will get him thinking about things that matter. And yes, you should make sure your daughter is on board, and that she too is being asked some of the same questions.3

In courtship, a couple are moving more and more toward entering the covenant of marriage, even if they are not engaged yet. In a weird way, they are perhaps “engaged to be engaged.” In any event, the idea of marriage becomes a growing reality ahead of them, and because biblically speaking, marriage is a covenant between two people in the grace of God in Christ, it necessarily has the communal context of church and family. The reason Christians get married “before the church” is not to give a religious appearance to the ceremony but because Christians hold the marriage covenant in the context of the community of the body of Christ. Seeking the support and counsel of family is an extension of this.

I know this kind of family involvement can be difficult for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which may be because many young Christian couples come from non-Christian families. But as much as you are able, ground your marriage in the greater fabric of family life and legacy because it can strengthen your relationship, increase your wisdom, and enhance the sense that you are part of something greater than yourselves.

The church context is also important. A couple seeking to do married life apart from the teaching, discipleship, community, and grace of a local church is making things much harder than they have to be. Yes, your relationship is yours. You are not going to be married to anyone but your future spouse. But your marriage does not exist in a vacuum. Because marriage is meant to reflect the great sacrificial and sanctifying love Christ has for his church, it makes sense to connect your married life to a local Christian congregation.

When a couple are making an effort to take these steps in courtship, they are making it more obvious that they are ready to enter the covenant of marriage.

Dealing (Still) with Growing Sexual Desire

After our gal has brought Solomon home to meet Mom, we come to this refrain: “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases” (3:5).

Now, that sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? We’ve heard this before. Twice, as this relationship grew to another level, this young woman pleaded for things not to get overly physical.

We’re going to keep coming back to this because the reality of sexuality is all over the Song of Solomon. Some commentators have noted that the Song is primarily a manual to sexual intimacy. While their emphasis may be a little heavy, they aren’t necessarily mis­reading the sexual resonance throughout the entire song.

This recurring refrain—“do not awaken love until it pleases” (or “until it’s time”)—is a reminder that for our sexually interested couple, only the covenant of marriage will sanctify sexual consummation.

If you are in a growing romantic relationship, you should read this text as directly applicable to you. The woman is pleading with you. Don’t let your relationship get too physical.

When you remove the relational element of sex—even if you’re married—and sex becomes just physical, what you’ve done is undercut the ability to create and nurture genuine, legitimate intimacy. Sex becomes this weird pill you can take that makes you feel intimate with one another but actually facilitates the opposite of intimacy.

Have you ever wondered why every magazine in the grocery store checkout line has an article on sex that always has something to do with technique?

“Nine Ways to Be a Better Lover,” “Seven Spots She Wishes You Would Touch”—that kind of thing. Why are the magazines always pushing technique? Well, if you’re having sex with different men or women and it doesn’t bring you lasting joy or fulfillment, the only hope you have for intimacy and sexual fulfillment is to improve your technique. “And maybe, just maybe,” the magazines implicitly promise, “if you become a better lover, then this aching in your soul will go away. Maybe if you become a better lover, you’ll be satisfied.”

Incidentally, this is why porn is unbelievably devastating. It holds out an ever-increasing promise of satisfaction while simultaneously, gradually removing the ability to be intimate. Porn makes sex purely physical, and when it becomes purely physical, it loses the glory God has designed it to have. You lose that glory even in marriage when sex becomes purely about the physical act of intercourse, and you certainly forfeit this glory when you engage in sex outside of marriage. Sex outside of marriage is deliberate disobedience of God’s commands, which are for your good, and therefore it is a deliberate forfeiture of your own spiritual well-being, as well as your own sexual well-being!

The repeated warning in Song of Solomon 3:5 is well-timed, because the good desire for physical intimacy will likely only grow as a couple approaches marriage. Even as a couple nears the commitment, the temptation can become greater to begin “bending” some rules, assuming that the intention to commit authorizes some things and blurs some lines. The pull toward physical intimacy will feel almost overpowering at the courtship stage, and the lie that “We are going to get married anyway” will be one that must be addressed and confessed often.

