CHAPTER FIVE
“AND THE TWO BECOME ONE FLESH”
We followed our newly wedded couple through their romantic Song from their first meeting through dating, courtship, and right up to their wedding ceremony. Next, leaving no aspect of their relationship to our imagination, they ask us to follow them to the honeymoon suite.
There’s no getting around it. This is exactly what was happening in Song of Solomon 4. They sang about sex on their wedding night. When you adequately interpret the poetry, the actions described are fairly graphic. But it’s not crude. It’s not inappropriate.
What we see is the outpouring and unleashing of desires that were held in check by God’s grace working through the couple’s godly will to obey. Solomon and his bride restrained themselves throughout their relationship while growing closer emotionally and spiritually. They became very intimate in their relationship, but even as sexual desire for each other grew, they didn’t stir that love before its time.
But now it’s time. They made their vows before the witness of their community and families. They pledged before God and each other to ahava love, no matter what—all the way until death. The covenant was sealed, and now they get to make the proverbial drive from the reception to the hotel.
When you marry your spouse, if your wedding day is the culmination of a long period of physical restraint, you will probably experience a similar feeling. Maybe you’ll hop on a plane to your honeymoon spot, land, rent a car, and make the drive to your honeymoon suite. You’ll be nervous and excited and a little scared, but a lot excited and sort of anxious and a very whole lot excited. You know that what you’ve held back for all this time is now sanctioned.
There’s another thing that may happen on the honeymoon night—something that probably happens more often than people care to admit: when a married couple finally meet each other sexually for the first time, when it’s over, they may think, That’s it? Between the buildup of anticipation, the nirvana-like category our culture has assigned sex, and the long, long wait, sometimes that first time is built up out of proportion. More weight is given to it than ought to be. We need to have some caution when reading about Solomon and his bride’s first time. If we misread it, we may set ourselves up for having our joy stolen.
Similarly, if you’ve been married a long while, if you’ve got kids, you work long hours, and you and your spouse have been racking up the years in age, you may read Song of Solomon 4 and think, What fairy tale did this come out of? This is ridiculous.
Thus, we need another caution. Remember that this chapter covers what we may call “ideal sex”—honeymoon sex between a couple who have actively kept themselves chaste while connecting deeply with each other on every other level. The sex depicted in Song of Solomon 4 is like the throwing open of a dam to release all the wonderful pressure of the nonsexual intimacy building up in their relationship. Their hearts were full and hopeful. What’s depicted is ideal sex. However, I think we can still pull some principles out of this text for our own sex lives well into marriage, even if you can barely remember your honeymoon night or even if you’d prefer to forget it. This fourth chapter of Solomon’s Song shows us, from God’s perspective, what sex is meant to be. And it starts by not being in a hurry to start.
Sex Is Romantic
When you’re making love to a soul and not a physical body, there’s this unbelievably powerful, fulfilling, beautiful thing that occurs. Song of Solomon 4:1 begins with a declaration that I find unbelievably profound: “Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful! Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead.”
What was he talking about? Well, he was talking about her eyes, but he wasn’t talking about her eyes. He was commenting on her appearance, but he wasn’t just saying, “You’re hot,” or whatever. That can be a nice thing to say at the right time, if your woman appreciates that, but “You’re hot” doesn’t really get the depth of his feeling here. In giving his appraisal of her appearance, Solomon was really romantically approving of her. More than that, he was delighting in her.
So there they were in the honeymoon suite. He had his tux on. She was wearing her dress. He looked at her. They were all alone. The sixty groomsmen and sixty bridesmaids were left behind. And finally together, alone, on the precipice of long-forbidden intimacy, he looked deep into her eyes—into her soul, really—and said, “You are beautiful.”
“Behold!” he said. “You are beautiful!” He was captivated by her, body and soul. He didn’t say, “I like your eyes.” He dug deep. He kept pulling out the poetry. He didn’t turn off the poetry when they finally got married, as if the work was done, as if all his romantic effort was simply in getting a woman to say yes so he could put the relationship on autopilot. He said, “Your eyes are doves … Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead.”
Now, in case you don’t know better, men, you’re probably going to need to update your language a bit. Don’t try saying this exact stuff to your wife. Don’t put the book down, take your wife in your arms, and say, “Man, your hair reminds me of goats.” Probably doesn’t translate too well today and will probably end differently for you than for Solomon. So don’t steal his words, but do steal his idea.