This temptation is one that anyone who has been married and spent a considerable time engaged is familiar with. Maybe they suppressed it, maybe they fought it, but it certainly came up. The longer the engagement lasts, or the closer the wedding day comes, the greater the temptation becomes. “Hey, we’re only two weeks out. What’s two weeks?” But this seemingly compelling logic is exactly what Solomon’s woman “adjures” (or “pleads with”) us to reject. She wouldn’t be pleading if the temptation was weak.

It’s important for us to understand that when the Bible says to “keep waiting,” it’s not trying to take anything from us. God’s not trying to rob you of an experience but rather lead you into a greater one, and the arguments of our culture are absurd. For instance:

“Well, how will you know if you’re sexually compatible?”

Because I’m a man and she’s a woman.

“How do you know that you’re going to work out well together?”

Well, we don’t! That’s the importance of the covenant of grace. We’ll figure it out. We are making the promise to figure it out with God’s help, whatever happens.

Before we make the vow before God, we don’t want to derail the good pleasure God has designed for us. We don’t want to get in his way. He’s leading us toward a greater reality than sexual gratification, wooing us into what will be best for our joy and for his glory.

So, please, don’t think that God is sexually repressed. Wait till we get to the fourth chapter of Solomon’s Song! We’ll cover that portion of the text more closely in the fifth chapter of this book, but there’s no way a reasonable person could read the Song of Solomon and come away thinking that God is a prude or that his Word is somehow embarrassed by sex.

The world is certainly not embarrassed by its sexual activity, even though it should be. God, who designed the act of sexual intercourse and wired us to be sexual beings, should absolutely not be. He has every right to explain all we need to know in his Word to find the kind of sexual satisfaction that will bring us joy and him glory. That kind of sexual satisfaction is reserved for a man and woman in the covenant of marriage as a recurring consummation and “ratifying” of their union. That is the godly, wise way to live out our sexuality.

But the biblical way of wisdom is not the way most of us live our lives. If you’re a single person reading this book, statistically speaking, you are not a virgin. It’s quite likely that you have, in the words of Solomon’s Song but contrary to its admonition, “awakened love before its time.”

Rules of behavior are not the only kind of wisdom God gives us in his Word, nor are they even the best kind, especially if 2 Corinthians 3:9 is to be believed. The gospel is better than the law, and for those who have engaged in sexual sin, there is much gospel to be had.

There are two stories in particular in the Bible that radically reorient how we see and understand who God is and what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Both stories involve sexually promiscuous women.

The first is about a woman caught in adultery. An angry, religious mob grabbed this poor, naked woman—leaving the man behind, for reasons probably having to do with misogyny and prejudice—and dragged her to the feet of Jesus, hoping to catch him in a tricky situation. They said to him, “The Law says that this woman caught in the act of adultery should be stoned to death. What do you say?”

Just imagine for a moment that God sent an angry mob after you when you engaged in sexual sin. Imagine the shame of being busted publicly in your sin, of being exposed spiritually and physically, of being dragged naked in front of a crowd of hateful people yelling at you and accusing you, taunting you, teasing you. Can you feel the fear? The vulnerability? Can you feel the hopelessness? The despair?

Imagine they have thrown you at the feet of a highly respected righteous man. And the law of the land is that the penalty for your sin is death.

The storm of emotion inside this woman must have been suffocating. Regret, fear, shame, desperation, shock—all at once.

The Bible, in John 8, says that Jesus bent down and started to draw with his finger in the dirt. I don’t know why, but I’ve always thought it’s the coolest thing ever. Nobody knows what he wrote in the ground, but after he doodled in the sand, Jesus stood and said, “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.”