Solomon continued to survey her beauty and respond with poetic approval:
Your lips are like a scarlet thread,
and your mouth is lovely.
Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
behind your veil.
Your neck is like the tower of David,
built in rows of stone;
on it hang a thousand shields,
all of them shields of warriors. (vv. 3–4)
Once again, it’s very clear that these two saved themselves for each other, because we’ve seen the whole romance from the beginning. It’s also very clear that the romance didn’t stop on the wedding day. It was carried through into the wedding night. They weren’t even undressed yet when Solomon remarked on her captivating presence.
This is such an important principle to remember, especially for men. Notice how Solomon proceeded, husbands. He wasn’t quick or rough. He hadn’t even touched her yet. He spent the first moments where intimacy began to build by saying, essentially, “Your soul is beautiful.”
He wasn’t in a hurry. He gazed at her beauty and went step-by-step, slowly praising her—eyes, mouth, cheeks, neck. This whole thing is very, very romantic. Notice he hadn’t even gone below her neck yet. (Yet!) He didn’t say, “Man, your eyes are pretty. And those breasts!” No, he took his time. He started from the top and worked his way slowly down, doling out praise in a very measured fashion.
As he did this, what do you think happened to her nerves, her fear, her insecurity? If he had just hauled off and grabbed her right off the bat, her guard would likely have gone right back up again. But he slowly disarmed her before he disrobed her. We know from the previous chapters that she likely carried around some insecurity about her body, about her appearance, as nearly every woman does. Solomon knew this. And because Solomon was very wise, he also knew that insecure women do not feel safe. Nor do they feel free and sexually uninhibited.
Do you remember that old country song “Older Women (Are Beautiful Lovers)”? No, you’re probably not Spotifying it. But that song by Ronnie McDowell is interestingly enough pretty truthful—at least as far as the premise goes that the older a woman gets, usually the more comfortable in her body she becomes. She becomes more comfortable with who she is. The song is sort of a celebration of that idea, I think. Solomon didn’t marry an older woman, but he understood the same principle: unless and until his bride felt confident in her own skin—and felt confident that Solomon was confident in her—she wouldn’t be ready to give herself fully to him.
And, of course, he was also aware that women don’t get turned on the same way men do. Unlike men, most women aren’t always sexually “ready to go.” They need some time, some tending to. You’ve probably heard the old adage that women aren’t microwaves but Crock-Pots. So Solomon warmed her up. And what we see in his slowness, his poetry, his wise understanding of how she was wired and what she needed to hear is that marital sex according to God’s Word is romantic.
Sex Is Tender
What Solomon did to romance his bride initiated deeper levels of intimacy and vulnerability. As a result, as this chapter progresses, we see increasing openness. He next moved to behold her physical beauty more fully.
“Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that graze among the lilies” (4:5). Her dress was at least half off as she stood topless before him, and he praised her still, poetically complimenting her breasts.
This metaphor may be a little difficult to decipher, but let me see if I can break it down for you. Fawns are baby deer, right? Now, if you saw two baby deer grazing among the lilies, how would you approach them? Let’s assume you have some sense and an appreciation of nature. What do you do? Well, for instance, you don’t tackle fawns. You approach them quietly and gingerly. And if they don’t run away as you slowly approach, you don’t ring theirs necks when you get there, right?
Are you following me here?
We see in this portion of the text that marital sex is not only romantic but also gentle.
I often hear guys complain about the frequency of sex in their marriage, but I can tell by the things they say and the way they say those things that they may be their own worst problem. I want to say to them, “Maybe if you quit groping your wife, she’d be more interested.”
Women respond to slowness and gentleness. Once you’ve reached the point of intercourse, she may want you to move more quickly and touch more firmly, but most women can’t get to that point until they’ve felt wooed into it. They want to feel safe and secure. They want to feel embraced more than grabbed, caressed more than groped.
Make no mistake: Solomon looked at his wife’s naked breasts. He was going to touch them and kiss them. He wanted to go further. But he was going about the whole thing with an evident tenderness. He was interested in more than his own gratification; he wanted his bride to feel sexual pleasure too—but beyond that, he wanted her to feel loved.