From oldest to youngest, the accusers dropped their rocks and walked away. But that’s not the part that gets me. The part that gets me is when Jesus walked over to the woman, took her face in his hands, maybe wiped away all her tears and dirt and shame—and if there were any eyes she didn’t want to look into, they would be the eyes of Jesus, the most holy man who ever lived—and said to her, “Where are your accusers, woman? Has no one condemned you?”

She replied, “No one.”

And the holy king of Israel replied, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

After reading this, can you doubt there is abundant grace for the most ashamed of sinners?

In another encounter, Jesus was walking through Samaria when he stopped at Jacob’s well at noon. A woman approached the well, and what’s interesting is that this was not a common time of day for women to come to the well. Most came early in the morning or later in the evening to avoid the heat, but this woman came in the heat of midday. It is suspected by most scholars that she wanted to avoid people. Maybe she was carrying shame and didn’t want to deal with scolding looks and turned-up noses from other women.

In the dialogue that ensued between this woman and Jesus, he revealed that she was married multiple times and the man who she was living with at the time was not her husband. It appears to be kind of a “sex for rent” arrangement. Jesus began the conversation with the topic of worship, but through that, Jesus revealed to her the reality of his kingship. Part of this reality, part of the breaking in of God’s kingdom through him as Messiah, was the invitation he gave to her: “I want to give you water so that you’ll never thirst again” (see John 4).

We have to wrap our minds around the fact that this woman had been treated very cheaply, and as a result, she treated herself very cheaply. And then a Jewish man, who should have been the most judgmental toward her, offered her eternally satisfying refreshment.

I’ve been a pastor long enough to know the effects of sexual abuse. I know that women don’t become strippers or prostitutes because they aspired to these careers as little girls. It’s a long, dark road that leads women into circumstances like these. It is often the result of desperate choices made in the wake of abuse and oppression. They’ve been taken advantage of by people they trusted. Any woman who is trying to avoid prying eyes and mocking lips also has the opportunity to stand before the sinless Messiah, the one who will judge righteously. And Jesus’s response to her will not be, “Clean yourself up.” Or, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

It will be, “I want to give you water so that you’ll never thirst again.”

To the woman at the well, Jesus was basically saying, “You are trying to quench your thirst with these men. This desperate thirst you have coming out of the emotional and spiritual desert of your life … I want to give you water that quenches that thirst forever.” Christ’s response to her was sorrowful, broken, tender, and redemptive.

So if you’re in a place of having been made to feel shameful, you should know there is good news. You don’t have to surrender to shame. You don’t have to be owned by regret. You don’t have to live forever under a dark cloud of guilt. The holy God of the universe who has condemned your sin and promised wrath for the unrepentant workers of disobedience offers you—freely, abundantly, mightily—total and absolute forgiveness, forever. To all who trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, his righteousness becomes theirs, his holiness becomes theirs, his security in the Father becomes theirs. And if you are repentant and believe in him, his grace is yours.

Christ has brought about the redemption of our past and a recognition that he is able to make all things new. So what can happen right now, even as you read this book, is that by his grace you can lay down your sin, ask for his forgiveness, and walk away completely blameless (see Col. 1:22; Jude 1:24).

This is possible even if you’re in the midst of sexual sin right now. Maybe it is God’s will for you to be married, and your relationship has great potential for godliness, but it is marred by physical intimacy before its time. You can both repent.

Men, you should lead the way by apologizing to your woman, asking for her forgiveness and promising to pursue her heart in godly ways. It’s never too late to repent and start anew by God’s grace.

You must believe that God is not holding out on you, that he isn’t withholding sex from you to make you miserable. He has something greater in store for you. And if you as a couple can trust him together and believe in the wisdom of his Word and the godly counsel of his servants in the church, your relationship will go to better places than sexual intimacy can take you.

If you are willing to repent in this area and cling to the gospel with desperate abandon in order to honor each other and work toward each other’s sanctification, the day of marriage will be that much sweeter.