This is another reason pornography is so dangerous. It makes men sexually stupid. You might think it’s showing you advanced stuff, the right techniques, the apex of sexual activity, but it’s so remedial. It’s less than remedial, actually, because it is fake. Those performers may actually be having sex, but they are doing just that: performing. They aren’t making love. And the whole scene is not an accurate depiction of two people expressing love for each other through sex but rather a facade, a ruse, an illusion of intimacy. The whole thing is designed to gratify the male viewer; it is sex as a lustful man would imagine it.
When young men become trained by pornography, they get married and expect things from their wives that their wives aren’t interested in or can’t even do. It leads to frustration and anger and shame and insecurity. Pornography doesn’t show you what sex is; it shows you what male lust is.
Sex the way God created it to be is very romantic and, yes, very intense, but also very tender. Let’s talk about that intensity, though.
Sex Is Passionate
In the Song of Solomon 4:6, our new husband declared from the joy of the honeymoon suite: “Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, I will go away to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense.”
In case you’re not tracking, he basically said, “We’re going to be here for a while.” He wanted to do this until the sun came up! When he talked about the mountain and the hill, he wasn’t talking about going for a hike. He was referring to her, or to certain parts of her, and how he intended to tend to them for a long, long time.
It’s important to take this into consideration because as we see in the text that marital sex is meant to be romantic and tender, it’s not coldly methodical. He showed restraint in this time of foreplay, but he wasn’t devoid of passion. He was intoxicated by her. He couldn’t get enough of her. The sexual fire burning within him—that God put there for his wife—was growing hotter and hotter. Not only does God want married sex to be romantic and tender, but he also wants it to be passionate.
The sex described between our newlyweds was exhilarating. I mean, I don’t really know if Solomon had the stamina to do what he said he was going to do, but he sure meant to try. Fundamentally what he said is richer than what he planned to do with her. He was basically saying, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here. I’ve got nowhere else I want to be.” Whether they were moving slowly or more quickly, he wasn’t setting her up for a “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.” He wasn’t checking his watch, looking over her shoulder at the television, thinking about work, or stressing about the yard. He was totally in the moment, and he declared that he didn’t want the moment to end.
This is what we should desire for the marriage bed. Not in a hurry, not in a rush. Not thinking about a thousand different things. No distractions, no interruptions. Ideally, the sex is so loving that it builds itself up, fuels itself, and keeps stoking the passion as it proceeds.
Consider chapter 4, verse 7: “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”
He hasn’t let up, has he? When he said “You are altogether beautiful,” we are meant to assume that he saw her in her entirety. She was completely naked. Culturally, this was a time when a woman’s figure was entirely hidden by her dress. They didn’t wear formfitting clothes. So this was likely the first time Solomon was able to consider the size of her breasts, the roundness of her hips, or the shape of her legs.
She must have been nervous about this too! What if he saw something he didn’t like? Would he have been able to disguise some disappointment? She was probably thinking, I hope he likes this. I hope he will approve of me. I hope I don’t disappoint him.
Solomon didn’t miss a beat. “You’re flawless,” he said. He saw his bride standing naked before him, and in a moment every married couple must experience, he had the opportunity to bring either grace or judgment. Like that very first couple in history, they were exposed to each other. Before sin entered the world, Adam and Eve were “naked and unashamed.” This is the spirit of sexuality, intimacy, and security every married couple ought to strive for, with the husband taking responsibility to lead the way.
Solomon and his bride were in their honeymoon chamber, naked and unashamed.
Our groom sought to put his wife at ease because of his love for her. And he was in love with her. He was crazy about her. Nothing could change that.
Come with me from Lebanon, my bride;
come with me from Lebanon.
Depart from the peak of Amana,
from the peak of Senir and Hermon,
from the dens of lions,
from the mountains of leopards. (v. 8)
What in the world was going on? Did they get bored and go to the zoo?
No, he was out of his mind with passion for her. There were mountain peaks, wild animals—a romantic ferocity, a passion taking place. They were being transported! Maybe you’ve heard some sexual encounters described as out-of-body experiences. This was one of those. They felt swept away. The passion was so great that this sex became about more than sex and physical gratification. It became the culmination and the means of something greater, something beyond themselves.
Solomon cried out to her, “Come with me,” and he thereby demonstrated his gracious leading of her into passionate pleasure. “Take hold of my love,” he was saying. “I want to sweep you away and take you to dazzling heights of love.” One commentator remarked, “This seems to be simply the bridegroom rejoicing over the bride, the meaning being, ‘Give thyself up to me’—thou art mine; look away from the past, and delight thyself in the future.”1
The passion in their sex was not simply about sexual appetite and urges. It was indicative of the goal of marriage, that a man and woman would become “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). A real union was taking place. They were becoming something different.
When a husband and wife really connect sexually, the passion can be overwhelming. If you are married, perhaps you know this experience quite well. It may not happen the same way every time, but when you’re both totally in sync, firing on all cylinders, and the sexual encounter is taking place after an obvious connection that is emotional and spiritual, it is entirely different from simply “having sex.” And Solomon’s poetic tongue can’t and won’t stop:
You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride;
you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace.
How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride!
How much better is your love than wine,
and the fragrance of your oils than any spice!
Your lips drip nectar, my bride;
honey and milk are under your tongue;
the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon (vv. 9–11).
He kissed her passionately, sensuously. He found her delicious. In an odd way, you could almost say that his passionate loving of her was gluttonous. To describe her taste like nectar and honey and milk was a way to say he was feasting on her passion. And in fact, in Song of Solomon 5:1, the lovers were told to “be drunk with love!” Much like the young husband is told in Proverbs 5:19 to “be intoxicated always” by his wife’s love.
Obviously, there are ways that lust and unrestrained appetites can masquerade as passion. We need to make an effort not to confuse passion with quickness or forcefulness. Everything from porn to romance novels seems to get this wrong, almost always conflating passion with roughness. A married couple may progress into a degree of vigorousness in sex that they mutually agree is appropriate, of course, but the romance and the tenderness must remain. And the passion we see here, as exhilarating and “drunk” as it was, was not how the sex began. Nor was it the pace of one party against the restraint of the other. Instead, this passion was the result of husband and wife so connected on every level, and so worked up from all the seduction and wooing before intercourse, that they were jointly stirred, aroused, and impassioned.
There is no limit on this kind of passion. Betsy Ricucci wrote, “Within the context of covenant love and mutual service, no amount of passion is excessive. Scripture says our sexual intimacy should be exhilarating.”2
To trade in this kind of passion, as free and fun and fiery as it can be, for the basic giving in to libidinous urges is to debase sex, which even married couples can do. Just because a married couple agrees on some sexual behavior does not sanctify that behavior. There is a way for even Christian married couples to have sex “in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thess. 4:5).
The couple in the Song of Solomon possessed a passion akin to adoration. It was awash with glory, not about urges but unction.
The union of husband and wife comes to fruition through sexual intimacy, and it makes their sex about more than sex. And this is why, biblically speaking, sex has a sacredness to it.
Sex Is Holy
The passion continues as we proceed through the fourth chapter, but the tone changes a bit. It seems evident that their passionate experience revealed to them something special about marital sex, something sex outside of marriage can never be. Solomon said:
A garden locked is my sister, my bride,
a spring locked, a fountain sealed.
Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates
with all choicest fruits,
henna with nard,
nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon,
with all trees of frankincense,
myrrh and aloes,
with all choice spices—
a garden fountain, a well of living water,
and flowing streams from Lebanon. (vv. 12–15)
What we know about Solomon from the book of Ecclesiastes is that he was quite the botanist. He built not only gardens but also full-on national forests. The guy’s green thumb was unreal. He spent a very large portion of his life building gardens in Jerusalem. In fact, if we were to hop on a plane right now and fly to the west or east side of Jerusalem, we would see these massive craters that are called the Pools of Solomon. He built them to water the forests he had planted. This guy knew his stuff.
What he did here in this passage, then, was list the rarest, most expensive, and most sought-after plants, flowers, and spices. And he’s comparing those things to his bride. He said, “Your body is like an impossible garden, the dream garden, the stuff of mythology!” Because you can’t grow cinnamon in the same place that you grow pomegranates, for instance. But as he passionately drank in her body, as their souls became mingled together in the purest of marital sex, he proclaimed, “Your body is the most perfect place, and it’s being discovered for the first time.”
Think of the fabled lost city of Atlantis or El Dorado. Places of legend, places that, if they even exist, have been hidden for centuries. He compared her to the discovery of a lost garden that existed only in his imagination; it was locked up and hidden for years. Until he discovered it.
But this was bigger than just a myth found to be true. It was a parallel discovery to the wonder of God’s glory. The freedom of the marriage bed is seen here to be a correlation of, for instance, entering the Holy of Holies after being forbidden access for so long.
I don’t want to overstate it. This is an analogy, not an equation. But it’s a good, biblical analogy. There was something holy taking place between husband and wife. It was sacred, special, unique.
“Holy” has often been defined as “being set apart for special use.” Sex certainly fits that description. It is not for everybody. It is set aside for special use in marriage. Sex is holy.
At that moment, Solomon was in a way saying, “You know, I could have sexual intercourse with any woman, but what’s happening here is well beyond our physical bodies and just sex.” There was a friendship that had been built. There was real, sacrificial love. There was genuine care for the soul.
Physically speaking, they had a great time, of course, but there was something behind his desire to touch her that was greater than testosterone or the desire for an orgasm. As C. S. Lewis wrote, “Pleasures are shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility.… Make every pleasure into a channel of adoration.”3 He was speaking of the Christian’s need to follow every earthly pleasure back to its source in the God who is the giver of every good thing (see James 1:17), that he might get the glory.
And that is why sex is holy—it is meant to remind us of the God who gave it to us, who takes joy in union with his people. We don’t need to overspiritualize sex to see it this way; we just need to approach it the way the Bible ordained and be grateful for it. Seeing sex as holy will also help us love our spouses more greatly. Gary Thomas wrote:
Sex is about physical touch, to be sure, but it is about far more than physical touch. It is about what is going on inside us. Developing a fulfilling sex life means I concern myself more with bringing generosity and service to bed than with bringing washboard abdomens. It means I see my wife as a holy temple of God, not just as a tantalizing human body. It even means that sex becomes a form of physical prayer—a picture of heavenly intimacy that rivals the shekinah glory of old.4
Sex Is Reciprocal
So far in the fourth chapter of Solomon’s Song, we’ve heard only from Solomon. It’s good that he took the lead in the honeymoon suite, setting the tone for his bride so she knew he would be romantic and tender and passionate, while also maintaining the boundaries God set up for marital sex. He made her feel safe and secure, and because of that, she felt unashamed and free and uninhibited.
She responded, “Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind! Blow upon my garden, let its spices flow” (v. 16).
This is probably pretty much what you think it is.
Solomon brought her to the point of rapture. She was totally surrendered. He told her she was beautiful with her dress on, which was important. He told her she was beautiful with her dress off, which was also important. He kissed every part of her body, taking his time, tending to her in the right places at the right pace, and in Song of Solomon 4:16 she essentially called out to him to “bring it.”
The north wind in Jewish symbolism represents strength. He said he planned to tend to her mountains and hills until daybreak, and she replied, “I’ll bring the Gatorade.” (Not really, but kinda.) “Awake, O north wind” means, basically, “I hope you’re not almost done!”
But the south wind is a little different. The south wind, as the reciprocal of the north wind, represents gentleness. “Take me!” she cried out. “But continue to be gently passionate.” She wanted it to last because she was enjoying it too; drunk on passion right alongside him; enraptured, aroused, and reciprocating his love.
What we see here in an ideal sexual encounter between husband and wife is a mutually enjoyable and mutually expressive love. And it can remind us that men desire for their wives to desire them too.
I think sometimes what happens when there are intimacy issues in marriages, particularly when women have intimacy issues, is that they know their husbands’ desires for sex, but somehow they’ve come to see sex as dirty or forbidden. Or maybe they’ve come to think that it is sinful for a woman to enjoy sex or that it makes her unholy or unfeminine or immodest. So many wives will have sex with their husbands, but they avoid passionate intimacy. Sometimes there’s a block there.
Many men are trying to do the right thing, and they’re trying to care for their wives and figure out what it is that will please them sexually, but the intimacy isn’t working. The husband will slow down, but his wife freezes up. He’ll speed up, but that makes things worse.
This is one of those areas in our lives where if we’re not careful, the little foxes will absolutely destroy the garden. If you’re in this situation right now, consider seeking help from a trusted Christian counselor. Maybe you need to seek out a recovery program for sexual abuse, pornography, or other kinds of trauma. This could be especially helpful if you’re able to look back and pinpoint where wounds have prevented intimacy. This is not an easy thing to approach, and it’s not a light thing to process. It is complex and heavy, and while I can’t cover the fullness of its complexity in the space of this book, I don’t want you to assume that’s because I don’t think it’s a big deal. If there is a real barrier here in your marriage, if intimacy (sexual or otherwise) is being blocked because of wounds, insecurities, or traumas from your past, for your own spiritual and emotional health and for the health of your marriage, please seek help.
Women, assuming you are able, I have to tell you that your husband is not seeking just sexual willingness from you but sexual eagerness. They are not the same thing. Many women think that all their husbands want is sexual release. Of course men want sexual release, but you might be surprised to know that most men cannot find even that release fulfilling if they know their wives did not enjoy the experience.
In her book For Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn revealed the results of a professional survey of men that asked this question:
With regard to sex, for some men it is sufficient to be sexually gratified whenever they want. For other men it is also important to feel wanted and desired by their wife. How important is it to you to also feel sexually wanted and desired by your wife?5
Feldhahn wrote:
This topic earned the highest degree of unanimity of any question: 97 percent of men said “getting enough sex” wasn’t, by itself, enough—they wanted to feel wanted.
One man I interviewed summed it up like this: “Everyone thinks women are more emotional than men. And everyone thinks that when it comes to sex, guys just want to ‘do it,’ and women are more into the emotion and cuddling of it. So women think there are no emotions there. But there are, and when you say no, you are messing with all those emotions.”
And it’s not only a flat “no” that hurts. The survey showed that even if they were getting all the sex they wanted, three out of four men would still feel empty if their wife wasn’t both engaged and satisfied.6
The truth is, for men, sexual reciprocity is extraordinarily pleasing and satisfying in ways mere sexual release is not.
Whether Solomon’s bride knew this or not, she was eager to please—and to be pleased. “That mythic garden you were just singing about?” she basically said at the end of verse 16. “Come eat its choicest fruits.” She called her groom to come indulge in her and enjoy her.
And when sex is reciprocal and mutually enjoyable, it becomes as mutually fulfilling as it can be.
Sex Is Fulfilling
Are Solomon and his bride blowing you away yet? This dude was masterful with the poetry, and she ate it all up. He led expertly, and she responded joyfully. But I wonder if we shouldn’t get the wrong idea. This was their first night together, their first attempt at this sex thing, and I’m willing to bet neither of them was as good at it that night as they would be after many years together. I’d bet neither one of them had very good sexual technique.
I’m sure those of you who are not virgins can recall your first time. I don’t know how you’d grade yourself, but even if it was your wedding night and therefore was superspecial, more than likely, if you’re honest, you were thinking, That’s it?
Solomon and his bride moved wonderfully toward satisfaction, but there’s indication that they weren’t experts at this stuff right away. They were completely inexperienced. They hadn’t learned each other’s bodies yet, so we’re not going to call them experts as far as technique goes. And yet, they thoroughly enjoyed sex.
Once again, we see that sex is not about technique but rather finding ourselves in the rhythm of how God designed sex to be. And as we turn the corner now into Song of Solomon chapter 5, we see the voice of God reflected in the chiming in of others, perhaps still ringing in their ears from the celebration of their wedding: “Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!” (v. 1).
Solomon and his bride consummated their marriage at this point. They were lying in the bed (it had apparently been about a day and a half!), and the outside voice passing judgment on their wedding night experience was well pleased. Their entire experience was very pleasing to God. “Good job,” he said. “Well done. Keep it up.”
How pleasing was it to God? I mean, they were lounging in bed, trying to recover, sighing, “Oh, we’re so full,” and God said, “Have some more.”
God wants married couples to know that sex is his gift to them. And God does not give gifts to people so they won’t enjoy them. If he gives you steak, he wants you to savor it. If he gives you wine, he wants you to enjoy it. And when he gives a couple sex in the covenant of marriage, he wants them to indulge in it. The NIV translates the end of Song of Solomon 5:1 this way: “Drink your fill of love.” Why would he tell us to drink up if he didn’t want us to be fully satisfied?
If you put Song of Solomon 4 next to any romantic comedy or any porn site on the web, I don’t know any sane man or woman who’d say, “Yeah, I’ll take the movie. I’ll take the porn.” If you want to see sex as God created it to be, Song of Solomon 4 is it. When you bring in the context of what led to this moment in the Song as well as the Bible’s teaching on sex in other books, you can see that God is not stingy with joy when it comes to sexuality. If he gives you a gift, he wants you to enjoy it as it is designed to be enjoyed, which will ultimately lead to your satisfaction—not only with the gift itself but also with himself as the Giver.
Sex in the Song of Solomon is romantic, gentle, passionate, holy, and reciprocal. Because of all that, it is deeply satisfying for both the married couple and for God. When we steward sexuality in the appropriate biblical way, it can remind us to enjoy sex without making it an idol, to engage in it in a way that serves our greater good, which is ultimately trusting in the grace of God in Christ.
Sex Is About the Gospel
Maybe you’ve read through Song of Solomon 4 and thought, You know, this sounds like a really beautiful thing, but I’m a messed-up person and this is a broken world, and it all seems pretty unrealistic.
All of us have been wounded and hurt in some way. We’re all insecure, fearful, and broken. Maybe you are a husband thinking, I’ve already blown it. I haven’t led my wife like Solomon, so that ship has sailed. Maybe you’re a wife thinking, I don’t want to be unresponsive to my husband, but I don’t know how to make myself enjoy this.
Human beings are so complex. When you factor in sin, trauma, insecurity, and anxiety, our brokenness becomes part of that complexity. We can begin to feel indecipherable, unfixable.
When I was growing up, one thing I couldn’t figure out was what was going on at church. Going to church always confused me. Everybody seemed so happy, and I couldn’t figure out why. If you’re relatively new to church, have you ever tried to figure out why the people there raise their hands? ’Cause that’s goofy, isn’t it? Are they trying to ask questions of the guy up front?
Or if you just don’t understand this whole Christianity thing, you may get really confused about why people become emotional when it comes to the thought of God. What’s going on inside of them that thinking about some God up in heaven would make them weep?
So I want to clue you in because it’s something that I learned over time by God’s grace working in my life through the Christian message. What people are celebrating is that while we were at our worst, Jesus still loved us.
What made me love Christ wasn’t that all of a sudden I figured out how to do life. What made me love Christ is that when I was at my worst, when I was at my lowest point, when I absolutely could not clean myself up and there was nothing anybody could do with me, right at that moment, Christ said, “I’ll take that one. That’s the one I want.”
You know the Bible calls the church Christ’s bride. So it’s like standing before Jesus, completely exposed, all of our flaws and insecurities and—worse than that—our sins are right there in front of his face, and against all reason and rationale, the song of grace becomes startlingly, exhilaratingly true because the Groom looks at us and declares us beautiful. Spotless. Righteous. Justified.
This is the gospel. It is important to admit, believers in Jesus, that Christians are not more moral than anyone else. The essence of the gospel and what we celebrate is not that “we can” but that Christ did.
Intimacy is hard for broken people. We need Jesus. We need his help. But when you’ve gotten closer and closer to the incredible reality that God chose you, forgave you, and approved of you despite your sin, all because of Jesus Christ, that grace is satisfying and empowering, and it can be carried over into your marriage. It can be carried over in the way you respond to your spouse, confident and free because of Christ’s work in your life. It can be carried over in the way you forgive your spouse’s sins and overlook his or her imperfections, as a way of sharing what God has given you.
In this way, sex can be about the gospel, if we’re mindful enough to make it so. If Jesus wanted the broken version of you, can you find the strength to want your broken spouse? In Christ, it is possible—it just has to be worked and fought for.
Love the gift of sex and love your spouse, but it’s not technique or romance that makes sex like they had in Song of Solomon 4 possible—it’s Jesus. He—and he alone—reconciled what went so wrong in Genesis 3.
Can you have pleasurable sex outside of life in Jesus? Sure. But it can’t be all that he designed it to be. In the end, it won’t draw you any closer to the person you’re having sex with. It certainly won’t draw you closer to God, who alone satisfies completely. But married sex can draw you closer to God and your spouse, and one of the ways it does that is by pointing away from sex and toward the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Sex is good, but it’s not built for eternity. It won’t be around forever. Neither will marriage, for that matter. No, marriage and sex are good, but Jesus is better. He is better than everything in life. He is better than life itself. He is life!